Why Conservative “Slippery Slope” arguments undermine American democracy (and have always been intended to do so).

I’ve taught a course on the History of American Conservatism for seven years now, and I’ve become increasingly aware of how central (essential, really) the “slippery slope” argument has been to American conservatism. These reflections are inspired by just one of many recent examples one could pick: Wayne LaPierre’s recent comments at CPAC.

The supposed horrors of “European-style socialism” are, apparently, one election away from being irreversibly imposed on the American people. These horrors include the confiscation of all guns, which of course would be followed by incarcerating political enemies. [Don’t even get me started on the irony that the same guy who’s worried about being locked up by the state for his political opinions was chanting “lock them up” about HIS political opponents during this same meeting.]

The ur-slippery slope argument is Hayek’s Road to Serfdom (1944), one of the foundational texts of modern conservatism. Hayek argued that virtually any form of government interference in the free market set a society predictably and inevitably down the path to the gulag. One example of such rhetoric is Ronald Reagan’s 1961 speech on universal health care. If we institute something like Medicare, then we will “spend our sunset years telling our children…what it once was like in America when men were free.” Still waiting, I guess. American anti-communism (a key dimension of American Conservatism) followed Hayek in associating any form of progressivism or state regulation of the economy with a secret “Red” plot to undermine all of our freedoms. See, “McCarthyism.”

Preceding and working alongside this economic slippery slope argument was a racial one. The “gag rule” in the 1830’s Senate was premised on the idea that if someone even mentioned the idea of ending slavery in Congress, it would destroy the republic. The enslavers’ world view was essentially one big slippery slope argument. Teach enslaved people how to read and “our entire civilization” will collapse. One suspiciously disrespectful look or act by an enslaved person had to be met with severe force, or else enslavers thought the entire system would unravel.

In the antebellum North this racial “slippery slope” argument lay behind politicians’ obsessive talk about the “threat of miscegenation.” This is why they used the epithet “Black Republicans” to refer to Lincoln’s party. Stephen Douglas is just one of many Northern politicians to make this argument: Integrate schools? Extend civil & political rights to black people? Well, if you do that, then the next thing ya know your daughter will marry a black man & the white race will cease to exist. Civil Rights activists from the Abolitionists through the Freedom Riders to Black Lives Matter have been subjected to the “slippery slope” treatment — demands for equal rights get hysterically transmuted into “an existential threat to American civilization itself.”

Here’s what’s anti-democratic about such arguments. Slippery slope arguments are a dehumanizing and fear-producing tactic that powerful people use to staunch conversations that a nation needs to have in order to bring about positive change through the democratic process. “Let’s talk about banning one type of gun responsible for so many mass shootings,” citizens say. “OMG, the jackbooted thugs are coming to confiscate grandpa’s muzzle loader!” says the NRA. “Can we craft policies that would make African-Americans’ interactions with police officers less dangerous and deadly?” citizens ask. “OMG, BLM is a terrorist group that wants to kill all police officers,” says Fox News.

Functional democracies identify social problems, undertake open conversations about how to resolve them, and then ultimately take action through the political process. The slippery slope argument works to sabotage that process at the very first step. Even worse, the slippery slope is a complete inversion of democracy. It says that the desire to begin a democratic process of deliberation on a topic is, in and of itself, a threat to democracy — i.e. just talking about gun control will produce the gulag.

In terms of race and democracy, the multi-century persistence of the racial “slippery slope” argument reflects the nation’s ongoing inability to reckon with what WEB DuBois, in 1903, called “the problem of the color line.” The conservative slippery slope arguments on race have served as a way to police that “color line,” to turn aspirational demands for democratic rights into existential threats to a racially exclusionary conception of American democracy.

Perhaps this puts the most recent conservative “slippery slope” arguments about immigrants (that they are the snake-like entering wedge for rapists and murderers) in an illuminating light. The recent CPAC boos hurled at a positive depiction of naturalization ceremonies reveal how the slippery slope view of immigrants has moved to the center of the contemporary conservative movement. The longstanding narrative of America as an evolving “nation of immigrants,” a narrative even most post WWII conservatives embraced, is now discredited. Immigrants, according to CPAC, don’t move us toward a better future, but instead threaten the future survival of the nation. The supposed “purity” of the nation is at risk of being sullied by immigrants from “sh*thole countries” apparently.

What these slippery slope arguments do is turn people — progressives, African-Americans, immigrants — into existential threats. It depicts citizens exercising their democratic rights in pursuit of a better future, as sinister secret agents trying to bring the American experiment to an end. The slippery slope argument is a failure on the part of one set of people to authentically see and hear the other. It is the reflexive response of people who have the wind of history firmly at their back, yet who feel themselves to be uniquely entitled and uniquely aggrieved.

Put in toddler terms, the “slippery slope” argument is the 5 year old’s foot stomping response to a request to have one piece of candy from their overflowing Halloween bucket — “fine, just take it all then!” Put in the terms of the serial sexual harasser, it is the “BUT WHAT ABOUT DUE PROCESS!?!?” argument that justifies disregarding and discounting women’s voices. As if everything will come crashing down if women are heard. Put in the terms of the Koch Brothers, it is the “but our entire economy will collapse if we take even the smallest step to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels.” Put in terms of the anti-UN folks, it is the “if we participate in any international agreements then we might as well just stop pretending we’re a country because we will become the slaves of UNESCO.”

The slippery slope argument is the way in which conservatives stand on the throats of those calling for democratic change and yell “SHUT UP!” A heathly democracy should be rife with arguments of all sorts. But citizens in a democracy should look askance at those who make arguments intended to undermine the very possibility of democracy itself — like the barrage of slippery slope arguments that have become the hallmark of contemporary American conservatism.