Are you an oikophile or an oikophobe?

Conservative philosopher Roger Scruton (1944-2020) coined these two words from the Greek , meaning household, home, or place. But Scruton broadened this meaning to include culture. Accordingly, oikophiles are those who love their homes and the culture passed down through generations. Oikophobes may love their private homes, but disdain, or even despise, the cultural inheritance handed to them from the past.

In Scruton’s wordplay we find one of the fundamental explanations for our present-day political divisions.

A recent visit to North Carolina’s Waynesville, a town in the Great Smokies, convinced me once again that I’m in the oikophile camp. Here I lived from 1984 to 2006, operating a bed-and-breakfast, a bookstore, and a homeschool book company.

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