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Originally Posted by Wisha Haddan H3
... But to oppress or ban opposing viewpoints is the road to totalitarianism. Dictatorships are full of blind, obedient patriotic citizens who don't think for themselves, use only one source of information and follow a single-minded ideology. That path leads to the antithesis of democracy and freedom - fascism, jihad, and crusade.
There's a difference between "majority rules" and "might makes right". Even within a democracy, when people blindly follow their leaders, their party or their own ideology, they disrespect what democracy exists for. Ultimately, although the US was founded with a political structure of checks, balances and democracy, it's only as democratic as the people who think for themselves, stay informed, consider opposing viewpoints, make up their own mind and vote their own conscience. Anything else is the slippery slope toward totalitarianism.
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This is such crap. Just because we disagree with the lefties who ARE NOT in the White House, and instead agree on many issues with our President, doesn't mean that we are "blind, obedient patriotic citizens who don't think for themselves." I, and I assume most who agree with Bush's foreign policy, have thought their opinions through very carefully and intelligently. Just because we don't agree with you doesn't mean that we are "people blindly follow their leaders, their party or their own ideology."
By the way: That arrogant (yet oddly stupid) theory is mostly unique to the liberal/Democrat crowd. When Clinton was in office, many conservatives dramatically disagreed with his policies and his followers. Nevertheless, I can't recall any significant number of conservatives moronically claiming that the liberals were heading us to Dictatorship because they were “blindly following” the man. We just disagreed with them and said so. It’s a poor substitute for a real argument to simply accuse people who don’t accept your views as “oppressors.”
By the way #2: The slippery slope argument is one of the most overused, overextended metaphors. Success in life is basically all about moderation and focus. The former concept defies the slippery slope concept altogether. It can be applied to anything, and usually is in a paranoid result-oriented manner:
- If we ban porn in the elementary schools, pretty soon, they’ll be coming after our political speech.
- If someone criticizes my venomous attacks on President Bush, they will soon be sending me to a concentration camp.
Slippery slopes are not that slippery.
For example, most people, including me, condemn the Japanese internments. But you cannot make a case that it paved the way for other such transgressions. If it set any precedent at all it set trends in the opposite direction. In 1988, the United States Congress formally apologized for the internment and appropriated money to compensate the 60,000 survivors. The same thing holds true for pretty much every such civil-liberties "outrage" in American history. Habeas corpus was reinstated after the Civil War and, over the next 150 year, became an even stricter legal standard. After all of the revelations of the 1960s and 1970s about wiretaps and secret files, Congress made it more, not less, difficult to abuse the civil rights of citizens.
This exposes the main flaw with slippery-slope arguments. Much like conspiracy theories, they reflect more imagination and less hard thinking than usually required. When we go "too far" one way, we are more likely to swing back the other way than to keep sliding in the wrong direction. It's called the law of unintended consequences. FDR may have been right or wrong when he used military tribunal for icing a few Nazi spies, but that's a stand-alone argument; it didn't launch any long-term authoritarian trend.
So, if you're going to get mad when people reject your attacks on our President or even your “mindless following” of Ted Kennedy,” that's perfectly legitimate. But please bring something more to the table than a slippery-slope argument — because we've been sliding uphill for more than two centuries.