Nova Cyberia wrote:Twilight Imperium wrote:I'm pointing out that the erosion of civil liberties is often a slippery slope, yes. The vast body of (recent!) historical evidence prevents it from being fallacious, though. Please try again.
It is fallacious. The argument itself is fallacious.
I thought you might double down on this, so I have prepared a response. According to WIkipedia,
The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences. The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process that leads to the significant effect. This type of argument is sometimes used as a form of fearmongering, in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience.
If you have significant objections to this definition, please let me know and I'll revise. Otherwise, to wit:
a) Once you remove a civil liberty from a group of people, they generally don't get it back without a huge amount of work. Therefore, tossing them away blithely is a bad idea and must be commensurate with some sort of gain. This is why I used the term "erosion", as the physical process of weathering is similar.
b) With fewer civil liberties, it becomes easier to remove even more of them, since you no longer have the expectation of privacy/expression/armament/whichever one is relevant here. It's okay for the TSA to use their weird x-ray specs on you before you board an airplane these days, when 40 years ago even having your luggage searched would have been an unthinkable imposition, for example. Thus, "erosion begets erosion", or if you like, the slope becomes slipperier.
c) Just because the end result is scary, doesn't mean the entire argument is invalid. If I was standing on a slippery slope, and someone said "hey if you take too many steps that way, you'll fall off!", I wouldn't smugly keep going and say "ha, slippery slope argument lol" and fall to my death. I'd take a look at my footing. Thus, "sometimes the slope actually is slippery".
Any questions?