Higher-Order Insanity from the Volokh Conspiracy

Ilya Somin is unhappy:

Brad DeLong Misrepresents My Position on Libertarianism and Asteroid Defense | FavStocks: n a recent post, I expressed my disagreement with co-blogger Sasha Volokh’s view that libertarianism condemns government funding of asteroid defense, pointing out that most prominent libertarian thinkers also disagree with him. Through selective quotation, Brad DeLong tries to make it seem like I endorsed Sasha’s position. He does so by quoting the part of the post where I explained why I don’t think Sasha’s position is ridiculous or “insane”...

I deny this. I did not write that Somin endorses Sasha Volokh's view that taxing people to pay for asteroid defense is immoral. Somin's insanity is, rather, a second-order insanity--the insanity of taking first-order insane claims to be questions about which reasonable people can disagree.

So: for the record: I nowhere claim that Ilya Somin agrees with Sasha Volokh's bizarre and insane claim that it is immoral to tax people to pay for asteroid defense.

I nowhere quote Ilya Somin out of context. I quote him--accurately and in context--as claiming that Sasha Volokh's position is a serious one with which reasonable people can agree or disagree.

I simply don't happen to think that Sasha Volokh's position is one with which reasonable people can agree or disagree.

And I don't think that the claim that Sasha Volokh's position is reasonable is itself a reasonable claim.

And, for that matter, I don't think that Ilya Somin's claim that Immanuel Kant's claim that you have a moral duty not to lie to insane ax murderers about the whereabouts of their would-be victim is a reasonable claim is a reasonable claim.

Now if he wants to argue that he is not insane--that the claim that the claim that Immanuel Kant's claim that you have a moral duty not to lie to insane ax murderers about the whereabouts of their would-be victims is a reasonable claim is a reasonable claim is itself a reasonable claim--I would be happy to listen to him.

But I cannot imagine how he would make such an argument. In Kant's case the trolley of moral philosophy has run off its tracks and over the cliffs of insanity. And attempts to argue that it has not are simply higher orders of insanity.

Can you?

Brad DeLong