A Slippery Slope Fallacy Society

I had a discussion today that reminded me of the importance of this blog's mission.  My mom and my Grandma and I had an in depth discussion about the health care bill.  My Grandma was opposed to this because it "allowed for the government to tell us to buy a product" (referring to the mandate that everyone buy health insurance). Now what was interesting to me about this discussion is that it ended up about being what a bill "justified" rather than the actual merits of the bill.

While I felt the same as her, that the health care bill's mandate to force people to buy health care was bad, and many of our justifications were the same, we still didn't feel the same in that I didn't believe that the health care bill necessarily "justified" anything.  I think pragmatically, the mandate could force people who can't afford health insurance to buy it, and then pay a fine if they can't afford it, which is wrong, and will lead to a lot of issues.  But it's not because the passage of the bill means that we will eventually live in a Marxist or communist or fascist or totalitarian etc state.

To say that one "policy" justifies another causes us to fall into the slippery slope fallacy.  (Something we see a lot of Glenn Beck's TV show, for example.)  Where a simple policy is similar to that of another country that did something despicable and consequently we will do something despicable because we have a similar policy.  That is ridiculous.

I will give an example of this sort of logic.  The NAZI's provided health insurance for their veterans.  The U.S. too gives health insurance to our veterans.  Consequently, the US will soon become NAZI Germany. 

In a lecture once I heard a joke about this sort of philosophical application.  The lecturer called it the transitive property of Hitler's pants.  "Hitler wears pants, you wear pants, consequently, you are Hitler."  It is ridiculous, but a similar, almost as extreme, sort of logic is used on a regular basis in the discussions we have about policies in this country.

I think ultimately this is why we have so much trouble reaching conclusions on policy issues.  Because instead of debating the benefits of a policy, we also debate what a policy justifies.  People reach extreme conclusions about policies by comparing them to similar policies that are far more draconian than the policy itself. I'm not worried about all of this in the abstract, like that we might get to the point where all our political discussions consist of slippery slope fallacies and we don't get anywhere in our political discussions.  Because that itself would be a slippery slope fallacy. I am worried because I think that we are already there. And to me, that is far more worrying than the existential threat of Hitler's pants.