What is Communitarianism?

[Occhidiangela]

I'm sure I'm going to regret responding to yet another belligerent, words-in-my-mouth taunt, but here goes.

"Right" and "left" are not well defined, nor do they form a useful spectrum. However, they have at least come to vaguely imply a pair of culturally driven political alliances. The terms are not useless, however nebulous they might be.

The "third way" doesn't even make it to that feeble standard. There is no coherent idea behind it at all. It is a cynical branding exercise, and its adherents tend to be about as slippery and vague as good Mr. Clinton was.

-Jester

Since you offered nothing new there in that post, I see nothing of substance to reply to. But I'll do it anyway.

I am fully aware of the dynamics of the simplistic "right and left paragidm," the weakness of such a shallow way of viewing the world, regardless of its popularity, and the character of polemicists who try and perpetuate it.

Please dont be one. Too bad you didn't grow up in the seventies.

To pretend that there is no third way is damned foolishness. Third ways, or proposals of alternate assumptions, crop up with varying frequency. Where do you think the Third World comes from, in a conceptual sense?

To allege out that a third way can't exist, as you suggest, conveniently overlooks the multiparty systems in many parliamentary governments, in Europe if not elsewhere. While the big hand to little map approach offers a reductionism of those variations on themes into your convenient pigeon holes of "left" and "right" (which we agree is a less than ideal model, it seems) details matter to the advocates of those parties and positions.

Beyond that. I'd like an answer to my question to you:

What is your take on Distributism?

Occhi