Third Way leads to Third World

Third Way economic theories imply an antithesis between "Capitalism" and "Socialism", free-trade and central-command: such a Third Way promotes itself as their synthesis. In any event, any economic theory comes out of a refusal to judge the morality of a system. The only question which all theories ask is Deng's: "if the cat catches mice". These theories are a product of secularism, in short.

The most infamous Third Way is, of course, fascism. Mussolini's model, by that name or not, spread all over the world after the European powers lost their colonies. These colonies proclaimed themselves a "Third World", non-aligned to the two other worlds, in whatever order, under the banners of the Stars And Stripes and of the Hammer And Sickle. In a span of not-many years, the Third World became a wasteland.

Every now and again someone promotes a Third Way in a First World nation - sometimes, in a Second World nation, like Dubcek in Czechoslovakia 1968. The hope is for a system with rules and without cruelty. An example I've run across is the Georgism, which the educator Frank "Kek" McEachran promoted. Kek ended up inspiring full-on traitors serving Stalin. Distributism is another example, like that of Chesterton. Chesterton's protégé Arthur Bryant came close to embracing the Swastika - too close by his own estimation, to the extent he tried to recall his own book.

Third Way theories, I conclude, are weak. The theories are weak because we are weak; the theorist may be a dispassionate high-IQ analyst, but he is going to rely upon low-IQ grunts to enforce his theory. They just want to be given a purpose and told what to do. And what will make the most sense to them is a Leader. Which tends to fascism, either homegrown or run by a foreign Stalin.

Even getting to enacting worldviews like Georgism tend to be Jihad Complete Problems. People get into Georgism and Distributism - and Libertarianism - when they have given up on politics entire. The thing with Jihad though, is that it doesn't end with Muhammad's heaven on earth; it ends with Caliph al-Saffah.