Rep. Nancy Mace has a new target, and it is not a policy or a rival politician. In an essay published in the Daily Wire, the South Carolina Republican argued that “we are currently witnessing an epidemic of pathological empathy among liberal white women, and it is quietly becoming the single greatest threat to our national security.” The piece, titled around the claim that “the liberal white woman is a national security threat,” drew swift and heavy criticism the moment it went live.
What Mace Actually Wrote
These were not offhand comments caught on a hot mic. They were Mace’s own written words, published under her name in a national conservative outlet. In the essay, she frames the compassion that progressive women show toward immigrants and transgender people as a form of dangerous naivety – an “epidemic of pathological empathy” that she claims is undermining the country from within.
The argument is striking because of what it does with a basic human trait. Empathy – the capacity to care about people who are different from you – is recast not as a virtue but as a vulnerability. In Mace’s telling, women who advocate for vulnerable groups are not simply wrong on the merits; they are a security risk.
Who the Essay Targets
The essay does not stop at an abstract critique of the political left. It names groups. Immigrants and transgender people are cast as the beneficiaries of a misplaced kindness that Mace says endangers the nation, and the women who defend them are cast as the vehicle for that danger. Critics were quick to point out that this is the rhetorical machinery of scapegoating: take a broad social anxiety, assign it a face, and label that face a threat.
That is the line that turns an ordinary political disagreement into something darker. There is a meaningful difference between saying an opponent’s immigration policy is wrong and saying that caring about immigrants makes someone an enemy of the state. Mace’s essay leans toward the second framing, and that is why it landed the way it did.
A Pattern, Not a One-Off
The essay did not appear in a vacuum. It surfaced alongside a separate early-August controversy over Mace’s remarks about Muslim lawmakers – a coincidence critics say points to a broader habit of singling out entire groups of people for suspicion. Taken together, the two episodes formed the impression of a lawmaker returning again and again to the same well: identify a group, question its loyalty or its influence, and let the outrage do the rest.
Supporters framed the essay as blunt, no-nonsense talk about a political movement they distrust. Detractors saw something else entirely – a sitting member of Congress using the language of national security to describe women, immigrants, and trans people as internal enemies. The gap between those two readings is exactly where the fight over the piece has played out.
What This Means for Americans
Words from elected officials carry weight that a random online post does not. When a member of Congress publishes an essay casting empathy as a threat and naming specific groups as the danger, it does not stay on the page. It shapes how supporters talk, who they see as an enemy, and what kind of rhetoric becomes normal in American politics. Holding a sitting lawmaker accountable for that language is not about silencing debate – it is about insisting that disagreement not curdle into dehumanization.
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