Hey everyone. We're live now on the Conversations That Matter Podcast. I'm your host John Harris. I apologize to everyone who is waiting. I should have made more clear that this was Eastern time and doing all these podcasts across time

zones does get confusing but we're live now for some of you this means your lunch

break for some of you you're just getting up but good morning America we have a special guest with us today who has not been on before

Dr Thomas Fleming thank you for coming on the podcast Dr Fleming really appreciate it

well it's a pleasure John. And I know we met what now a year and a half at least something like that ago and

you have quite the pedigree and I can't read all of it, but Dr Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation.

He served as the editor of Chronicles magazine from 1984 to 2015.

He is the president of the Rockford Institute or was the president of the Rockford Institute or was the president from 97 to 2014 and has written many works and we're going to talk about a topic that I know you're very well versed in today.

You told me before we started recording, you've been thinking about this for about 20 years.

And that is why, I answered the question question why is it that Europeans white people

Westerners seem to have an affection for foreigners and hate themselves at

least our elites seem to have that and the

simplistic explanations out there I've heard don't seem to make sense of it and I

know you've thought very deeply about this so I appreciate you coming on to share your thoughts and help us explain the world we're living in.

Well, you know, it is an odd phenomenon because if you went around the world, two or three hundred years ago and even today if you go to rural areas if you I spent a lot of time in Italy and if you go to an Italian village not only do they know Italy is a better country than every other

country and their region of Italy, whether it's Lombardia in the north, and I covered their

separatist movement for years, or down or in Sicily.

They know that their region is the best and not only that, they know that their village

is the best and that they're part of their village is the best. I used to know a Marxist political

theorist that you lived in the Abruzzo and he said in my town we not only knew a foreigner or an alien like somebody from Northern Italy, but we knew a guy who walked into our neighborhood from the other side of town because even though he was wearing the same clothes he wore his hat a

little differently and we hated him. Now, okay, hatred isn't nice but the fact is if you

really love who you are and who you belong to and you love your your family you know the maybe the

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