Originally broadcast 1965

Compassion is a sympathy, a pity.

There’s always been compassion in the world, and the right kind.

The classic story of all compassion is the parable of the good Samaritan.

There’s always been a right kind of compassion and it manifests itself in various ways:

Physical compassion – boy carrying his brother.

Financial compassion – helping the poor.

Moral compassion -  God coming down to this earth, taking on upon Himself our sins and dying for us.

Compassion always implies the moral order, namely a distinction between right and wrong.

Compassion also implies there’s a distinction between a man destroying himself through his own fault and being destroyed by others.

False compassion which is gradually growing in this country, is a pity that is shown not to the mugged but to the mugger, not to the family of the murdered but to the murderer, not to the woman who was rapped but to the rapist, not to the poor girl who was given at shot of dope but the rich boy who happens to come from a fine family.

For today the decent man is practically off the reservation.

This is a false compassion.

How did it start? It started in literature.

Where pity was extended to the good-natured snob.

Now with what is the result?

Crime is increasing. The clemency of a false kind is shown to a criminal.

They are not guilty. They’re just sick, that’s all.

Part of the blame for this crime picture has to be laid at the door of those who have committed and shown false compassion.

We broken down the standard of right and wrong. We reduced everything to malady and disease.

As the great Russian thinker of the last century said:
“The days is coming when people will say there’s no longer right, no longer wrong, there’s only hungry, men will coming crying and fawning at our feet saying, give us bread.” In other words it’s just economics that matters. Nothing else.

There is latent in our society a grave danger.
That we may go in for a kind of masochism and cruelty.
I think in America we will revive bull fighting. And I think we will get new kicks out of mugging bulls.

What’s to be done to stop this false compassion?