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File this under POSEUR ALERT:

Kagan considers that the United States and Europe have come to reflect the incompatible views of the world held by two great philosophers, Thomas Hobbes and Immanuel Kant. The former lived through the English civil war of the 164o's, whose horrors impressed on him that the law of the jungle is the natural order of mankind and that the sole resource available to tame the general beastliness is the state’s possession of superior power, coupled with the resolve to wield it. Kant, on the other hand, living in the relative calm of the 18th century, maintained that reason is the tool for perfecting society and ensuring perpetual peace.