Conservative commentator Matt Walsh recently delivered what he called a " heartfelt message " to transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney. In the video, he says that the gender surgery Mulvaney underwent will never make Mulvaney female. He also says of the TikTok star, "You are weird and artificial, you are manufactured and lifeless, you are unearthly and eerie."

The video is igniting a media firestorm. Some gender-critical commentators are praising Walsh for what they see as his refusal to sugarcoat a hard truth. Others are calling his message unnecessarily vicious.

On Tuesday, investigative reporter Christina Buttons announced that she is leaving the Daily Wire due to Walsh's video, arguing, "There is a critical distinction between speaking truth and being tactless, between sticking to the facts and sticking it to the libs."

Buttons is right, but it's not just Walsh who can be accused of conflating speaking truth with sticking it to our political opponents; this kind of thing happens across the political spectrum. Saira Rao, co-author of the bestselling book White Women: Everything You Already Know About Your Own Racism and How to Do Better, recently tweeted , "If you are a Republican in 2023, you are a fascist." In 2017, Huffington Post contributor Kayla Chadwick wrote an article titled "I Don't Know How To Explain To You That You Should Care About Other People." The article called conservatives "hordes of selfish, cruel people" who can't "look beyond themselves."

This kind of over-the-top rhetoric doesn't actually help whichever cause the authors care about because it's not helping to sway public sentiment toward them. In The Righteous Mind, renowned social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points out that we make decisions primarily for emotional reasons. One of the core principles in the book is that "intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second."

This means that if we want to change someone's mind, we need to start by connecting with them on an emotional level. When we talk to people across the aisle, we need to lead with empathy and highlight our shared moral intuitions; only then will they let down their guard and consider what we have to say. When we lead with personal attacks, we just get their backs up. To put it another way: Republicans are unlikely to see Rao calling them fascists and conclude that they should start voting blue.

The other reason that this kind of name-calling is unhelpful is that it tells people who don't already agree with X's cause that X's advocates are monsters. We get our information about what the other side thinks primarily by listening to its standard-bearers. When a standard-bearer such as Walsh says something vicious, lots of liberals and centrists will assume that he speaks for all gender-critical commentators.

Walsh gives opponents fodder to believe the worst about gender-critical commentators: not simply that they disagree with transition surgery, but that they loathe and look down on transitioners. That makes it harder for more compassionate conservatives to make inroads on this issue because they have to overcome the stereotype that Walsh is inadvertently creating in their audiences' minds.

If this sort of over-the-top rhetoric doesn't actually work to grow a movement, why do so many pundits use it? One reason is that most professional pundits are not financially incentivized to preach to the unconverted. There are plenty of gender-critical people in the U.S.; Walsh doesn't need to make more of them in order to earn a living. Instead, Walsh's biggest economic concern is how to differentiate himself from his competition, which in this case is other conservative pundits.

The best way to do that is to be seen as more hardcore than his competitors. That attracts likes, retweets, status, and (crucially) money from the people who care most about beating the other side. Walsh's star rises even as his commentary turns away open-minded liberals and centrists who might otherwise be willing to give gender-critical commentators a chance. He's essentially virtue signaling, but the truth is that virtue signaling just makes our political polarization worse and lessens our side's opportunity to grow.

If we really care about a political cause, we need to fight for it with empathy and deep compassion for the human beings who disagree with us. Yelling and insults might feel good, but they don't win hearts and minds.

Julian Adorney is a writer and marketing consultant with the Foundation for Economic Education .