Of Camels and Frogs

No Lost Causes

Slippery slope arguments are used in reckless abandon by both left and right.  Apparently, the term "slippery slope" was coined by someone in the early nineteenth century.  As some wit observed, talking about "slippery slopes" was dangerous.  Once someone talks about a slippery slope, soon others will, and before you know it we'all be on slippery slopes.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p.115.]

Goldberg goes on to warn us of the very real dangers of slippery slopes by reminding us of how many figures of speech in our language are applied to this particular grave danger, such as: the camel got its nose under the tent; the ship sailed; "the horse got out of the barn, and drove the wedge that toppled the first domino, which opened the floodgates, and now all we have left is boiled frog."  Heh. 

One problem with such arguments is that the similes leave out one small matter: human beings are not camels, ships, horses, or thin-edged wedges.
  Actually, thankfully human beings tend to be rather ornery creatures.  Regardless of precedents, push folk far enough and you risk a strong reaction. Human beings are rather too complex for simple cause/effect equations.

If government funds Catholic schools, then opponents of funding of religious schools will say it's a slippery slope, and we'll have to fund all religious schools, including jihardist madrasas and Satanic academies.  But that's not true.  Rather, if we give money to Catholic schools then some people will say we have to give money to jihadists and Satanists, because fairness and consistency requires that we do so.  These people will fall into four general groups: jihadists, Satanists, lawyers and idiots.  And it is the duty of all good men to marshal the energy and will tell jihadists, Satanists, lawyers and idiots: "No."  (Ibid, p. 119.)

Goldberg argues that in democracies, elections can be powerful circuit breakers.  When enough people get fed up with government intrusions and tyrannies, they vote the malefactors out.  We have seen an example in recent New Zealand history.  Consistent with the adage that opposition parties do not win elections, rather governments lose them, the former odious Clark administration lost because in the end more and more people got irritated with a government hectoring them about how long they should shower, what kinds of shower heads would be permitted, and mandating that only certain kinds of light bulbs would be sold--all in the name of fighting global warming. 

All of which leads to an adage Christians should consider: holy living requires that there are times we must be curmudgeonly and ornery.  There is a time to say, "No!"  We must never forget that the slippery slope metaphor (along with all its kin) is just that, a metaphor.  It is not a deterministic prophecy.  We are called to be both salt and light.  Salt, as has been frequently noted, is a preservative.  It helps prevent decay.

Some closing thoughts on the matter from two sages--firstly, Edmund Burke:

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle. (Goldberg, op cit., p. 121)

Secondly, T. S. Eliot:

If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause, because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.  We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors' victory, though that victory will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive in the expectation it will triumph.  (T. S. Eliot, "Francis Herbert Bradley," [1927], cited by Goldberg, p. 114.)

For a Christian, there can never be such a thing as a "lost cause"--at least not in any final sense.  The Lord Jesus Christ, the King of all kings has no lost causes.