That's not empathy, that's memory. Poor kids growing up in crime-ridden neighborhoods have PTSD; does this judge sit with them, or bury them under the jail?
edit: To be even a bit more contrarian here, sympathy in judges is something that I actively dislike, and why I'm a progressive in support of mandatory minimums, which is pretty much blasphemy. Sympathy in judges is why an affluenza defense can work, and why rapists sometimes get sentenced to probation.
What am I supposed to be proving again? I don't know this judge, or his career, and never claimed to. What I said is that it was disappointing that a story that, to me, seemed like it was about someone finding compassion for someone in a vastly different circumstance was a vet relating to another vet.
The distinction you're trying to make does not exist. Memory of a similar experience is a potential part of empathy. It, in no way, invalidates or precludes an empathetic response.
And empathy in one situation does not automatically mean empathy in all situations. Humans are funny like that.
It's a pointless signalling thread where people are falling all over themselves to say "Awww, that's nice. Oh, it gives me hope for the world." It's akin to a story about a cop who adopts an abused dog that they found at a crime scene and nurses it back to health. Hence, people are falling all over themselves to disapprove of my disapproval as if it were a competition. It's the kind of thread that "attracts low quality responses" as dang would say - but HN is more tolerant towards low quality threads that don't devolve into ideological wars.
Here's my stance: I don't believe in cruel or unusual punishment. I believe that defendants who "remind me of my son" or "remind me of me, when I was a kid" or "me, if I had made one wrong choice" get better treatment than the heartless superpredators that don't look like the judges son.
edit: To be even a bit more contrarian here, sympathy in judges is something that I actively dislike, and why I'm a progressive in support of mandatory minimums, which is pretty much blasphemy. Sympathy in judges is why an affluenza defense can work, and why rapists sometimes get sentenced to probation.