Benedict Beckeld on Why Oikophobia, not Suicidal Empathy is Killing the West | Fireside Chat 277

"There's a kind of ghoulish happiness about people they think are bad and dangerous being killed. They were celebrating, but they were also signalling — look at me, I'm saying the thing everyone's supposed to say."

Brian sits down with Dr Benedict Beckeld, philosopher and author of Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations, on why cultures come to hold themselves in contempt — and why he thinks it isn't new, or an excess of empathy.

Also: macro and micro monomania, his terms for reading all of history through one lens; which class the contempt starts in and how it spreads; the Canadian identity built on not being American; and whether the "weak men create hard times" idiom survives contact with the historical record.

"Nothing is more human than taking a good idea too far. Once somebody levels a good point of self-critique against his own community, the next person has to show he's even smarter, and levels a more extreme one."

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