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"One cannot train whole generations to practice self-flagellation without paying a price," warns the French writer Pascal Bruckner.

Bruckner's new book, "The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism," is a perfectly timed takedown of the canon of Western self-hatred.

But how do we recognize this abstraction, "self-hatred"? I would argue that a leader misleading the public in order to conform to the prevailing doctrine of navel-gazing political correctness would represent a scorching red flag.

So thank you, Michael Bloomberg.

"If I had to guess 25 cents, this would be exactly that. Homegrown, or maybe a mentally deranged person, or somebody with a political agenda that doesn't like the health care bill or something. It could be anything," the New York City mayor told CBS News after the Times Square bombing attempt May 1.

The same day Bloomberg made those comments to CBS -- three days after the incident -- we were told to be on the lookout for a "middle-aged white man." Of course, we now know the culprit was Faisal Shahzad, a 30-year-old, goofy, bearded, unibrowed, Pakistani man, and that the Pakistani Taliban was behind the attack.

According to a poll released May 11, 56 percent of Americans favor repealing the recently passed health care reform bill. So the Taliban almost pull off a car bombing of Times Square a few months after the U.S. captures a high-ranking Taliban leader, and Mayor Bloomberg tells the public that 56 percent of the country is now the case's primary suspect.

In case you're wondering how someone as boneheaded as Shahzad (see Catherine Philp's U.K. Times article "Faisal Shahzad's basic errors led police to his last-minute arrest") can come so close to pulling off this attack, Bloomberg's strategy of looking for white free-marketeers should offer a clue. But the fact that Bloomberg would behave this way is indicative of a wider issue -- something that has slowly eroded our public self-portrait since Sept. 11, 2001.

"The critical spirit rises up against itself and consumes its form," writes Bruckner. "But instead of coming out of this process greater and purified, it devours itself in a kind of self-cannibalism and takes a morose pleasure in annihilating itself. Hyper-criticism eventuates in self-hatred, leaving behind it only ruins. A new dogma of demolition is born out of the rejection of dogmas."

Bruckner is a member of the European academic Left, but he cannot stomach the West's loathing of the pillars of its own identity. He is also no apologist for Islamism, noting that "Radical Islam constantly speaks two languages: that of the victim" and "that of the executioner".

Though that act doesn't fool Bruckner, it clearly worked on Bloomberg. And there is another destructive byproduct of a leader like Bloomberg: He doesn't exactly inspire confidence among the populace. (What to make of his next statement to CBS, that there was "no evidence here of a conspiracy" and that it appeared to be an "amateurish job done by at least one person"? At least one person -- but not a conspiracy?)

Contrast this with New York's previous mayor, Rudy Giuliani. After 9/11, Giuliani became the "voice of America," wrote Time magazine's Eric Pooley when the magazine named Giuliani its Person of the Year.

"Every time he spoke, millions of people felt a little better," Pooley wrote. "His words were full of grief and iron, inspiring New York to inspire the nation."

Giuliani's honesty, learned from Winston Churchill's steely realism, became his most powerful asset.

I asked the Manhattan Institute's Fred Siegel, a prolific writer on New York City and an original editor of City Journal, about the contrast.

"I think Bloomberg, because he puts his faith in [NYPD Commissioner Ray] Kelly, handled [the post-attack institutional response] well. But Giuliani never would have made Bloomberg's initial statement, suggesting it might be someone associated with the tea parties," Siegel told me. "Bloomberg made a fool of himself. Giuliani wouldn't have done that."

Leadership is more than just letting Ray Kelly do his job; leadership entails guiding the public through traumatic and sometimes terrifying moments.

And to Siegel, there's an undeniable psychological element to Bloomberg's reaction that Bruckner would probably recognize as well.

"When you scratch the surface of Bloomberg, there's a shallow man underneath," Siegel said. "When you scratch that very wealthy and well-PR'd veneer, there's a shallow man underneath, and that's what came out."

And Giuliani? "Giuliani is much more thoughtful."

That's a perfect choice of words. Thoughtfulness is what Bloomberg makes pretensions to, when his knee-jerk multi-culti response to a crime points the finger at all white American men not named Michael Bloomberg. But as Giuliani proved, toughness doesn't preclude thoughtfulness.

"Nobody believed Giuliani had a heart," former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik told Pooley. "He's not supposed to have a heart. He's an animal, he's obnoxious, he's arrogant. But you know what? He gets it done. Behind getting it done, he has a tremendously huge heart, but you're not going to succeed in New York City by being a sweetie."

Bloomberg reigns with a tyranny of Western guilt. Giuliani's thoughtful and effective leadership is gone, but not forgotten.

Seth Mandel is the managing editor of The Jewish State.