Originally posted on CrossLeft.org
As I was reading Jeff Sachs's The End of Poverty, I came across a quote from Immanuel Kant that spoke to me. 150 years before the formation of the United Nations he argued for some semblance of global governance to end war.
To quote Sachs and Kant:
In 1795, Kant argued that perpetual peace between nations could be achieved if self-governing republics linked through international commerce replace monarchies. Kant explained that monarchs have the incentive to launch wars because war does not require the ruler "the least sacrifice of the pleasures of his table, the chase, his country houses, his court functions, and the ike. He may therefor resolve on war as on a pleasure party for the most trivial reasons, and with perfect indifference leave the justification which decency requires to the diplomatic coprs who are ever ready to provide it."
In a republic, by contrast, "the consent of the citizens is required in order to decide that war should be declared." "Nothing is more natural than that they would be very cautious in commencing such a poor game, decreeing for themsleves all the calamities of war," which include "having to fight, having to pay the costs of war from their own resources, hving painfully to repair the devastation war leaves behind, and, to fill up the measure of evils, load themselves with a heavy national debt...."
Hopefully, you can see why this spoke to me. We have a President who was born with the silver spoon in his mouth. When it was his turn to learn the pain and horror of war, he decided to stay away. I wouldn't fault Bush, Cheney, or others from staying away, if they weren't war mongerers today. Perhaps if they would have gone to Vietnam they would have learned the real lessons of war of which Kant speaks. The boy who would be King sacrificed nothing during Vietnam, had his powerful father get him out of every DUI or cocaine bust, rescued him from failed business dealings, and even tried from a distance to show him the way out of the war with his friends from Baker-Hamilton. Because the boy who would be King never had to learn a life's lesson in taking responsibility for his own failings, never had enough contact with an average person to understand that families need health insurance and child care and other services, never had the experience of war to temper his own exuberance for the matter, we in the republic now reap the calamities of his failed Presidency. He essentially has acted the same as king in Kant's analogy.
We do now live in Republic, but not a Republic structured as well as it might be. When a President can continue a war, that the overwhelming majority of people have been against for years, we have to wonder about the efficacy of our Republic in representing the people. This isn't a situation where the whims of the people have changed abruptly, but rather a sustained voice to end war for the last three years. The fact that one man can hold the nation at war against its collective will indicates that something structural must change.
The other problem of our republic, is the sacrifices are not shared as Kant suggested they might be. I do not disagree with the All-Volunteer Force, but clearly the burden has fallen on a small minority of Americans. Perhaps that is why we do not hear the voices against the war nearly so loudly as when young people were being indiscriminately shipped off to war through the draft during Vietnam. When the draft ended, the voices subsided, even though the wrongs continued.
As Kant noted, we have rung up a national debt as a result of the war. Instead of asking people to pay for it through higher taxes as would be done in Kant's proper vision of a republic, the boy who would be King lowered taxes, and lowered taxes a lot for rich people. So instead we ask our major threat on the horizon, China, to finance this war so we can pay them back throughout our lifetimes instead of spending that money at home. Let's be clear, eliminate the Iraq War and you eliminate most if not all of the deficit.
Kant's words about a republic our supposed to be true. Republics are supposed to be better at determining when to go to war since the sacrifice is shared amongst the people. Unfortunately, we have a President who has essentially lived the life of a boy who would be King, lacking any consequence for failure and now unable to face the reality of the biggest failure of his life, Iraq. To me, he is still a boy. A man would have learned to face up to his mistake and seek to remedy the harm he has caused. He has circumvented the world body that Kant dreamed about and that our nation established to launch this war. He has not asked our citizens to shoulder the burden of this war and so while we are against it, we do not rise up as we should to demand a cessation to endless war.
The Boy Who Would Be King, has sinned mightily against our republic and against humanity. But this Repubic is ours, not the Kings's, and we must take it back.
Finally, as a side note, I commend the End of Poverty by Jeffrey Sachs to all of you. Too few Americans know about the Millenium Development Goals as a means to end extreme poverty in the world. I agree with Professor Sachs that we can do it, if we only have the will.
http://www.crossleft.org