Are you ready for some football?

Fire of Liberty
Doug Kern has an interesting piece over at Tech Central Station on how the varying approaches(Neo or Paleo) to current US foreign policy is very similar to the way various NFL fans in America find a particular team to pull for. Kern notes that even though there are varying reasons and arguments why people choose a sports team over another as others choose their approaches towards foreign policy, they still end up rooting for the same cause which in the NFL fan's case is football and in the case of foreign policy is the defense of this nation. If you think about it, Kern's piece arguing that the way one picks their foreign policy is similar to the way NFL fans choose who to cheer for, is a pretty good analogy to present to folks who just scratch their head when they are presented with terms like Paleocon or Neocon foreign policy. I'll just give you a sampling of Kern's argument and you decide:

To draw a caricature: paleos want us to cheer for the home team because it's the home team, whereas neos want us to cheer for the home team because it wins lots of games. Which kind of loyalty is better?

I believe that the paleos are right to assign loyalty to people and places -- to real tangible things, rather than airy abstractions. And I agree that America's freedom rests primarily in her people. If America were to switch laws and economies with any dictatorship you care to name, I believe that the dictatorship would run itself into the ground within a year, whereas Americans would rise up against the tyranny and recreate freedom. Laws alone cannot make or unmake a virtuous people.

But I also believe that Americans understand themselves to be a people devoted to universal propositions about freedom and human nature. You cannot genuinely love the American people without accepting that Americans revere the origins of their liberty in law. From the Civil War to the World Wars to our current conflict, Americans have consistently fought and died in support of "airy abstractions" -- even when it would have been cheaper and safer to stay at home. Since John Winthrop told the Puritans to be a city upon a hill, Americans have felt compelled to hold out their success as a model for the world to follow. The distinctive quality of Americans is our refusal to believe that our qualities are distinctive. We really do hold these truths to be self-evident. We believe that truth and justice are synonymous with the American way. We believe that our institutions and economic policies make us free -- not our membership in the American people. And we conduct our foreign policy -- and our wars -- accordingly. To love Americans without loving their evangelizing impulse, as some paleos do, is to love an idea of Americans, not the real thing. How veryÂ…neoconservative of them.

Preaching the gospel of freedom to other countries is what we do, as Americans. It's in our national DNA. But can we build virtue in Iraq adequate to meet the demands of the laws and economic structures we have given them? That choice may rest with the Iraqis, not with us. But it will not be the neoconservative plans that make Iraqis' free. It will be the Iraqi people who accept or reject virtue. We will succeed in Iraq only if the neos and paleos are both right.

Sounds good to me.