What if America hasn’t stopped caring? What if we’ve simply become more selective about who counts?

Americans argue constantly about empathy. One side sees cruelty in immigration enforcement, Medicaid restrictions, abortion bans, and cuts to public assistance. The other sees compassion distorted into dependency, disorder, and obligations that ignore taxpayers, victims, unborn children, and communities carrying the cost.

But there is a problem with both stories:

Nobody has ever built an instrument that can tell us which side cares more.

In A Shorter List of Neighbors, Robert Walker follows the evidence instead.

Beginning with children separated from their parents at the border—and a government that could not reliably count them—the book moves through the psychology of empathy, the rise of Christian nationalism, Medicaid work requirements, immigration, abortion, and the remarkable network of religious volunteers who drive through the night to rebuild homes for strangers.

The findings repeatedly refuse the easy conclusion.

Conservatives do not simply “lack empathy.” Liberals are not immune from withholding compassion from political opponents. Christian nationalism is measured differently depending on who is doing the measuring. Religious communities can provide extraordinary care while supporting political boundaries that leave other people outside them.

Walker approaches the subject from the political left and without religious belief—and says so on the first pages. Then he applies the same rule to his own assumptions that he applies to everyone else's: Do not claim to know what is inside another person's heart when the evidence can only show what happened afterward.

The result is a provocative, evidence-driven exploration of compassion, polarization, religion, public policy, and the invisible lines Americans draw around the people they believe they owe something to.

The question is not whether Americans care. It is: Who is my neighbor?