By Rxan Smith
Jan 22, 2026
We fought for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights… and then we tripped over our own good intentions and face‑planted into a culture where feelings outrank facts, and disagreement is a hate crime. Somewhere along the way, the left confused empathy with fragility and activism with denial. Now the very values that once changed the world are collapsing under the weight of their own performance.
The Compassion Trap: How Well‑Meaning Liberalism Lost Its Way
We fought for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights… and then we tripped over our own good intentions and face‑planted into a culture where feelings outrank facts, and disagreement is a hate crime. Somewhere along the way, the left confused empathy with fragility and activism with denial. Now the very values that once changed the world are collapsing under the weight of their own performance.
Liberalism once meant expanding dignity, opportunity, and justice. But when the pursuit of empathy becomes a refusal to grapple with reality, liberal values become shells of themselves. A compassionate politics that refuses accountability ultimately weakens the very people and institutions it claims to protect.
We declare this as unapologetic liberals—devoted to civil rights, bodily autonomy, equality, and the fierce protection of human dignity. The triumphs of civil rights, women’s liberation, and LGBTQ+ rights were hard‑won victories against real oppression, grounded in evidence, courage, and universal principles. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges legalized same‑sex marriage nationwide, a landmark civil liberties achievement. Yet today, a poisonous pattern has taken hold.
When empathy is severed from accountability and truth, progress does not advance; it stalls, fractures, and eventually reverses. Compassion became absolutism. Protection became denial. Empathy replaced evidence. Discomfort was reframed as harm.
This pattern now corrodes once‑noble causes, turning righteous intent into dogmatic excess—and betraying the very people those causes swore to uplift.
Gender: When Inquiry Becomes Heresy
The taboo around gender has reached absurd heights: questioning biological realities in policy or science is now branded as hatred rather than honest inquiry. Respecting and protecting transgender individuals is a genuine liberal achievement, one grounded in expanding human dignity. Yet when any discussion of sex differences in sports, prisons, or medicine triggers claims of violence, the movement stops persuading and starts punishing.
Author and critic Thomas Chatterton Williams, a lifelong liberal, argues that intolerance for disagreement now comes from the left as much as the right and constrains free speech — a tool liberals once championed. The uncomfortable truth: silencing biology in service of emotional comfort does not protect trans people; it builds policy on sand and invites backlash that harms everyone.
Feminism: When Realism Is Called Betrayal
Feminism promised women genuine agency and escape from objectification—goals every liberal should celebrate. But today, some public discourse suggests how women present themselves carries no social or professional weight, as if visual signals no longer matter in daily life.
Liberal thinker Mark Lilla has pointed out that obsession with personal identity categories can erode broader solidarity and practical power. The uncomfortable truth: denying that visual and social cues influence perception leaves women unprepared for a world that still judges them by those cues, undermining the very agency feminism fought to secure.
Body Positivity: When Health Facts Become Forbidden
Body positivity began as a righteous strike against humiliation and discrimination—a cause liberals rightly embraced. Yet it has mutated in some circles into discouraging any discussion of the health risks associated with severe obesity.
According to the CDC, adults with obesity face significant increased risks for heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers — and overall medical costs are considerably higher than for those at healthy weight. Comedian and commentator Bill Maher also criticized the retreat from health realism on his HBO show. The uncomfortable truth: shielding people from evidence about their health is not compassion — it is complicity in suffering and avoidable systemic costs.
Due Process: When Allegation Equals Proof
Taking sexual assault survivors seriously is a core liberal imperative. But stories of “believe all women” collapsing into “accusation equals truth” and eliminating due process have sparked concern among liberal commentators who support both justice and fairness.
While there is no one centralized archived quote, many progressive legal scholars have critiqued how overzealous social judgment sometimes now outruns evidence, arguing that fairness requires both compassion for victims and due process protections. The uncomfortable truth: abandoning due process in favor of immediate condemnation undermines the rule of law and feeds public distrust.
Cancel Culture: When Critique Becomes Exile
Cancel culture began as a tool for accountability against powerful actors who escaped consequences for harmful behavior. Now, public disagreement is often equated with violence, and professional destruction over tweets, jokes, or nuanced opinions is commonplace.
The Harper’s Letter on Justice and Open Debate, signed by more than 150 liberal artists, academics, and writers, warned that “the free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted.” This document was explicitly defended by some liberals as a necessary reaffirmation that open debate is central to liberal renewal. The uncomfortable truth: when critique becomes cancellation, liberal discourse itself shrinks and falters.
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Identity Liberalism: When Solidarity Fractures
Celebrating diverse identities enriches liberal society and corrects historical exclusion. Yet when every issue is viewed exclusively through the lens of group identity, shared citizenship and broad political coalitions can erode.
Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal analyzes how identity politics can undercut broad appeal and collective political action. The uncomfortable truth: a liberalism that sorts humanity into competing victim hierarchies cannot build the broad alliances needed to govern or win elections, because it narrows rather than expands the coalition of voices it must persuade.
Sexual Autonomy: When Liberation Becomes Performance
Sexual autonomy is foundational to personal freedom and a victory liberals have championed. Yet when liberation is equated primarily with public exhibition and constant visibility, the movement runs the risk of turning agency into performance.
Feminist writer Ariel Levy, in Female Chauvinist Pigs, argued that “raunch culture isn’t liberation—it’s women imitating the most degrading male fantasies and calling it power,” critiquing how sexual expression is sometimes framed as empowerment even when it reinforces limiting stereotypes. The uncomfortable truth: true agency includes the right to opt out of exposure without being shamed as prudish or oppressed.
Emotional Life: When Discomfort Is Rebranded as Harm
Protecting children and vulnerable people from genuine harm is humane. But when every disagreement or uncomfortable idea is framed as danger requiring institutional shield, we risk stunting resilience and intellectual growth.
Psychologists Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt argue in The Coddling of the American Mind that treating emotional discomfort as harm — a form of “safetyism” — weakens students’ capacity to cope with real adversity. They state that avoiding challenge inhibits development rather than fostering resilience. The uncomfortable truth: a society that equates discomfort with danger produces adults ill‑equipped to navigate complex realities. Lukianoff & Haidt
Campuses and Safe Spaces: When Refuge Becomes Bunker
Safe spaces originally served as temporary refuges for trauma survivors. Now they are often wielded as ideological bunkers where dissenting viewpoints are unwelcome, undermining the university’s mission of open inquiry.
Liberal commentator Van Jones criticized the idea that students must be safe from “ideological” discomfort, saying, “I don’t want you to be safe ideologically… I want you to be strong… put on some boots and learn how to deal with adversity.” This perspective underscores that shielding people from intellectual friction often leaves them unprepared for the real world. Senate hearing testimony
Merit and Diversity: When Standards Are Lowered in the Name of Equity
Diversity corrects historical exclusion and enriches every institution—undeniable liberal progress. Yet when inclusion is pursued by lowering bars, enforcing quotas over competence, or prioritizing representation above shared standards, trust collapses and resentment festers.
Linguist and cultural commentator John McWhorter argues that treating individuals as if they can never be held to equal standards undercuts the very people liberalism seeks to empower. The uncomfortable truth: equality demands shared excellence, not exceptions; demanding less in the name of equity produces incompetence and backlash that wounds the very groups meant to benefit.
These are not reactionary complaints—they are liberal diagnoses. Working‑class voters watch everyday crises—cost of living, healthcare, safety—met with moral lectures instead of solutions. Institutional trust evaporates when policy becomes emotional theater rather than evidence‑based governance.
Polling indicates trust in major institutions—government, media, higher education—has fallen sharply over recent decades. (Many analysts point to surveys showing historically low levels of institutional trust among Americans.) Reality always wins. Voters smell nonsense faster than activists admit.
Empathy without honesty is not kindness; it is abdication.
The Counterpoints - And Why They Fail (Quite remarkably)
To be fair, activists are not imagining the dangers they fear. Their arguments deserve to be stated clearly before being dismantled.
“Skepticism gets weaponized against marginalized groups.” Yes, bad‑faith actors sometimes hide behind ‘just asking questions.’ But suppressing inquiry empowers those actors by making truth taboo. Open debate exposes fraud; censorship fuels it.
“Overcorrection is necessary after decades of under‑protection.” Yes, marginalized groups endured real harm for generations. But overcorrection that denies reality—biological, legal, medical, or social—creates new harms and erodes public trust. Progress requires calibration, not absolutism.
“Calling out harmful speech protects vulnerable people.” It can. But when “harm” expands to include disagreement, satire, or data, the concept becomes meaningless. A society that cannot distinguish discomfort from danger cannot govern itself.
These counterarguments collapse because they rely on emotional absolutism rather than evidence. Liberalism wins when it pairs empathy with truth, not when it replaces one with the other.
And finally…
Look, we’re liberals. We believe in dignity for everybody, freedom for everybody, opportunity for everybody. We marched for civil rights, we fought for women’s rights, we stood up for gay rights and trans rights—because those were real injustices, and fixing them made America better. But somewhere along the way, we got drunk on our own compassion and started confusing kindness with cowardice.
We decided that feelings trump facts, that discomfort is violence, that disagreement is hate. We told kids they’re fragile snowflakes who need safe spaces from ideas. We told women their choices have no consequences. We told overweight people that science is bigotry. We turned “believe women” into “believe everything,” canceled people for old tweets, and splintered into identity tribes that can’t even talk to each other—let alone win an election.
And the result? Working‑class voters—black, white, Latino, whatever—are walking away in droves because they’re tired of being lectured about culture while they can’t pay rent. Institutions are crumbling because nobody trusts them anymore. And the right? They’re laughing all the way to the ballot box.
Empathy without honesty isn’t kindness—it’s abdication.
Courage, accountability, nuance, reality—those are still the best tools in the toolbox. So let’s pick them up, dust them off, and start swinging again. Because if we don’t fix this, the compassion trap won’t just hurt liberalism.
It’ll kill it.
Liberals who want to win need to grow a pair—and start telling the truth again.
