Lately I’ve doing some translation work for a Japanese publisher that is making a bilingual book on peace for teens, using Immanuel Kant’s philosophy and theory of how peace is established and maintained.  So I’ve been reading Kant in English and Japanese to do this. I’d read a little of Kant previously but not enough, so it’s been an enlightening experience for me, as it seems everything connected to Japan has been for me. 

I wish there were more recent books on peace published (if you know of any, please let me know what their titles are), especially ones that try to explain what it is and how it functions and what societies must do in order to maintain it, and why it’s important.  This all seems like common sense, but apparently these days it has left the realm of common sense and has been placed in the category of “merely speculative” by our current administration.  Reading through Kant, I see we’ve already failed at many of the tenets he observed are necessary in order to keep peace in the world.  Such as the need for no debt to be accrued in relation to a nation’s international or foreign disputes.  I think the U.S. must have passed by that stop sign a long time ago, according to what our congressmen and women have been saying for some time now.  I still can’t believe how out of control this administration is and how it simply gives everyone the finger when the majority of the citizens of the country, which *is* the nation, has told it to stop.  It’s no wonder why people feel so powerless and small these days.