Self-Flagellation Nation

Authored by Frank Filocomo via RealClearBooks,

You've probably heard the refrain before, but it bears repeating: The West is the best.

As I write this, it's nearly one hundred degrees Fahrenheit here in Brooklyn. Thank God for air conditioning.

The air conditioner, by the way, was invented by the New York-born Willis Carrier in the early part of the twentieth century. Willis was, without question, a product of Western Civilization.

Before the AC - which we, no doubt, take for granted nowadays - our ancestors, when faced with the dog days of summer, would have no choice but to sit on ice blocks, drink cold beverages, and fan themselves to stay cool.

Many non-Western countries still resort to these old methods.

The computer in which I am typing this article is also a product of Western innovation. After I finish writing this, I'll use it again later today to schedule a doctor's appointment, wherein I'll likely be prescribed Western medicine.

Okay, okay. What am I getting at here? Well, simply, I am proud to be a product and inhabitant of Western Civilization.

Not all, however, feel such gratitude.

In his latest book, Suicidal Empathy: Dying to Be Kind, Gad Saad documents the myriad ways in which Westerners today engage in ethno-masochism and self-flagellation.

"The suicidally empathetic person," Saad writes, "feels guilty that they were born in the West, whereas others were not as fortunate."

To be sure, we do indeed have it good here. And there's nothing wrong with having empathy for those who've never experienced Western living.

Under Maduro's rule in 2017, starving Venezuelans were literally stealing animals from the Zoo with the intention of eating them.

That's not a problem we have here in the West. It's natural to pity such people.

It is when our pity becomes excessive, to the point where we are hurting our own in the pursuit of altruistic ends, that we encounter civilizational decay.

While reading Saad's book, which relates dozens of stories of "privileged" white Westerners forgoing their own welfare to appear morally virtuous, I recollected the now-famous tiff between Trump advisor Stephen Miller and then-CNN journalist Jim Acosta, wherein Acosta basically argues that our immigration policy should be dictated by the Emma Lazarus poem tacked onto the Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

I don't know, Emma. I'm not sure that's always such a good idea.

As Saad rightly notes throughout the book, non-Western immigration has fundamentally altered the identities of many once-great European nations, rendering them nearly unrecognizable.

That Islamists come here with the intention of bringing with them their illiberal and theocratic cultural attitudes is of no concern to the wide-eyed liberal, who is more fearful of coming off as "Islamophobic" than they are of being sexually assaulted by Muslim grooming gangs.

"Suicidal empathy," Saad writes, "leads to caring more about the rights of rapists and felons than their victims."

Right-wing shock jock and host of Get Off My Lawn Gavin McInnes once quipped that the Left is so tolerant that they tolerate the intolerant.

Truer words have never been spoken.

Equipped with a sardonic wit, Saad plays the Left's language game. Just as we've been coached to say "undocumented immigrant" when referring to illegal aliens - the correct term - Saad, in a dark but humorous attempt to demonstrate his Suicidally Empathetic bona fides, refers to rapists as "undocumented lovemakers."

To be sure, some readers might find this dark humor to be flippant and distasteful. I'm a bit ambivalent about it myself. Still, the point holds: to the Suicidally Empathetic Left, it is more important to demonstrate tact and