Several years ago, I saw William F. Buckley being interviewed by Morley Safer on 60 Minutes. The great conservative pundit was saying something denigrating about liberals and compassion. Safer challenged him, asking what was wrong with being compassionate. Buckley replied in that clenched-jaw, Thurston Howell III accent of his, "Compassion is a buzzword." He was trying to control the conversation by controlling the words being used, making the word "compassion" to suit his own meaning--that of a fake sop to the guilty consciences of bleeding hearts.
Ronald Reagan did the same thing when he made the word liberal into a curse word by stating Michael Dukakis would not admit he was one. Yes, he's a L word, the great communicator jovially ranted. He made the word suit his purpose and gave it the meaning of a "tax and spend" demagogue whose head was in the clouds, wasting the hard-earned money of the average, God-fearing American.
Now the GOP is trying to hijack the word empathy in connection with the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor. President Obama used the term to describe a quality he desired in a Supreme Court judge. The right wingers are twisting it to mean subjectivity and partiality to minorities. They are trying to make empathy into a weakness as Buckley wanted to do with compassion and Reagan did with liberal.
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