Rising Authoritarianism

Shut Up, Shut Down, And Shut Out

One of the surest indications that an opponent is either pedalling a shonky argument or he is too incompetent to press his case intelligently is when he attacks the opponent (ad hominem) or attempts to silence him.  What has been dubbed the "new authoritarianism of the Left" has all the hallmarks.

We see it on every hand these days.  We will doubtless continue to see it.  The whole brouhaha resembles a dirty bomb: lots of heat, not much light, but plenty of poison.

The laziness of the Left over climate change is a case in point.  Not willing to face up to the debate, it sought to elude the argument by leap frogging it, declaring "the debate is over; the science is settled".  This casts  opponents as reactionary idiots--a modern type of flat-earthers, or geo-centric astronomers.  But anyone who knew even the barest basics of science, or the elementary principles of logic, or the primary hermeneutics of the scientific method knew instantly this was balderdash.  Feeding hypothetical projections into an electronic calculator to "prove" the reality of global warming has been the biggest instance of question-begging since Adam was a boy.

You Shall Not Pass!

We Will Never Surrender

We have posted recently on "slippery slope" arguments (here, and here).  One of the points made by Jonah Goldberg about slippery slope arguments is that they discount the human factor, where people rise up to say "enough" and the slippery slope becomes less slippery.

Here is an example of what he means.  The slippery slope in this case is abortion and its increasing availability by chemical means.  Take the pill, kill your baby.  In a terrible case in the United States a "boyfriend" tricked his pregnant "girlfriend" into taking an abortifacient drug, causing the death of the infant.  The slippery slope argument would reasonably predict that as a result of such drugs an inevitable situation is arising where abortion will be as widespread and common as drinking a glass of water. 

Turtle Bay covers the case:

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.