A 2019 study titled “Ideological differences in the expanse of the moral circle” examined how political ideology shapes moral concern. In the study, participants allocated 100 “moral units” across 16 concentric circles, from immediate family to all things in existence.

Researchers then used heatmaps to show how participants with different political beliefs prioritise their moral priorities. The circles are layers of concern that expand outward from the self. Each ring represents a category that a person might care about.

Here are the 16 levels, from closest to farthest:

1. Immediate family
2. Extended family
3. Closest friends
4. All friends (even distant ones)
5. Acquaintances
6. People you’ve met
7. Everyone in your country
8. Everyone on your continent
9. Everyone on Earth
10. All mammals
11. All animals with backbones (including reptiles, fish, and birds)
12. All animals, even microscopic ones
13. All animals in the universe, including aliens
14. All living things, including plants
15. All natural things, even rocks
16. Everything in existence

The study found that conservatives tend to exhibit a steeper gradient, placing greater moral obligation on those closest to them—family, community, and nation—whereas liberals often display a flatter distribution, extending comparable concern to distant others, including strangers and foreign groups.

When it comes to ordered affections, Liberals displayed the exact inverse of Christianity. As finite beings, humans are incapable of loving all people equally. While Christians are commanded to love others, the love required of us is not a levelling love that erases all distinctions and priorities. It is a love expressed through action, not just sentiment.

As noted before, we are called to love God above all else. A husband should love his wife uniquely and more deeply than he loves his neighbour’s wife. Parents are meant to love their children more and in a distinct way than they love other children. As such, our ability to love and understand one another is limited. Therefore, the Bible presents a hierarchy of affections (Ordo Amoris), and if this order is disrupted or inverted, it will negatively impact all other relationships.

If loving your spouse leads to neglecting your love for God, you are not truly loving your spouse. If loving your children causes you to neglect your love for your spouse, you are not truly loving your children. If loving your fellow Christian means neglecting your love for your family, you are not truly loving your fellow Christian. If loving the foreigner results in neglecting your love for your neighbour, you are not truly loving the foreigner.

By following God’s divine order, our love is properly directed and blesses those within our sphere of responsibility. As such, marriage bonds, family ties—and by extension, national ties—remain important. This is not a negative aspect of life; rather, it is an inherent part of the human experience. It is not a sinful desire to be suppressed, but a good and godly desire to be redeemed for the benefit of those we are called and capable of caring for.

In other words, Christianity teaches that love and responsibility begin at home and radiate outward—from household to brother to neighbour, then to the broader world. When this natural order is inverted—when someone shows more concern for the distant foreigner than for their nearby neighbour—it is usually a cloak for something else.

Often, ‘liberals’ care more, in theory, for the foreigner than for their neighbour because they hate God, despise the image of God, and thus, hate their neighbour. Of course, they won’t always admit that. Sin often cloaks itself in false virtue. So, by redefining “neighbour,” they cover their refusal to practically care for those closest to them by feigning a concern for the foreigner who just so happens to be forever out of their reach.

They then invoke their false virtue and feigned concern to scold anyone as “un-Christian” if they do not affirm their inverted moral order. This irrational hatred is so strong and so entrenched that they’d watch their own nation burn and their own people destroyed before obeying Christ’s command to “love your neighbour as yourself.” The current miserable state of the Western world is proof of that.