Slippery slope
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The metaphor of a "slippery slope" conjures up images of the danger of coming too close to the edge of a cliff. One step in itself may not cause you any harm, as it merely brings you down the slope a bit. But if you take enough steps toward the brink, you will reach a point where the slippery ground makes you lose your balance and tumble down over the precipice.
In rhetoric, a "slippery slope argument" is one which suggests that an innocent-seeming small action will lead inevitably to a disasterous result.
Examples:
- If we allow this increase in administrative fees, soon tuition will double!
- If we don't stop the terrorists in Iraq, they'll invade Maine next!
- If we send in 100,000 troops, the next thing you know we'll be in a quagmire like Vietnam!
- If we let gays get married, soon men will want to marry their kitchen appliances!
This sort of argument is generally recognized as a logical fallacy.
Quotations illustrating use
Literal
- Even when I was on this mare, she would poise herself on the top of a block of granite, with her four feet close together in the manner of a goat and she leaped across crevasses of unknown depth after having to go down a slippery slope on one side, and when, on the other, she had nothing to jump upon except steeply-inclined blocks of stone.—"Himalayan Ponies," The New York Times, March 14, 1875, p. 4
- They stood, who saw the future come
- On through the fight’s delirium!
- They smote and stood, who held the hope
- Of nations on that slippery slope
- Amid the cheers of Christendom.
Metaphorical
- The cry for the rates in addition to the taxes has been going up from the clerical for years. But they were warned by the late Archbishop of Canterbury[3] not to attempt it, for as surely as they succeeded they would lose their control of their sectarian schools. They would be on the "slippery slope," he said, in a characteristic phrase. However, they have taken the plunge, and the Education Acts of 1902 and 1903 are the results.—John Clifford, 1905[4]
- We cannot give up any portion of our claim until the question of interallied debts has been settled. We have the right and duty to guarantee ourselves against the possibility of a diminution of our claim by the international financiers.... If today Germany obtained any remission of her debt she would profit.... It was by far the wisest policy to hold fast at the top of that slippery slope." French premier Raymond Poincaré, Nov. 16, 1923[5]
See also
Notes and references
- ↑ Thompson, Will Henry (1888), The High Tide at Gettyburg, in Stedman, Edmund Clarence (ed) (1900), An American Anthology, 1787–1900
- ↑ The poem made an appearance in the Boston Daily Globe, May 30, 1903, p. 6, as no. 671 in a series of "Poems You Ought To Know." On August 27, 1903, p. 6 the Globe published some correspondence stating that it first appeared in The Century, July, 1888
- ↑ Presumably a reference to Frederick Temple (1821-1902)
- ↑ "Clifford, John (190-) ("The Rev. John Clifford, D.D."), "Passive Resistance in England and Wales." The North American Review, 1905, p. 436
- ↑ James, Edwin L. (1923), "French Premièr Retorts," The New York Times, November 17, 1923, p. 1