I’ve been enjoying watching Brad DeLong pull his hair out in frustration with those who are willing to make peace with madness if that is where their arguments lead. (DeLong is entertaining when he’s exasperated.)
Some of the relevant posts are here and here.
The immediate provocation for all of this was the internally consistent, but barking mad, insistence by Sasha Volokh that “taxing people to protect the Earth from an asteroid … is an illegitimate function of government from a moral perspective.” We’re not talking about the case of a possible or potential asteroid, mind you, but about the case of an actual, identifiable asteroid confirmed to be on an impending collision course with the Earth. (Volokh was responding to this brilliant piece from The Onion: “Republicans Vote to Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed for Earth” — responding that such a repeal would, in his view, be the Right Thing To Do.)
That particular example led, as such conversations often do, to a discussion of Immanuel Kant’s absolute prohibition against lying even to protect victims from fiends and tyrants.
DeLong helpfully distinguishes between first-order insanity and second-order insanity. Kant’s “claim that you have a moral duty not to lie to insane ax murderers about the whereabouts of their would-be victim,” he notes, is an example of first-order insanity. Second-order insanity involves the claim that Kant’s claim is not patently nuts, but simply a matter of reasonable controversy over which sane people may disagree. Kant’s claim is not reasonable (first-order) and the claim that Kant’s unreasonable claim is reasonable is also not reasonable (second-order).
This is all sort of academically amusing until one remembers that such second-order insanity is what provides first-order insanity the space in which to work its madness, and that such madness when combined with the power to put it into practice tends to lead to actual people becoming actually dead. That’s why DeLong wants to shout it down as emphatically as possible:
Put me down as believing that any theory of moral action that privileges one particular set of rights or goods lexicographically — i.e., “based on absolute respect for certain rights” and not for other rights or duties — above all others is, ipso facto, insane.
Sane thinking starts with taking people as ends in themselves and not as means to ideological purity.
Was the Sabbath made for humanity or was humanity made for the Sabbath?
The first-order insanity from John MacArthur in the previous post loses all sense due to precisely what DeLong describes. MacArthur is saying — contra Jesus Christ, contra the Bible he claims to be following — that humanity was made for the Sabbath. He is treating people as means to ideological purity or, more specifically, as means to some idea of “biblical” purity.
I’m aware of how MacArthur wound up arriving at such madness. He’s relying on an absolutist reading of the opening verses of Romans 13 as holy writ to be consulted apart from all other scripture, theology and reason. He’s relying on the idea that the beginning of Romans 13 must be read as a unique and privileged prooftext that should be interpreted as overruling and nullifying the rest of the scriptures — including especially Romans 12 and the rest of Romans 13.
And then, having set out on this path, MacArthur winds up in the mad swamp to which that path leads. Like Volokh and Kant and anyone else caught in the quagmire of this first-order insanity, MacArthur pleads helplessness and irresponsibility. It’s not my fault that my position is absurd, monstrous, evil and inhuman, he argues, this is where the path carried me so this is where I have to be.
The point here is that if one has followed a path that leads inexorably to a conclusion that is absurd, monstrous, evil and inhuman then one should retrace one’s steps. If your devotion to ideological purity or biblical purity has led you astray, that doesn’t condemn you to remaining astray forever. Return to Go. Start over. Try a different path — one that has some hope of leading you somewhere that is not absurd, monstrous, evil and inhuman.
The clues that one is losing one’s way are not hard to spot. If you find yourself having to say things like, “It would be better if the asteroid wiped out Asia” or “I would tell the Nazis where Anne Frank was hiding” or “I’m not saying Moammar Gadhafi is the best leader …” then you should realize something is amiss.
If you’re saying such things, realize that you’re lost. You’ve made a wrong turn. You’re on the wrong path. Try to find your way back. Stop and ask directions. Start over.
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