One oft-invoked criticism of “Critical Thinking” texts is that they use arguments no one would ever make. Â Well, in the first place, there’s pedagogical value to that. Â Second, people make all sorts of crappy arguments. Â Here’s a laughably silly textbook version of the slippery slope (Mother Jones via Daily Kos):
Well how far will [it] go? Last year, February 29, 2012, the Journal of Ethics in Australia, they debated that. They said we already know abortion is fine, why stop in the womb? Why not three months after. Why should we end the responsibility at that point? It could happen in America. Florida’s trying to do it right now and so is Georgia. Planned Parenthood. Because we allowed that slippery slope. Every human being deserves life, liberty, and property.
Forget the slippery slope, everyone deserves property? Â How much property? Â If we allow that slippery slope, everyone will demand to be as wealthy as Donald Trump.*
*(a joke).
In his infamous “47%” speech, Willard Romney put out a slippery slope argument that if the “takers” got government benefits, they’d soon figure they had a “right” to “food and housing”.