Issues:
Preface
To understand the dynamic between zeroth and third positionism it is helpful to familiarize ourselves with an argumentative tactic the latter’s proponents use against us: The libertarian stupidman.
Stupidmanning is a cousin of strawmanning where weak, stupid arguments for or misrepresentations of a position made by weak, stupid proponents of that position in the real world are attacked to the exclusion of that position’s proper presentation. In the vernacular this is known as refusing to pick on opponents your own size. The stupidman is a more persuasive fallacy than the strawman because the fact that weak proponents of a position exist and argue as they do allows for their opponents to deflect accusations of strawmanning, which by definition is the attacking of proponent types that do not in fact exist.
Unfortunately as of the time of this writing such proponents of libertarianism are numerous, which gives third positionist rhetoric reliant on this tactic more heft than it deserves. This reliance is a double-edged sword, however, because their political economy is by itself so manifestly weak a position, one given only a superficial plausibility as a default alternative to the genuine shortcomings of the first and second positions and the alleged shortcomings of ours. Once their stupidman arguments are exposed as such the bankruptcy of their own position is brought much better into focus.
Refuting third positionists therefore presents us with the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone: Their stupidman arguments and the clowns in the liberty movement who also make them (the latter will be hereafter referred to by their proper philosophical designation of “liberals” rather than the stale and juvenile epithet “lolberts”). The proceeding can therefore serve as a resource for those seeking to defend the liberty movement both from right-wing attacks from without and left-wing attacks from within.
The proceeding refutation of third positionism is from a reactionary perspective only, refuting it only in terms of reactionary, traditional, and nationalist values. The parts of third positionism that are generically progressivist (such as a number of planks in the National Justice Party’s platform) are addressed only insofar as they redound on such values, as refutation on purely economic or non-reactionary grounds has already been abundantly provided by more generically libertarian organizations such as the Mises Institute. Filling the current void within the liberty movement of a reactionary justification of liberty is a significant value that Liberty+ strives to enrich the movement with.