Exercise 12-1
Look over the following examples and decide which ones are instances of the slippery slope fallacy and which ones give well-founded warnings of genuine slippery slope dangers.
1. [The environmentalists'] real thrust is not clean air, or clean water, or parks, or wildlife but the form of government under which America will live. Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s. The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism. The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism.
2. It is very frustrating when our manufacturers fail to win a share of a foreign market, and when that happens, they may resort to imposing punitive tariffs on the other country's goods in an effort to force them to open their markets to our goods. In extreme cases, perhaps such punitive tariffs are necessary, but they should be used very rarely and avoided if at all possible. What happens if we can't sell our paint in Tangistan and so decide to slap a punitive tariff on radios imported from Tangistan? That makes the radio manufacturers in Tangistan angry, and they pressure their government to respond with a punitive tariff, and so Tangistan places high tariffs on all the cameras we export to that country. And then our camera manufacturers get angry, and they call for high tariffs against all fruits and vegetables imported from Tangistan. And soon you have the makings of an all-out trade war between the two countries, with all the problems for both manufacturers and consumers that such a trade war causes.
3. We must stop this movement for a moment of silence in public schools because once you allow a moment of silence, it soon becomes a moment of teachers leading prayers, and before long, it becomes government-sponsored religion and the ban of all religions other than the one favored by the government.
