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Gun Confiscation Is Intolerable
We don’t need to surmise that the Democratic Party wants to ban all guns; not only select types of guns. Democrats have advocated against gun ownership for decades and their political kin in Europe show us their vision. Thus, a proposal to seize high-capacity magazines or particular weapons by way of financially penalizing ownership is reasonably assumed to be the first step of several toward confiscation of firearms generally.
This must be a line in the sand for freedom-loving Americans. One gun grab cannot safely be assumed to be the last. If such seizures are tolerated by degrees, we will be unarmed by the time need of resistance becomes unavoidably clear.
American citizens should not comply with any such unjust law which ultimately aims to leave citizens defenseless against tyrannical government. Governors, mayors, police agencies, and prosecutors should not comply with enforcement of such an unjust law.
The US Constitution is unique in that it assumes the existence of natural rights — innate human freedoms which precede any government and cannot be ultimately suspended by any government. Self-defense is such a human right.
But though natural rights persist morally through any tyranny as a condition of immutable human nature, they are borne to fruition only by the forceful insistence of individuals. Freedom is not a license but an ability. Exercise maintains its strength.
The freedom to both possess and “bear” weapons — “arms” and not only firearms — is inviolable. Law secures it only while the will to secure it remains evident. Without assertive citizens and officers devoted to fundamental principles, laws are so much paper to be burned by the whims of autocrats.
Published in Guns
Well, at this point, I still hope war can be avoided by civil disobedience and a general understanding that government cannot enforce every tyrannical idea imaginable. Governors and other leaders can still say that they will not participate in such gross violations of the US Constitution.
The “slippery slope” argument implies chance movement, and doesn’t take into account intentional incremental advancement toward a goal.
Is it ever really about chance? Doesn’t seem like it to me. I guess you could say that the first step might be “chance” but it isn’t “chance” that keeps the slope going downward.
Well, I’m referring to two kinds of “slopes” or forces acting to move an opinion or a policy, or a belief. One is arbitrary or unknowable, and occurs without planning, and the other is a predetermined deliberately planned-out series of changes accomplished surreptitiously with the specific intention of moving something (a behavior or a practice) unobtrusively. The first slippery slope is I suppose fallacious, but the second isn’t a slippery slope because it is deliberate work; that is, deliberate and directed movement.
I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone argue a genuine slippery slope fallacy correctly: slippery slope fallacies are negated by intellectual intentions. There’s a difference between gravity pulling you down a slope, and an intelligent plan action to push you down.
I once argued with a friend that a certain sexual practice once accepted at large would lead to another more deviant sexual practice, and the person I was talking to said: Oh, but that’s a slippery slope argument, and that’s a logical fallacy! Therefore your conclusion is false!
In other words, he said my my prediction was wrong, because my logic was wrong. But the more deviant sexual practice I was referring to did come about in society. And this showed that either the slippery slope fallacy is erroneous because slippery slopes do exist, or else the slippery slope fallacy leaves out consideration of “work being done” so to speak; it’s not a random gravity pulling you down the hill upon which you can stop and get your footing, but someone actively, deliberately and repeatedly pushing you.
Right, my point was that I don’t think it’s EVER really by chance or accident. Not once started anyway.
Oh. Well I think that you’re right. It took me a years to figure that out.
Seems like it pretty much has to be, really. Someone might “open the door” innocently enough, but I don’t think it goes beyond that without intent. That might be a main reason why they don’t want to admit to the “slippery slope” argument/claim, because THEIR intentions were – at least sometimes – good. Admitting it could lead to bad means maybe THEY don’t get what THEY wanted. What THEY want – maybe same-sex marriage – is GOOD, so what that might lead to is just “logical fallacy.”
The slippery slope argument is not a logical fallacy. Anyone that says so is not a logical thinker.
It is true to say that not all slopes are slippery and raising the possibility of a slippery slope is not definitive. But lots of slopes are objectively slippery and if the last 50 years are any indication, the left counts on slopes being slippery.
Agreed. Slippery slope isn’t even a logical argument, it’s a prediction of the future. Thus it has no logic but it might be persuasive.
I agree that in part the left’s disdain for slippery slope is a denial that their policies could possibly have any negative unintended consequences, but I’m way more cynical. I think the left actually wants these negative consequences. I’m a fan of Hanlon’s Razor, but after 50 years, incompetence is no sufficient to adequately explain the left’s policy preferences, so we are left with malice.
It seems clear that much of the left, especially the “leadership,” does want to keep pushing things “down the slope” as it were, although they may not actively want the negative consequences: they might believe it’s “good” and that anything bad that results is just because they haven’t done it ENOUGH, or because of the awful benighted conservatives who resist their goodness… And that’s probably why they dismiss “slippery slope” as a fallacy, and because it’s convenient.
My previous comment could have been worded more precisely, but I ran into the pesky word count limit.
A slippery slope argument is logical. But it is inductive reasoning, rather than deductive reasoning. Deduction considers a complete set of facts and works backward. Induction makes predictions and leaps from a basis of facts because of missing information (direct observation of future events).
To object to slippery slopes generally is as ludicrous as to object to predictions generally. Predictions are a necessary practice and an inevitable product of basic intelligence. Such objections are as silly as pretending stereotypes are all just hateful prejudices.
A right not exercised is a right eventually lost to tyranny. If Americans do not demand that their civil rights (ALL their civil rights) be recognized and openly practiced, the government will eventually abrogate those rights.