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# Posted 3:28 PM by Ariel David Adesnik

ARE YOU A NEO-CON? Greg Djerejian points to this amusing little quiz in the Christian Science Monitor. Greg reports that he was a realist at first, but then changed one answer he wasn't sure about and became a neo-con.

I just took the quiz myself and discovered-- to my complete surprise -- that I am a realist. My surprise abated, however, when I read the quiz's definition of realism, which has absolutely nothing in common with the capital-R realism of Hans Morgenthau, George Kennan and Henry Kissinger.

All in all, I'd have to say that the CSM definitions are fairly crude and are unfair to everyone except the (mis-named) realists. In short, the liberals are naive, the neo-cons are jingoistic and the isolationists have their head in the sand. This leaves us with the realists, who come across as sensible, pragmatic moderates.

But a sensible, pragmatic moderate is not what I am. Rather, I am a fierce advocate of basing American foreign policy on democratic principles. I am neither a liberal multilateralist nor a neo-con unilateralist. "-lateralisms" are means, not ends. Democracy is the end.

In fact, I think that there are a lot of liberals and neo-cons who would agree that we all share an interest in promoting democracy but disagree on how to achieve that objective. However, in the CSM and elsewhere, that disagreement has become the news, while the underlying principles get ignored.

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