By: Tim Kirby

The Fourth Position and “Father’s Will”

Part I and Episode I – “I or We?”

Editor’s note: “Fathers’ Will” is an ongoing series of essays regarding the past, present and future of ideology and how we can move forward to an Illiberal age written by award-winning political analyst and radio talk show host Tim Kirby.

“The Fourth Position” is the related video series regarding the same – the 1st episode, “I or We?”, is now available to the public on our YouTube Channel, “Center for Syncretic Studies“. – Joaquin Flores

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he so-called “End of History” is beginning to end. With the victory of Liberalism over Communism it seemed to many in the 90’s that we had entered into the final political theory, that there would no longer be any ideological development.

Liberalism in the 1990’s was to be the alpha and omega, a system for the whole world that “demonstrably” worked “the best” for all of humanity. At the time this seemed like an obvious truth as Liberalism proved itself to “work better” for the masses than Communism. But now, a mere 30 years later the thousand-year-reich of Liberalism is corroding before our eyes and rather quickly. History has not ended, there is no ultimate solution to all problems and the human story continues on. The West is committing demographic suicide, Chinese Communism is the second largest economy in the world, and the world finds itself yet again divided into SCO and NATO, BRICS and WTO etc.

Now there is talk of “Illiberal Democracy” from Hungary and a “Fourth Political Theory” from Russia. We are already at the point where we can begin to think of something new and something different. A new system not yet tried or perhaps a combination of what was. Maybe it could be something so old that it would seem absolutely new to many. The main thing is that when leaders of nations like Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin call for the creation “Illiberal Democracy” and “A Multipolar World” (respectively) we can see that the need for a new ideological movement, a new political theory if you will, is something not for the darkest corners of the internet, but for mainstream discussion. But to begin this discussion we need to take a look at the core of what makes a political theory – its subject.

If we view the three political theories of the 20th century through the filter of their subjects then we can see that Communism and Fascism were collective/group systems. Communism in the Soviet Constitution(s) provided rights and duties to the working class as a whole and as the subject of said political theory. And, although it had little time to develop due to committing suicide on Russian bayonets, it is clear that Fascism saw that the core unit of society was race/ethnicity. Basically we have two societies whose, so to say, core unit was a group. These were systems for “We”. (Hence, why fans of Liberalism see Fascists and Communists as two sides of the same evil coin.)

Liberalism on the other hand is a system for “I”. it is a system in which all laws are for individuals who have individual rights. You will see that with some historical exceptions (segregation in the US) any liberal country forbids itself from making any distinctions between groups. In the past there was usually only a distinction between citizens and noncitizens. Citizens are part of the nation-state and non-citizens are not. But now the advocates of globalization who want a world without borders do not even see that distinction, and in many ways they would like any division based off of any group identity whatsoever to fade into history. Open society, open borders, universal values, because all that matters is “I” for the Liberal.

So as we see one key factor in these subjects is whether they are collective or individual. If we stop for a moment and think about things scientifically, that is to say ask ourselves first off, “do I and/or We even exist?” then we can easily see that individuals do exist. You are a physical organism contained in one body with one brain and one soul. You have your own name, instincts for your own survival and you have your own desires. It is easy to see how Egalitarians and Libertarians get so caught up on the individual for it is very obvious and very provable.

But, no matter how much one can scream about the individual or the selfish nature of man no sociologist or psychologist could argue that man is an individualistic being. The very fact that there is a special term (hermit) for people who do not live in a group shows that this is a radical abnormality. Furthermore how many hermits do you know who completely reject by choice all human contact? All humans belong to groups even if that fact is unpleasant, be those groups, gender, a language group, an interest group, a fashion style etc.

As stated above we can prove that you exist, and individualists would argue that all group identity is false or contrived (or impossible to represent) but even though there is no physical stamp saying someone is English or Chinese these cultures do exist. And, this attempt by Progressives\SJWs and other hyper Liberals to pretend like they don’t exist is just as mad as previous attempts by Marxists to create an individualless world of working class drones or the Nazi’s to build a pure Aryan race on a continent with populations moving about for millenia.

Furthermore, the tribal mentality of man is so deep that even in a monoethnic culture, people of the same social class given the chance will fight like monkeys for their favourite football team or pick on the kids who wear “gothic” fashion in school. People create groups by nature even in areas where humans would seem to be very uniform. To say that there is no “We” and only individuals exist is a delusion that only the most glutinous of dog-eat-dog Libertarians can deny until they finally set foot in another country and see that they are no longer in their group and the culture shock from it.

So we see that both “I” and “We” exist. The three political theories of the 20th century (mainly) decided to pick one or the other as the subject of their ideology. I would argue that as we move forward in the 21st century towards a Fourth Political Theory or Illiberal Democracy then we MUST make it a theory whose subject is BOTH I and We, for both individuals and groups do exist and to deny one or the other leads to the horrible Misery created by the three main theories.