Fmr. Director of NIH: There’s a ‘Truth,’ ‘Trust,’ ‘Civility,’ and ‘Compassion’ Deficit in America

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
>> Stephen: what can we do to help? How can we do that?
>> Dr. Collins: I think people are worn out with the controversy, the outrage olympic’s flying back and forth, the animosity, the grievances. That’s the group. It’s two-thirds of the country that has the best chance of bringing us back to where we want to be. Our nation has lots of problems. We worry about things like our national debt, a fiscal deficit but we have other deficits that politics aren’t going to solve. Maybe they are making it worse. There is a truth. We are in a place now.
[Applause] There seems to be no real penalty for saying something that’s demonstrably false. It’s just okay. No it’s not. We have a trust deficit where because people don’t know if they can be sure somebody telling the truth, why should I trust that person so we stopped trusting each other most of the time and that’s dangerous also for our future and we certainly have a civility deficit.
[Applause] But you know what I’m worried about most? The compassion deficit. What happened to us? How can it have become normalized not to be concerned about our fellow human beings even if they are not living in our house? Maybe they are down the street suffering or maybe they are in another part of the globe suffering. Predictions are that since the plug was pulled on usaid, 90,000 children have died unnecessarily. That’s the prediction from the people who follow this closely. And yet, where is the outrage? Why are people looking the other way? Where is our compassion? We’ve got to get that back and I think that’s up to us. If we want to flourish as a society that’s what we need to do.
[Cheers and applause]