Within each political/social cause, there are generally people who will tolerate a certain amount of disagreement with their viewpoint. Pro-choicers may agree, “Okay, no partial-birth abortion,” but still demand that abortion itself as a practice remain largely untouched. Evangelicals may agree that certain Biblical teachings aren’t literal or are merely cultural, but won’t tolerate someone who calls into question the Bible’s legitimacy or God’s existence itself. Gun supporters might tolerate background checks, but not anything beyond that, etc.
But within each movement you usually also find certain factions who will insist that it’s “my way or the highway;” you either agree with them 100% (or, at least, maybe 97%) or else you’re a bigot/heathen/commie/un-patriotic etc.
So - at the risk of making this impossibly broad - what does each cause consider to be the maximum amount of permissible disagreement? When it comes to trans issues, for instance, someone who says “there are only 2 genders” will almost certainly be labeled transphobic, but in what things is disagreement allowed? Is ten percent disagreement allowed, or is five percent too much already?
Put simply, how far can one go in disagreeing before one becomes a bigot (or whatever the right-wing counterpart to that term is?)
It seems to be very dependent on the person/circle you’re in. I mean, my circle of friends and acquaintances mostly owns guns and use them for sporting purposes- skeet/trap/sporting clays, hunting, target shooting, plinking, etc… But none of us are hardcore 2nd Amendment types, and I’d be willing to bet that a straw poll would show that almost all of us are in favor of more background checks, more training and licensing requirements, etc… I think that registration or getting approval to buy new ones would get a pretty hard no though.
But others I’ve met in the past literally view ANY restrictions on gun ownership or requirements for anything like training/licensing as tyrannical, and already view anything short of completely unfettered gun purchasing access as tyrannical. As best as I can tell, there’s no level of restriction/requirement for gun or ammo purchases that they’d consider to be acceptable.
I agree with the ‘bell curve’ analogy. Wherever you and your like-minded friends sit on that curve, you’ll tolerate differences of 10% or so (as if such a thing were quantifiable!), but anyone outside of that range is an idiot or evil or both.
To me, when someone invokes “slippery slope”, what they mean is: “In theory, I actually agree with you, most of the way or maybe even all the way. But I am very afraid of what it could lead to, much more worried than you are, if you’re even worried about it at all. So even though our philosophies are similar, we’re going to have to part ways on how to implement this stuff in practice.”
to me it signifies “I don’t have a problem with what you’re proposing, but I can imagine where it will lead to an entirely different situation that I do have a problem with, so I’m going to argue against something completely off-topic.”
We’ve previously debated the definition of bigotry, specifically in a topicyou created. IMHO, my determination of bigot v not-a-bigot is totally orthogonal to whether someone disagrees with me.
I don’t see how that can be true unless you believe you are bigoted in some ways yourself. Since pretty much nobody thinks they are a bigot, it’s guaranteed that anyone who agrees with them will also not be a bigot in their eyes.
That thread you linked doesn’t do anything to define what bigotry is. I always thought it was about wanting to discriminate against people based on things like race, sex, sexual orientation, or religion, but the definition seems to have been drastically expanded. For example, arguing against affirmative action is apparently now considered bigoted by some.
It’s kind of a broad question. People can answer for themselves, but how much is that going to tell you? It’s certainly my perception that each side has become less and less tolerant of disagreement; perhaps there is a kind of ratchet effect where people with more moderate views are afraid to speak up because the more extreme will condemn them, but the moderates do not condemn the extremists so they are free to promote their views?
The silliest thing I have been called a bigot for was saying that men are stronger than women on average (it was on Twitter). At that level of crazy there is basically zero disagreement allowed.
To me, when someone invokes “slippery slope”, what they mean is “I don’t agree with you at all, and I am going to use the ‘slippery slope’ fallacy to invalidate any suggestions that might lead to any sort of compromise.”
i.e “We can’t have gay marriage because it will lead to polygamy or people marrying cows and horses”. Or “We can’t have waiting periods for hand guns because that will lead to the government collecting all guns.”
You may remember from history class that Congress first overrode a presidential veto for the original Civil Rights Act, of 1866. In announcing his veto, President Andrew Johnson made a slippery slope argument that treating different races as equal under the law would lead to legalization of interracial marriage, which he described as “revolting” and “an offence against public decorum”.
I think that is a bit too harsh of a criticism. The slippery slope is an informal fallacy in that just because we take one step down the slope does not necessarily mean we have to take the next steps.
However, it is useful to explore logical limitations on the position to explore the underlying assumptions. For example, if someone says that legal gay marriage will lead to legal polygamy, it helps inform the argument. If the argument is that people should be free to form their own relationships and call those relationships “marriage” then it is difficult to see, at least until it is fleshed out, why people cannot choose polygamy. If the argument is that homosexuality is valid and should be treated just like heterosexuality, including the limits on plural marriage, then the argument for polygamy collapses.
I agree that it can be used for attempts at squelching reasonable argument, but so can other informal fallacies.