Commentary It’s natural and normal to feel sadness and sympathy at the suffering of others and to want to alleviate it. The paradox of compassion in that sense is that it often becomes a rhetorical device for justifying action that harms those it’s supposed to help. If you had compassion, this kind of sanctimonious advocate says, you would support my policy. If you question it at all, you’re callous or cruel. Children use this form of manipulation to get parents to give them what they want. Parents for their part are not always as compassionate toward their own children as they seem in their dealings with others. In the ridiculous character of Mrs. Jellyby in his mid-19th century novel “Bleak House,” Charles Dickens warns against perversely misdirected compassion—he calls it “telescopic philanthropy.” Mrs. Jellyby combines relentless compassion from afar—working ostentatiously to support an improbable scheme for a tribe in Africa—with …