In what way is it selective?

If your frustration level is proportional* to the level of wasted time/money in government inefficiencies, you would have died in a conniption many years ago.

(* Even logarithmic is probably sufficient)

I only mentioned it because your comments on slippery slopes didn't make any sense and happened to be completely incorrect.

The consequence of a slippery slope in this case would be that the ruling was a de facto state establishment of a religion.

Conniption! I had to look it up. What a fun definition ("A fit of rage, hysteria, or alarm"), my guess was waaay off. I will think of you whenever I see it used! If I'm not already, of course...

I can see why you had difficulty with the scope of my post, as I was trying to relate it to the topic of the thread, also known as staying 'on-topic'. Just thought I'd return the favour of introducing new words.

Fortunately, I must have built up a tolerance to frustration from reading this very sub-forum (and I would like to extend you a special thanks in this regard).





jk smileyface

This seems to paint a fairly simplistic and naive view of how issues are balanced. Your contention seems to be that every "interest" is pulling towards some extreme caricature of itself at the bottom of a slippery slope. And if we set in place a rule - such as through a constitution - that eliminates those extremes that is equivalent of eliminating the interest from conversation entirely.

I don't think this is remotely the case. First of all, not all issues or interests are slippery slopes in the first place, and to say there MUST be a slippery slope in order for an interest to be relevant seems silly. But even if we restrict to issues that can present as a slippery slope, I think the whole point of the constitution is to put up various fences that eliminates extremes. That doesn't mean an interest is eliminated from the conversation, that no balance can be maintained. It just eliminates the extremes.

Do 'splain.

True, and a valid observation with regards to my claim about the existence of a slippery slope. Now if you would just find an observation that is relevant, you'd be going somewhere.

In any ruling that is trapped in the tension between opposing views, any victory for one side can be seen as a potential slippery slope for the other.

Right, it seems you do think that every single conflict can be thought of as opposing slippery slopes.

In this case, may we eliminate the word from our vocabulary? I typically think of slippery slope as something that sometimes applies to some types of arguments. And it provides a useful way to describing common properties of these subsets. But if everything sits on a slippery slope, we don't really gain much by occasionally labeling it as such.

I'm not characterizing the interest as pulling towards the extreme case. But I'm saying that in the balance, any movement one way or another can be viewed as a potential slippery slope.

I make no claims that this is a necessary consequence, or that this is what interests are fighting for.

If there's a constitutional provision against something, then short of changing the constitution, that something isn't allowed to happen. Period.

Maybe you think the bottom of every slippery slope is much deeper than what I think it is. I don't think every slippery slopes ends in desolation. Consequences, sure.

Take any issue and you can find a slippery slope. Taxes so big that the average worker gets crushed. Taxes so small that you lose social services. Government watching so closely that you cannot do anything without the government knowing about. Government so blind that terrorists can move about freely...

As long as the tension is there, one side or the other can be worried about slippery slopes when there's movement.

There's a distinction between a slippery slope argument and the existence of a slippery slope. One does not need to refer to the slippery slope in an argument. But this does not mean that the slope isn't there.

Uke just did, but I will elaborate.

There isn't a strong slippery slope argument to be made here. There was no likely ruling in this case that would have led to an inevitable cascading series of events culminating in a de facto establishment of a state church or to an inevitable cascading series of events leading to the outlawing of churches.

Nearly all slippery slope arguments are fallacious. Ones involving heroin abuse tend to be ok.

That isn't what a slippery slope means. A slippery slope is a very specific thing. It means that one step will lead to an inevitable cascading series of events culminating in a specific unintended outcome that no reasonable person would want.

What you are talking about is just one side winning. What we generally call that is "one side winning."

Right, you are effectively asserting that all slopes are slippery. That any movement anywhere at any time in any situation could result in that slip to the bottom.

Here at least you are casting you position as "worried" over "potential" slippery slopes which is rather wishy washy. Before you told me that there emphatically *must* be slippery slopes otherwise an "interest has been completely closed off from the conversation."

If I try to argue that 2% inflation has macroeconomic benefits over 0% inflation, you can "worry" over "potential" slippery slopes to a million % inflation all you want. But that doesn't mean that my arguments actually lead to a slippery slope, it doesn't mean that moving towards 2% inflation targets is actually going to slip to a million % inflation. Slippery slopes are specific things that apply to specific situations only, trying to classify everything as a form of slippery slope - whether you start adding qualifiers like "possible" after the fact or not - misses the point of the descriptor.

Am I to understand that Thomas' position is that the 1st Amendment isn't applicable to the States under the auspices of the 14th Amendment? Because it sure seems like spending MY tax dollars to support religious doctrine I don't espouse would count as denying me the equal protection of the laws. What a preposterous position from the conservative justices.

to which other justices are you unjustifiably assigning this position?

No.

The 14th Amendment doesn't say that equal protection means everyone has unilateral veto power over government spending that they don't like.

I've actually looked (not particularly hard), and in this particular case, I can't find any indication that the local bible-thumpers were paid.

In this context, yes. I'm not claiming that all slopes are slippery in all possible arguments. But when it comes to political positioning and in particular rulings made at the highest level, every slope is slippery because of the tension between the sides. When one side wins, the other side can always envision large consequences by the extension of whatever decision went against them. This seems so obvious that I wonder if you're just blinding yourself to it by trying to complicate it.

I did that from the start. You'll recall an emphasis on the word "impossible" (which stands relative to possible, and is an synonym to "potential"). The word "worried" stands as an emotional disposition towards what is possible.

You seem to have understood my position as declaring that all arguments are slippery slope arguments. You think that "slippery slope" applies sometimes to certain arguments, but not others. I agree. I never claimed that every argument is a slippery slope argument. I simply argued that the slippery slope exists whenever two sides are in tension with each other.

Yes. If a ruling is made for which no possible "worse" situation can be imagined, then the interest that was of concern really has no position left to take.

I never claimed that every argument is a slippery slope argument. Again, you're failing to grasp the distinction between declaring a specific argument to be a slippery slope argument, and the existence of the slippery slope.

No. The point of the description is to describe specific ARGUMENTS. Whether those arguments fully describe a SITUATION is a completely different manner. One can make an argument that's not a slippery slope argument while sitting on a slippery slope.

This doesn't really sound like equal protection. Government does all sorts of things people object to all the time.

Have your privileges or immunities as a citizen of the US been abridged? Have you been deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law? Have you been denied some sort of protection that is afforded to others by law?

I made no claim about "strong" or "weak" arguments. In fact, I made no claims about arguments at all.

Certainly, but most other things/spending don't fall under the auspices of the Establishment Clause in the manner it has been consistently applied and seems to have been side-stepped at best in this case.

Yes, I got that. You mean "slippery slope" to mean something completely different than the entire rest of the educated English speaking world does when discussing philosophy, theology and politics. "Slippery slope" is, by definition, a term about arguments.

I will keep that in mind for the future. I'm a firm believer in everyone's rights to use common terms idiosyncratically to maximize the impossibility of shared understanding.

Perhaps next you time you can say "begging the question" to mean an emotional plea to a query so that you can deny that begging the question exists.

Reading the various commentaries suggest that you have a different conception of establishment than the legal precedent. The Establishment Clause is not interpreted as an anti-religion clause. That is, it does not completely prevent religion from entering the sphere of governance.

You might want to read the scotusblog article. The issue of "coercion" is central in this case. If someone is praying at the start of a meeting, and that person prays in a non-derogatory manner towards others and does not pray in a proselytizing manner, then in what sense is anyone coerced into participating?

Ya this idea that every single spot of political tension is necessarily a slippery slope is ridiculous and highly nonstandard, at the very least.

I first used the term because I thought the arguments involved could be easily applied to a wider set of issues than the one under discussion. This was the sense that it was a slippery slope. However, sometimes justices use arguments that DON"T easily apply to a wider set of issues and are NOT slippery slopes.

You can "envision" and "worry" over whatever you want, but sometimes these worries are legitimate and some time they are not. Sometimes it is easy to have large consequences and sometimes it isn't. To go on saying that everything is necessarily a slippery slope is nonsensical.

If you are going to apply the term to everything, let's just drop it from our vocabulary as it offers no further explanatory power. Either that, or we could return to the usage that the rest of the world uses.

Again, I'm not applying the term to everything. I'm not claiming every argument is a slippery slope argument, or that every possible argument in existence has a slippery slope. But in the context provided here (politics at the highest level), slippery slopes are everywhere, and the existence of an adversarial political system is to keep things from actually going down those slopes. The fact that you either fail to recognize this fact, or simply don't like that this is a fact is irrelevant to the validity of the observation.

And LOL @ "explanatory power." Words that are used for classification don't really explain anything, and aren't intended to explain anything.

Slopes? Perhaps. But slippery ones? No, this is not some universal truth. Yes, adversarial debate is important to find a balance between competing aims. But that doesn't mean that these conflicts are all slippery. As in, it doesn't mean that a small change in the position is going to suddenly result in a huge change, which is the key part of something being slippery. You seem to be conflating the existence of political tension with slipperyness, and they just are not the same thing.

And if you take issue after issue in politics, you will find an enormous number that are NOT slippery slopes. The battle over abortion isn't suddenly going to turn into a battle over murdering young children. The battle over gay marriage isn't suddenly going to turn into a battle over marrying people to goats. Yes, moronic prolifers and marriage deniers will try and pretend such slippery slopes exist, but in our political system the slope isn't slippery here. There is a tonne of friction to get to those kinds of extremes. And some issues are slippery. For instance, I made the point that the specifics of the arguments from the case at hand could easily extend to a wider range of other issues. Your error is to think that ALL (high level political battles) are slippery. This is not the case, only some are slippery.

Your position really is on a rather slippery slope.

A Big Win for the Prayer Lobby

Meh, I am usually rather unpersuaded by articles alleging some sort of conspiratorial grand master plan carefully unfolding over decades.