Kindness Is NOT A Virtue

Thursday, September 10, 2026

In the movie Roadhouse, Patrick Swayze offers some advice to the bouncers in a very rough bar – “be nice, until it is time to not be nice.”  I have been wondering of late if we, as a society, have forgotten that there are times to not be nice.  “Be Kind” is everywhere as if it will solve all our problems.  And yet I do not find kindness or niceness on the list of virtues, (unless very loosely “translated” from the Latin) either cardinal or theological.  But then does anyone care about virtue anymore?  When I googled “the virtues” I got a bunch on entries about some TV series before I every got to anything on the actual historical concept of virtue.  It seems like we are creating our own list of unproven, and failing, virtues.

There is a term, currently in fashion among many conservatives, “suicidal empathy.”  Empathy is another one of those characteristics on the new, and failing, list of virtues.  We are told that anger is ALWAYS bad.  But is it?  There is such a thing as righteous anger; times when anger is an appropriate response.  We should be slow to anger, but that is quite different than declaring all anger as a bad thing.

The new list of failing virtues seems aimed at lubricating social interaction, but not actually resolving genuine problems.  As such, these new virtues end up exacerbating our genuine problems – letting them stew and grow until they become explosive. We have to be nice and kind and should not dare point out stupid when it presents itself.  Rather we must be empathetic and tolerant as stupid ends up in genuine societal harm.

We are seeing that societal harm develop right before our eyes – right now.  Yesterday I referenced an interview with three of the Lindsey Clancy jurors and noted how they are absolutely destroying the rule of law.  That interview was far more revelatory than just that particular insight:

Three of them spoke with NBC10 in Boston this week, and one in particular said it most explicitly. Remarking on the one holdout juror who refused to acquit, Kellie Farina, a middle-aged white woman, said, “He had the hardest time getting over the fact that Lindsay viciously killed her children.”

“Getting over?”…”Getting over!!!!”  Is the vicious murder of three children in any circumstance something one is supposed to “get over?”  Lord, I hope not.  And yet this juror thinks we are supposed to look past the murder in order to exercise this new list of failing virtues towards the murderess.  If indeed Lindsey Clancy is insane, and I have no idea at this juncture, then the most kindness we can show her, and society, is to see to it that she is permanently detained with proper psychiatric care.  But there is no “getting over” the killing, for Clancy, for society generally, and especially for those kids.  The list of failing virtues did not serve well in this case.

I have been unable to find it in print anywhere, but Monday, the host repeatedly played a quote from Abdul El-Sayed. It first appeared at 2:45 into the show on Monday (behind the Hughniverse paywall).

9-11 scarred our country in profound ways, but what we did after 9-11 scarred millions of other people.  When we talk about 9-11 we often fail to center them.

I see, we are supposed to be kind and nice to the people that attacked us and killed thousands of our citizens?  Seriously?  That’s who we are supposed to worry about in this scenario?  El-Sayed was about 17 when the attacks occurred.  He can be forgiven if he does not fully comprehend the impact of that day – no 17 year old really could.  But to call for empathy towards our enemy – and bear in mind they declared themselves our enemy by attacking, we did not just deem them so – can only be cast as virtuous by a truly misguided and compromised mind.  Nothing in that statement exercises prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance, faith, hope, or charity.

Do I want a kind and nice world?  Of course I do.  I often wish people were more empathetic and slower to anger.  But when we hold those things up as substitutes for genuine virtue we pervert justice and destroy hope.