Beware the Slippery Slope

Photo by Zbysiu Rodak on Unsplash

You have undoubtedly heard someone make a “slippery slope” argument before. It’s where you are cautioned against some action because it will inevitably lead to some other outcome that everyone agrees is awful.

The argument comes in two basic varieties. Causal slippery slopes refer to situations where one event causes a second event, which causes a third event, and so on, until the string of events leads to something unacceptable. Conceptual slippery slopes arise where the treatment of one circumstance inevitably leads, by way of precedent or through incremental analogy, to a different, and much worse, circumstance being treated the same way.

But whichever category the argument may fall in, it is usually a fallacy. The slippery slope argument is only valid if there are actual reasons why the first action must lead to the undesirable outcome. Typically, that just isn’t the case.

Nevertheless, the slippery slope argument is frequently adopted by people from one end of the political spectrum to the other. By way of just a few examples:

• If we permit any regulation of firearms, then it will just be a matter of time before the government takes away all of our guns.

• If we permit any regulation of abortion, then it will just be a matter of time before all abortion is outlawed.

• If we legalize marijuana, then we can no longer justify laws against heroin or cocaine.

• If we let religious organizations receive funds under the Paycheck Protection Program, then the wall between church and state will collapse and the government will be able to use taxpayer money to directly support religious programming.

• If government provides “single-payer” health coverage, then one industry after another will be nationalized, and eventually America will become a socialist country.

• If we permit doctors to assist in suicide by terminal patients, we’ll end up with death panels that will decide whether anyone who wants to commit suicide can get a doctor’s help.

• If we legalize same-sex marriage, pretty soon people will want to marry animals or inanimate objects.

• If we remove the statues of Confederate generals, whose statues will be removed next? George Washington’s or Thomas Jefferson’s?

I could go on.

Why are these fallacies? Because the consequence, in each case, does not inevitably follow from the first event.

In the law and in life, we draw distinctions all of the time. By criminalizing murder, it doesn’t mean that killing in self-defense is also a crime. If we raise the speed limit on a stretch of road from 45 to 55 miles per hour, it doesn’t mean that eventually there won’t be a speed limit at all.

Now, this isn’t to say that all slippery slope arguments are invalid. Sometimes, one event will lead inevitably to a specific outcome. But that’s a very rare occurrence, and the cause and effect must be rigorously confirmed before the conclusion should be drawn. Much more often than not, distinctions can be made, and in fact are made all of the time.

Firearm regulations go back to colonial times, yet gun ownership remains legal in each and every American jurisdiction. States that have legalized marijuana still have and enforce laws against the possession of other drugs. The establishment of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid has not led to socialism in the United States. Same-sex marriage has not led to a rash of human-pet weddings.

Recognizing that a slippery slope argument is a fallacy can sometimes be obscured because there may in fact be those who do advocate for the extreme position. Some people do want to outlaw all guns, to make all abortion illegal, or to decriminalize all drugs. But emphasizing those who hold such goals as an argument to avoid an action is itself another fallacy. It takes the most extreme position and generalizes it to everyone on the other side of the issue.

In the end, the point of every slippery slope argument is to scare the listener. It intentionally preys on fear. If you are sufficiently terrified of the purported consequence, you’ll do anything to avoid the first event that might lead to it.

The wide reliance on slippery slope arguments is a large part of the reason compromise has died in so much of our political life. It makes the slightest compromise equivalent to the worst outcome imaginable.

If a policy is actually a bad idea, there will always be better reasons to oppose it than the fear of a slippery slope. If the slippery slope is the only reason to oppose an idea, then you probably don’t have a good reason at all.

So, the next time you hear someone use a slippery slope argument, be very skeptical. And if you are tempted to use it as an argument, don’t. If that’s the best you have, you’re probably wrong.