First, I was quoting Kant, so are disagreeing with both him and me.
Second, "the US should let every other country in the world fix the ills of the world" is exactly what Kant isn't saying, as should be clear from the shallowest reading of the passages I posted. He is saying (many times, in many ways), that every nation has to fix its own problems for itself, without interference. And that, when a strong nation uses force to "fix" the problems of a weak nation, the result is tyranny, not freedom. He shreds all the excuses and ephemisms used by the Strong, to bully the Weak. As I have done consistently, he calls all this a thinly veiled imperialism, a case of theft on a grand scale, theft of treasure, and, what's worse, theft of freedom.
<Perhaps Canada and France can fix Africa>
France has had lots of experience "fixing" various parts of Africa, with poor results. Canada doesn't seem to be infected with the imperialism virus.
Third, what Kant proposes (and I have, consistently), in the opposite of isolationism. He proposes what amounts to a confederacy of republics, who pool their armies, and use them strictly, very strictly, only for mutual defense. NATO would be an example. Bush's "coalition of the willing", which actually was a "coalition of the billing, bullied and bamboozled" is very much not what he had in mind. |
