MetaChat is an informal place for MeFites to touch base and post, discuss and
chatter about topics that may not belong on MetaFilter. Questions? Check the FAQ. Please note: This is important.
19 January 2006
Are you a NeoCon?→[More:]The quiz really just provides a yes/no answer, since the choices are restricted to NeoCon, Liberal, Isolationist, Realist. Nothing for Radicals, New Agers, Vegetarians or Christofascist apocalyptics, sorry.
Well, like I always say, I'm a liberal who generally can't stand other liberals, mainly because they have lousy taste and tend to be schoolmarmish. Paradoxically, this could make me valuable to the liberal cause.
Reading the descriptions, I suspect that while I'm solidly in the "realist" camp, I'm much closer to "liberal" than not. And that pretty much is my foreign policy, I guess, "realist liberalism".
You and me, Brainwidth. Admit it: like me, you've considered taking the test for civil diplomatic service, haven't you? :)
Not a surprise that most here are solidly in the "liberal" camp.
orthogonality: Yeah, Reagan certainly wasn't a "neocon" in the strict sense. But he championed an expansive foreign policy with unilateral use of military force to, supposedly, further American values. That's pretty much the neocons.
I'm so fucking neocon I didn't just take the test, I pre-emptively shock and awed it into a drawn out insurgency and eventually a big old Iranian annex state.
I'm with ya, kmellis. And actually, I have thought about the civil diplomatic service, although my career path has taken me in a different direction.
I think that the definition of neocon used in the quiz results is descriptively accurate, but fails to capture the sociology of the neocons--their origins and intellectual roots. In any case, Roosevelt and Reagan were certainly not neocons in the Straussian sense, although the foreign policy they espoused may have been descriptively similar.
I'm a realist, which is why I'm pretty confident that this political quiz is kind of oversimplified and unsatisfying, just like every other one I've ever taken.
--takes quiz--
Upon further review, it turns out that I'm a liberal.
I have Golden-Utilitarian leanings, but if you call me Situational, I'll get Categorically Imperative on you, if not for the Enlightened Self-Interest of any onlookers passing by.
Just like those woolsuckers at the CSM to make a test about foreign policy complicated and subtle.
I was unsurprised to find that I'm a Realist. I had to defend Realist positions on MetaFilter, when they were mistaken for NeoCon positions. I'll reiterate here that it's the name of a philosophy of political science, not a synonym for "pragmatic" or some such, and it has some well-defined precepts.
I'd describe myself as realist, with liberal leanings.
I think that lately, liberals and isolationists are finding more points of agreement than they did in the past. The Cold War (and WWII) marginalized isolationism, but after Vietnam and now Iraq it's possible there could be a significant resurgence.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
photo by ethylene
