{"id":6654,"date":"2010-08-18T17:53:32","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T21:53:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=6654"},"modified":"2010-08-19T08:40:34","modified_gmt":"2010-08-19T12:40:34","slug":"immanuel-kant-anti-semite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/6654\/immanuel-kant-anti-semite\/","title":{"rendered":"Immanuel Kant, Anti-Semite?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For decades, philosophy buffs have argued<\/a> over whether Adolf Hitler’s appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche was a logical extension of the German philosopher’s work or a bastardization of his core themes. Now, a new wrinkle in the debate about how philosophy informs international affairs comes courtesy of the Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes (full disclosure: Dr. Pipes was a professor of mine in graduate school) writing in today’s Jerusalem Post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In a piece titled “Lion’s Den: Immanuel Kant vs. Israel”<\/a>, Dr. Pipes argues that the post-nation state ideology advanced by the legendary Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant in his 1795 work “Perpetual Peace” is now being used to advance a new paradigm of perpetual war against Israel. In relevant part:<\/p>\n

Under the old nation-state paradigm, the lesson of Auschwitz was \u201cNever again,\u201d meaning that a strong Israel was needed to protect Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n

The new paradigm leads to a very different \u201cNever again,\u201d one which insists that no government should have the means potentially to replicate the Nazi outrages. According to it, Israel isn\u2019t the answer to Auschwitz. The European Union is.<\/p>\n

That the old-style \u201cNever again\u201d inspires Israelis to pursue the Western world\u2019s most unabashed policy of self-defense makes their actions particularly appalling to New Paradigmers.<\/p>\n

Need one point out the error of ascribing Nazi outrages to the nation-state? The Nazis wanted to eliminate nation-states. No less than Kant, they dreamed of a universal state. New Paradigmers mangle history.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The lesson — in Israel’s case, as in all others — is simple. As the monopoly of legitimate force, government is a necessary evil requiring the vigilance of free citizens to keep it in check. In order to protect human liberty and maintain responsiveness to the citizenry, that means government should be as limited and decentralized as possible. And nothing is more threatening to that goal than the “benevolent” internationalism envisioned by Kant, the United Nations, and all their fellow travelers on the post-nationalist left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For decades, philosophy buffs have argued over whether Adolf Hitler’s appropriation of Friedrich Nietzsche was a logical extension of the German philosopher’s work or a bastardization of his core themes. Now, a new wrinkle in the debate about how philosophy informs international affairs comes courtesy of the Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes (full disclosure: Dr. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1731,1727,372,1130,1729,386,1728,1730],"class_list":["post-6654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-anti-semitism","tag-daniel-pipes","tag-european-union","tag-hitler","tag-immanuel-kant","tag-israel","tag-nietzsche","tag-world-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6654"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6658,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6654\/revisions\/6658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}