Ardern on Weaponised Empathy
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern recently told Yale graduates that the doubt, sensitivity and humility that comes with imposter syndrome shouldn't be seen as weaknesses in leadership, but may rather possess "a power of their own."
Power is the keyword here, for I believe power is what motivates Dame Ardern.
"It [imposter syndrome] drives you to seek information, to listen to experts who can teach you and advisors who can guide you," Ardern shared.
Ardern certainly believes in "experts." So much so that she followed the experts as far as she could go during the 2020 COVID lockdowns in New Zealand, insisting that the country's borders needed to be closed for the good of Kiwis everywhere.
Ardern was indeed the lockdown queen, loving Kiwis "in the abstract" and from 30,000 feet away.
In terms of lockdown zeal, she was perhaps only outshone by former Premier Daniel Andrews of the People's Republic of Victoria (Australia).Ardern's Yale talk is somewhat ironic, given that on 19 March 2020, she aggressively closed New Zealand's borders in response to the virus.
The official NZ Government website announced that day:
"The Government has taken further measures to protect New Zealanders from the COVID-19 virus, effectively stopping all people from boarding a plane to New Zealand from 11:59 pm today, except for returning New Zealanders, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced…"
"Protecting New Zealanders from COVID-19 is our number one priority. In recent days, it has become increasingly clear that the spread of the virus in other parts of the world means we need to take even stronger border measures," said Ardern.
Yet at Yale this past week, Ardern pontificated:
"In the same way that fear is a tool of politics against our long-term self-interest, so is isolationism—the illusion that closing yourself off from the world somehow means you are simply prioritising your own people—because it ignores how connected we are."
What was COVID-19 but a great fear psy-op? Such bloviating is expected from politicians, even ex-politicians. It's the gaslighting that causes so much head-turning.
For how could someone so staunch in shutting down national borders to "protect New Zealanders" be so adamant, just five years later, that closing yourself off from the world is misguided?
In the Middle Ages, theologians may have speculated about angels on pinheads. But not even Duns Scotus himself, the doctor subtilis (Subtle Doctor), could outdo the subtlety of Ardern's sophistries. She, in her own person, embodies a kind of theological pinhead.
Of course, the gaslighting is the point, isn't it? For Ardern's worldview is such that whether borders are open or closed is only a question of which way the globalist experts are pointing at any given time.
Words as Tokens
The Greek orator Isocrates (Against the Sophists 13.1) spoke of the sophists who "pretend to search for truth, but straightway at the beginning of their professions attempt to deceive us with lies."
Jacinda Ardern appears to belong to that class of politician (the most numerous class) that sees words not as vehicles of shared meaning, but as blunt instruments of power and control.
James L. Grant once called credit "the money of the mind," and much earlier, Hobbes spoke of words as "tokens of the mind"—arbitrary placeholders with no absolute connection to reality.
For the nominalist Ardern, words are tools to get the job done, and that job is to order the human lifeworld according to the whims of the elites she so cravenly serves.
Power dominates Ardern's Nietzschean vision, and words serve power's interests—the more emotive, the better.
This explains why the heavily freighted terms "compassion" and "empathy" loom so large in her vocabulary, as seen in her speech at Yale's commencement ceremony.
As a politician, Ardern proclaims what I can only call a form of political Buddhism.
Her worldview is what the late, great modern Aristotelian and Thomist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre referred to as emotivist
MacIntyre (After Virtue, 1981) argued that emotivism was false because humans are capable of rationally determining the best life, and can therefore make moral judgments that are more than whims.
Yet when Ardern speaks so vociferously in favour of empathy and compassion, one gets the disconcerting feeling that she is merely using those words as tools to manipulate.
Empathy, one fears, has become a stalking horse for rhetorical sleight of hand—especially when her lofty appeals are paired not with concrete ethics, but with abstract ideals.
Where's the Real Compassion?
I consider myself a beneficiary of Ardern's weaponised compassion.
Her political Buddhism was evident in her decision to close New Zealand's borders in 2021—which, in turn, closed the borders on me.
As an Australian but a long-term resident and taxpayer in New Zealand, I was stuck in Brisbane with my two eldest sons (studying at UQ) for seven months, while my wife and youngest son were landlocked in Aotearoa.
I attempted repeatedly to access MIQ—New Zealand's quarantine regime. However, as I was not a naturalised New Zealander (only married to one), I rarely got closer than 30,000th place in lotteries that had 3,000 available spots.
Let's be clear: these were lotteries for two weeks of isolation at your own expense, in a hotel room.
Eventually, I returned to New Zealand in March 2022 because, according to Ardern's government, the experts had permitted it.
Yet we later discovered those same experts had advised opening the borders four months earlier—in November 2021. Ardern had overruled them with her weaponised compassion.
She was being kind to us, even when she wasn't.
So kind, in fact, that I was effectively bullied into taking an mRNA "vaccine" I never would have otherwise taken—for a virus I didn't believe was worse than a bad flu. One which, according to Australian data, was killing 83-year-olds on average.
The vaccine didn't stop me from getting COVID. But it did hurt my heart—and not just metaphorically.
Back to Emotivism
I bring Jacinda Ardern to the bar for expressing weaponised compassion and executing a kind of political Buddhism. It is mystification disguised as profundity—Ardern as a smarter Kamala Harris (and that's no compliment).
This rhetoric is not about care. It is about the sentiments of leftist elites in utopian drag.
But it's also Machiavellian. Ardern's emotivism is precisely what MacIntyre described—a rhetoric in service of effective power.
MacIntyre saw emotivism as not just a theory, but a reality—describing how moral language has been used since 1910.
My claim (on MacIntyre's authority) is that Ardern is the most effective emotive raconteur in modern democratic politics.
She sits alongside Justin Trudeau, of course.
I don't include Australia's Anthony Albanese—not due to any desire of his, but due to a lack of talent.
MacIntyre mapped the decline of ethics as follows:
"Do this, because it will bring you happiness." — The Greeks / Aristotle
"Do this, because God enjoins it as the way to happiness." — Augustine / Aquinas
"Do this, because God enjoins it." — Luther (and perhaps Jordan Peterson)
"Do this!" — Modern politics
Ardern and her experts belong to this final phase—the de-Christianisation of ethics.
Her political divine commands are issued in the name of the demos—so long as the demos agrees with her definitions of kindness and compassion.
Her politics is not socialist—it is oligarchic. A rule of the few. A political Buddhism of spiritual elites.
The language of compassion is a veil for Machiavellian religious politics.It was spewed at Yale—appropriately, among elites and their heirs—our future rulers.
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Are the Experts Compassionate?
I did not experience COVID-19 as an era of compassion—yet it was led by experts.
Now Dame Jacinda Ardern lectures the world on the politics of compassion. On her political Buddhism.
"Listen to experts who can teach you, and advisors who can guide you." But democratic politics is supposed to trust in the common sense of the demos.
Yes, it failed in Nazi Germany. But must we deny the wisdom of the citizenry for that reason?
Ardern's gamble is this.
She closed New Zealand's borders not because she believes in borders—but because she doesn't. That's the paradox.
During COVID, one in ten considered suicide (as the Ezekiel Declaration from Australian Baptists noted). If that is where compassion leads—then the Nazis were compassionate too. I don't believe any worthy democratic politics can leave people so unhappy.
In the end, all forms of political Buddhism fail.
Jacinda Ardern's weaponised compassion at Yale is just one more rhetorical outburst from a soul searching for significance after the COVID era's expert-led excesses.
Craig Heilmann
June 2, 2025
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