To hear these comments from a citizen of Vietnam or Iraq might givbe me pause. To hear them from an Englishman is laughable. American attitudes towards the world are vastly less patronizing than what was inbred in English colonialism. The 'white man's burden' is an English concept, and resulted in the humiliation and subjugation of populations and resources everywhere the sun shone. It's withered empire drew and misdrew the maps of the world leading to much of the civil strife and sectarian violence which dominates today's geopolitical landscape--everything from Idi Amin to Israel.

And all this from a country which hasn't produced a useful item on it's own since the steam engine, which glories in its own feudal past, which regards its successors on the world stage with niggling public school arrogance, and which can't get a settee properly placed on the veranda without the help of a 40-year-old brown man called "boy".

Some saw the movie 28 Days Later as a horror film. Others as a utopian fantasy. Me? I love everybody.