We see, then, that there is no Party of Empathy. It’s not that liberal policies are driven by empathy and conservative ones are not. A more realistic perspective is that a politics of empathy drives concerns about people in the here and now. This meshes well with some liberal causes and some conservative causes. In some cases, such as gun control, empathy pushes both ways; in others, such as free speech and climate change, it is mostly silent on one side.
