The New White Man's Burden

"Guilt in the modern sense- not a legal decision, but a mental condition- is corrosive and destructive and is an extreme form of the arrogant self-indulgence that is the deepest and most characteristic flaw of our Western civilization. To claim responsibility for all the ills of the world is a new version of the "white man's burden," no less flattering to ourselves, no less condescending to others, than that of our imperial predecessors, who with equal vanity and absurdity claimed to be the source of all that is good" (75-76).

--Bernard Lewis, Cultures in Conflict (1996 A.D.)

 http://www.amazon.com/Cultures-Conflict-Christians-Muslims-Discovery/dp/0195102835