Empathy should have been the word of the year, mainly because it was never more used or abused. Quiet civil wars unfolded within US Christian nationalist circles over who “deserves” empathy. From Catholic convert JD Vance to Bible-touting evangelical Charlie Kirk to Elon Musk, this was the year they started framing it not as a virtue, but as a weakness on immigration issues, social justice and LGBTQ rights.

Kirk, who was murdered in September, said he couldn’t stand the word, viewing it as “a made-up, New Age term that does a lot of damage, but very effective when it comes to politics”. Musk claimed it was being “weaponised” by the woke and called it the fundamental weakness of western civilisation. Vance tried to trap it in a distinctive Christian perspective by quoting St Augustine’s ordo amoris – the order in which you dole out your empathy – to justify inhumane treatment of undocumented immigrants.

Former taoiseach Leo Varadkar had an honest stab at untangling the word when he was accused of lacking empathy as a politician. It wasn’t that he lacked it, he said, but that his family kept their feelings “more private” than others, which led to him being quite reserved. This had advantages while working as a doctor when he had to deal with a........

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