People find it comforting to see themselves as engaged in a titanic “clash of civilizations” in which good democratic nations are pitted against allegedly bad religions and cultures from other parts of the world.…

Such myths of purity, however, are misleading and pernicious. No society is pure, and the “clash of civilizations” is internal to every society. Every society contains within itself people who are prepared to live with others on terms of mutual respect and reciprocity, and people who seek the comfort of domination. We need to understand how to produce more citizens of the former sort and fewer of the latter. Thinking falsely that our own society is pure within can only breed aggression toward outsiders and blindness about aggression toward insiders.

Martha Nussbaum, Not for Profit. (ISBN: 9780691140643) p.28-29