Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
My father had a favorite saying with which was to excoriate me on the many occasions when I had misbehaved. “The Road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions”. He used this to chastise me for some bad behavior, but more importantly to give me guidance of the “slippery-slope” that I was on when I behaved badly. Although it’s been 50 years since his death his words have remained with me even though I’ve aged into a man who’s lived far longer than he had. It’s been my observation that there is truth to this cliche, yet it does represent a form of logic, the “slippery-slope”, which can often also be specious. When I read this New York Times Article: “Slippery-Slope Logic, Applied to Health Care” by Economist Richard H. Thaler, Published: May 12, 2012http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/business/economy/slippery-slope-logic-vs-health-care-law-economic-view.html , I was again reminded of my Father’s admonitions and began to think about the use of “slippery-slope” logic. As it relates to SCOTUS and health care Mr. Thaler’s critique of the “slippery-slope” logic being applied by Justice Scalia did ring true:
“Consider these now-famous comments about broccoli from Justice Antonin G. Scalia during the oral arguments. “Everybody has to buy food sooner or later, so you define the market as food,” he said. “Therefore, everybody is in the market. Therefore, you can make people buy broccoli.” ”
“Justice Scalia is arguing that if the court lets Congress create a mandate to buy health insurance, nothing could stop Congress from passing laws requiring everyone to buy broccoli and to join a gym.”
“Please stop! The very fact that a slippery slope is being cited as grounds for declaring the law unconstitutional — despite that “significant deference” usually given to laws passed by Congress — tells you all that you need to know about the argument’s validity. Can anyone imagine Congress passing a broccoli mandate law, much less the court allowing it to take effect?”
These are excepts from Mr. Thaler’s article. His short column is well worth reading for his examples of the problem with “slippery-slope” logic. My piece though, is neither about health care, nor SCOTUS. I’d like to explore the question of the validity of “slippery-slope” arguments that have been commonly used in public discourse and whether we would be better off as a society if we ignored them.
Religious Fundamentalists in America have long been obsessed with what they define as loose morality leading our country down the “slippery-slope” towards becoming Sodom and Gomorrah. The long history of American Laws passed regarding sexuality all had this theory as their basis and as their justification. I can remember many years ago hearing some politician making the argument that if we legalize homosexuality we will stop producing children and die as a society. Presumably his premise was that legalizing Homosexuality would cause everyone to become Gay, because that was the more attractive and compelling lifestyle. Those who would prohibit the use of birth control are really also expressing the “slippery-slope” attitude that birth control inevitably leads to promiscuity, which will leave us with an immoral society.The arguments made against a social safety net have been in essence arguments that such a “net” will inevitably and indeed has already, made people lazy. The “slippery-slope” has been the lynchpin argument of conservatives and libertarians about the initiation of any government program since it will inevitably lead down the “slippery-slope” towards socialism and/or bankruptcy. Probably one of the great, yet little remarked upon, injustices in our country’s history came in the form of the “Orphan Trains”. Immigration, westward movement, the Civil War and children born out of wedlock were perceived to be problematic to the country. The idea of public assistance for children, such as the AFDC grants we have today, were perceived at all governmental levels to be destructive to the “work ethic” and would follow the inevitable “slippery-slope” down to the creation of a society with a “lazy” underclass. The mechanism developed and championed by the nascent Children’s Aid Society was the “Orphan Train” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/horizon/nov98/orphan.htm :
“Between 1854 and 1929, an estimated 200,000 American children—some orphaned, others abandoned, all in need of families—traveled west by rail in search of new homes in a novel ”placing out” movement.”
“The intent of the program was not adoption as it’s now known but foster care. Families acted from various motives, and not all children who rode orphan trains found happy homes. Some suffered abuse, were treated like hired help or were never fully accepted. Officials knew that placing out was imperfect and did what they could to screen inappropriate families.”
In lieu of establishing a program for assistance of children in need on a localized basis, children were shipped off in trains heading west, stopping at various locations, so that local farmers and industrialists could “adopt” them to work on farms and factories. Thus a “slippery-slope” towards destruction of the “work ethic” and reward for “immorality” was avoided.
The “grand slippery-slope” argument in our politics is of course regarding the role of government. Conservatives and libertarians argue that we must reduce the role of government lest we destroy Capitalism and become Communist Demons. Thus every attempt at improving the lot of the poor, bolstering the middle-class, or even fixing our decaying infrastructure, is railed against as leading us down the “slippery-slope” of Marxist deviltry. Such is his fear that the infamous Grover Norquist wants to shrink government to the size “where it could be drowned in a bathtub”.
Yet I must ask is a “slippery-slope” argument always ill-founded? I could argue that the initial U.S. assumptions about the “Cold War” led our nation to the point where we have become the “Empire” that our Founding Fathers warned about. Those who objected to our aggressive “Cold War” policies were ridiculed for their fears of the “slippery-slope” towards nuclear destruction, chastened by an opposing “slippery-slope” argument, or simply called Communists. Those initial actions to protect against the threat of communism put us on a “slippery-slope” where our defense budgets have drastically increased, our foreign involvement in wars of choice has become decades, rather than years long and our security agencies are now operating against American citizens. This was all driven by the internal logic of our “Cold Warriors”, with a lot of opportunity for personal profit thrown in and with the threat of a “slippery-slope” that would lead to our country’s destruction. Despite the Reaganite claim that it was their foreign policy that lead to the end of the USSR, the truth was it was the communists own internal problems, rather than a threat from the US and NATO.
However, I remember huddling against the wall in my Elementary School practicing to save myself in the event of nuclear attack. Even at those tender ages I fully understood that huddling in the hall wouldn’t save me if an H-Bomb or two exploded in New York City. These “safety drills” were merely exercises in propaganda, used to convince us that the “Commies”, our implacable foes, would destroy us if we didn’t beat them to it. The entire 11 years fighting in Viet Nam was the result of the famous “slippery slope” gambit of the “domino effect”. Now, thirty-seven years after the Vietnamese beat us, we engage with trade with them. The “Domino Theory’s” false “slippery-slope” logic never took effect.
Are we always then to disparage “slippery-slope” logic? Perhaps there are instances where the “slippery-slope” has validity, but I’m personally hard pressed to come up with them, except in the cases of erosions of our civil liberties. From a civil libertarian view every instance where a book is banned for salacious content; a non-harmful sexual act between consenting adults is prohibited; extra-constitutional tactics to fight purported terrorism are instituted; the rights of a minority are limited; the introduction of religious beliefs into the public sphere is put into effect; and so on is an embarkation down the “slippery-slope” towards the destruction of our freedom.
The attack of 9/11 led us down the “slippery-slope” of anti-terrorism inexorably towards two wars, police state tactics, the interference of intelligence agencies in our private lives and assassination. Curtailment of civil liberties in almost any form can lead down a “slippery-slope” towards oppression. Perhaps these concluding words from Mr. Thaler, in the above referenced article give some clarity:
“More generally, we would be better off as a society if we could collectively agree to ignore all slippery-slope arguments that aren’t accompanied by evidence that said slope exists. If you are opposed to a policy, state your case based on the merits — not on the imagined risk of what else might happen down the road. The path of that road is so unpredictable that it may even produce a U-turn.”
What do you think?
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, guest blogger
bettykath cont’d….
And won’t that be ironic when they get their first hospital bill!
Bettykath
Reporting is done through tax returns. My guess is we’ll get a 1099 from our insurance company each year. Those without, will have a line that calculates a fee in lieu of carrying the insurance. But, I understand there is no real compuction, since no jail sentence or fine will be levied if you do not carry the insurance. The governments only leverage may be that they can deduct the unpaid fee from any tax rebate owed to the tax payer. I’m predicting that this process will increase the number of strokes suffered by wing-nuts.
MJ: If broccoli were the only thing we had to eat I would be ver depressed.
E: The question I had in mind was not as much in the details of the implementation and the legal issues surrounding the minutiae, that could certainly be debated, but whether conceptually, Congress has the right to pass a law that says we must buy broccoli, if they had a good reason to do so, and alternatively, even if they did not have a good reason.
Enforcement for broccoli buying makes me wonder how are they planning to enforce the everyone must buy medical insurance. They can have the hospitals turn you in, but what if you’re healthy and don’t need the hospital?
@steve k.
Think about it… there isn’t enough broccoli produced in the US for everyone. To make such a law, Congress would likely have to redirect farm subsidies away from corn, soybeans, etc., and towards broccoli (something that Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill might have something to say about, among other interests). Then, there would need to be some sort of enforcement measures put into place. How would compliance be verified? Who would keep the statistics (USDA? CDC? Or perhaps a new Office of Cruciferous Vegetable Ingestion?)? What sort of penalties for non-compliance would be established? How much broccoli would each citizen have to buy each week/month/year?
Seriously: while Congress could, theoretically, pass such a law, there are too many practical obstacles to overcome; for a negligible public health ROI. As the saying goes, “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Likewise, you could conceivably force people to buy broccoli, but it’s useless unless a) they eat it; and b) they simultaneously stop eating a lot of other unhealthy things. No one food in isolation can make people healthy: it’s multifactorial.
Mike
A fine (but devastating) prize winning novel was written about a child from the orphan trains – “Theory of War” by Joan Brady in 1993.
“The “slippery-slope” has been the lynchpin argument of conservatives and libertarians about the initiation of any government program since it will inevitably lead down the “slippery-slope” towards socialism and/or bankruptcy… The idea of public assistance for children, such as the AFDC grants we have today, were perceived at all governmental levels to be destructive to the “work ethic” and would follow the inevitable “slippery-slope” down to the creation of a society with a “lazy” underclass.”
As Corey Robin summed it up in his book, “The Reactionary Mind”:
“Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty – or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force – the opposition to the liberation of men and women from their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees.”
Funny how arguments about the potential of gov’t programs to produce “a society with a ‘lazy’ underclass” are never applied to the rich: no one with a major media or political platform seems unduly worried about how the morals of the rich are being corrupted by privatizing profit and socializing risk – despite ample evidence of corruption, fraud and other sociopathic behavior. That’s because – in the end – such arguments are about making sure the bottom feeders know their place(s).
FWIW, philosopher John Holbo expressed similar thoughts – albeit in a more amusing fashion – in his 2003 deconstruction of David Frum’s “Dead Right.” http://examinedlife.typepad.com/johnbelle/2003/11/dead_right.html – Great read.
Point being, we need to pay less attention to the validity of “slippery slope” arguments per se, vs. who is making them and why… and most importantly, whose prerogatives they’re being marshalled to defend. Ridiculous arguments, like the “broccoli mandate,” are more likely to be trotted out when the basic premise being defended don’t stand up to close examination. “Broccoli” works as a rhetorical device, since it conjures an image (of resentful children forced to do something unpleasant by their parents) that even those of us amongst the hoi polloi can relate to. Thus, it’s a neat deflection from the real issue: rejection of increased agency in the health care market and preservation of the status quo.
steve k,
What if broccoli is the only thing you have to eat?
I would be interested in the argument at to why the Congress cannot pass a law that requires we buy broccoli? This is missing in this blog post and in the NYT article.
Might they be able to make us buy it, but rather not be able to make us eat it?
I ask in all seriousness.
What is the point of climbing Mount Everest? So you can say you did. And then walk back down? Nobody cares. Get over it.
There is a certain segment of society that are eternal assholes. Always has been, always will be. The egotists. Most humans are like lemmings, but not all.
I don’t want to sound like a crazy, but they might want to be careful. Mommy might not go to their funeral.
This old metaphor was evidently dredged up prior to the advent of psychoanalysis and other forms for studying cognition and behavior.
A slope occurring in places that people inhabit is not always slippery. It may be temporarily slippery in winter when covered with ice, but once spring thaw comes naturally, that is no longer the case.
It is a flawed metaphor at its very base. People very rarely live in or frequent an area where a slope is always slippery.
Which means that most slopes can be navigated from low elevation up to the higher elevations most of the time, such as when hiking out in nature on trails.
The real fear that this ineffective metaphor seeks to impose is “out of control”, because we do not like to be out of control as a fundamental experience.
The notion that we have nothing to grasp on to as a remedy is like dreaming of falling.
The slippery slop notion appeals to primal realms way down “under the hood”, but it is quite lame.
Better metaphors would be attached to fire, war, hatred, disease, and the like, because in fact they will tend to spread “out of control” so long as they have sufficient sustenance.
Steg- LMAO! 😀
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.” Matthew 7:13
If I’m not mistaken, I do believe that to be the christian basis of the slippery slope argument. The conceptual basis that was taught to me as a child (I was raised a christian, am not one now, FYI) is that decisions leading to hell were easy ones, and those leading to heaven were difficult ones. After I learned to think a bit for myself (around age 12 or so) I began to realize the fallacy in that argument, and more importantly, the self-serving nature of that argument by the christian religion.
It seemed to propagate the notion that open minded discussion and thought, the broad path, would lead to hell. I began to wonder at what they considered easier choices? The “narrow path” came to mean to me a restriction of choice, a restriction on theology, and a restriction therefore on reason, and while no one will ever accuse me of being a mental giant, I’m with RWE when he says “Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.”
The slippery slope argument has the great advantage of being facially rational, easy to remember and spout, and simple natured, which is to the detriment of a society lacking in critical thinking. “The slippery slope argument . . . is the claim that “we ought not make a sound decision today, for fear of having to draw a sound distinction tomorrow.” (Eugene Volokh, The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope).
In other words, we must be wary of the slippery slope of universally permitting and using slippery slope arguments. A reaction must have a reasonable and logical progression from a cause, and the the risk and benefit of that analysis must weigh in before one uses a slippery slope argument. In other words, there must be a valid path down that slope. It happens all too often that the slippery slope of decision A is actually on an entirely different mountain than a given decision or result B.
Steg, LOL.
Is it a slippery slope when the government uses a somewhat oppressive tactic for awhile and as soon as people get used to it, add another somewhat more oppressive tactic? We saw this at airports. I used to fly with no security checks being made. Then they added the metal detectors that we had to walk through, then the wands if you set the detectors off, then the conveyor belts, then take off your shoes and no liquids in your bag greater than 3oz, now the x-rays and/or the gropes. Is that a slippery slope?
Slippery slope argument is used by one of the interviewees here.
Interesting article, I only skimmed because I have to run out the door. But slightly off topic yet dead on, you folks may appreciate this humorous video:
Well, it’s also paved with bad intentions, and sometimes with sheer indifference. The decision to NOT act, to refrain from acting, is not neutral. It is itself a conscious act freighted with its own set of consequences,legal, social, economic,and moral, e.g., the decision NOT to call the police when a crime is being committed because we don’t want to get involved. The “slippery slope” argument is, quite simply, a moral cop-out.
We’ve have to realize that we are headed in a direction that we don’t want to go before we will have any “U-turns” in the days ahead…… I think the argument “damn the torpedoes full speed ahead” is apt in this post…..