I want some historical examples to deflect the famous “next thing you know” argument. The examples that come to mind are “if we give gays the right to marry, the next thing you know nine year old girls will be marrying their teddy bears,” and “if we register handguns, the next thing you know you’ll have to register to buy a butterknife and wait for nine days.” Certainly such arguments are nothing new.
So what are some historic “next thing you know” arguments to use as non-examples? What calamaties were supposed to befall the republic if we integrated schools or gave women the right to vote?
Right-wing British politician Enoch Powell famously is misquoted as speaking of “rivers of blood” if non-white immigration was tolerated in the UK. Whe actually said was:
I suppose it’s a matter of opinion (race riots and recent Al Qaeda attacks notwithstanding), I think this is a good example of a “next thing you know” argument being disproven.
The most loathsome President in American history, Andrew Johnson, predicted that if black people were allowed to vote in the South, they would “create such a tyranny as this continent has never yet witnessed”. He asserted that “all order would be subverted, all industry cease, and the fertile fields of the South grow up into a wilderness”.
Hmm, I think that fell a little short.
He gets bonus points for saying this, not while carried away in a stump speech, but in his 1867 annual message to Congress.
These examples may be kind of lame, and I’m sure some Conservatives would disagree, but I think Canada is a pretty good example of how few slippery slopes there really are:
We recently allowed same sex marriage, and well, no Armageddon yet. Nobody has tried to marry a turtle. And I don’t think its adversely affected anyone’s “normal” marriage to have gay people getting married.
Canada has all but allowed possession of small amounts of marijuana, and very little has seemed to change. If anything, I think what you’ll find is that alcohol use is down in many groups.
For as long as I can remember Canada has allowed abortion. And what’s more, its all but stopped being a debating point in federal politics. Canada did not slide down that slippery slope of condoning infanticide. I don’t believe people are using it as their primary source of birth control. There is a catch though, I heard someone talking the other day about how difficult adoption has become, and blamed it on legalized abortion. It seems there just aren’t enough unwanted babies in Canada, and its forcing people to seek out adoption agencies in African and Asian countries.
The drinking age is 19 in many provinces and 18 in the rest. We seem to get by okay.
Herbert Hoover gave a speech in the waning days of the 1932 presidential campaign, derided even at the time, that FDR’s election would cause the total collapse of American democracy and the economy, and that “grass would grown in the street.”
I recall from Orwell’s Burmese Days, several British characters (in colonial Burma) repeating what appeared to be by then a well-worn cliche that if the Brits pulled out there would not be “a virgin or a rupee” left between place A and place B. But that was only part of the phrase – apparently the canard was so indelicate Orwell could not print it in full.
Well, the most famous example of a prediction that didn’t turn out as bad as we feared was the domino theory…the idea that allowing Vietnam to become Communist would cause the rest of Asia to fall to Communism. While this did happen to some extent (Cambodia and Laos), fortunately, the international consequences of the fall of South Vietnam weren’t as severe as many people feared.
Aren’t there any leftist mispredictions? I recall a lot of feverish “police state” ranting in the 1980s UK, but they were largely about the status quo rather than the future.
That would have been a nice trick, since the election wasn’t until 1980.
You could mention just about any slippery-slope argument ever made.
*An’ the next thing ya know,
Your son is playin’ for money
In a pinch-back suit.
And list’nin to some big out-a-town Jasper
Hearin’ him tell about horse-race gamblin’.
Not a wholesome trottin’ race, no!
But a race where they set down right on the horse!
Like to see some stuck-up jockey’boy
Sittin’ on Dan Patch? Make your blood boil?
Well, I should say. *
Not in River City, Iowa, it wasn’t going to happen.
I wasn’t around at the time, but I imagine that the slippery slope arguments being used against gay marriage today were used against interracial marriage 50 years earlier.
Alright, I’ll take a stab at that. Shortly before the invasion of Iraq three years ago, I saw a Shockwave animation about what would happen if the US invaded and Iraq did have WMD. As I remember it, in part, Iraq nukes Israel, fanatical Wahhabists overthrow the Saudi royal family and the country became the Islamic Republic of Arabia, Musharraf is killed in Pakistan, which nukes and is nuked by India, and major cities in the US and Europe are attacked by terrorists. Maybe it was satire or ‘what if’ instead of a prediction, but I don’t think everybody took it that way.
Certainly. It was widely asserted that the reintroduction of draft registration in 1980, the defense buildup of the 1980’s, and the first and second Gulf Wars would inevitably lead to the reimposition of the draft, which hasn’t happened yet.
Not really. The primary argument against interracial marriage was that it would lead to, well . . . interracial marriage! Black people and white people living together and fornicating, and . . . gasp . . . mixed-race children! (Well, yeah, it does tend to lead to that.)
Maybe it’s a sign of progress that gay marriage doesn’t scare people enough, so it has to be argued against on the grounds that it will lead to something worse.