How to Win Every Argument: The Use and Abuse of Logic (2006)

152 How to Win Every Argument

slippery-slope argument to suggest that any reform will lead
inexorably to unacceptable results.

/ oppose lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. This will only lead to

further demands to lower it to 16. Then it will be 14, and before we know

it our new-boms will be suckled on wine rather than mother's milk.

The point is that the factors which lead to the arbitrary drinking
age of 21 might change. There is nothing which suggests that
they must keep on changing, or that society must keep on
responding.
The slippery slope basically argues that you cannot do any-
thing without going too far. This belies human progress, which
has often been made by taking short steps successfully where
longer ones might have been ruinous.

If we allow French ideas on food to influence us, we'll soon be eating

nothing but snails and garlic and teaching our children to sing the

Marseillaise.

(It might beat pizza and chips, though.)

In some cases there is a point of principle at stake which, once
yielded, allows anything. This is not so much a slippery slope,
however, as a vertical drop. The story is told of a dinner-table
conversation between the dramatist George Bernard Shaw and a
pretty lady:

'Would you sleep with me for a million pounds?'

'Why yes, I would. '

'Here's five pounds, then. '

'Five pounds! What do you think I am?'

'We've established that. Now we're talking about price.'

(Shaw was correct, but this is not a slippery-slope argument which

would have led the lady to immorality in stages. Once the principle

was conceded, the rest was bargaining.)