Fear of the slopes

The Slate headline below maded me think of various forms of fear-mongering.

One is the slippery slope argument -- that if we enact one policy, then other less desirable policies will follow. If we allow same sex marriage, then we'll have polygamy and cousins marrying. If we invade Iraq, we'll end up invading Iran as well. The notion is that if we set aside the principle that was keeping us from the policy being considered , then there's nothing left to stop us from the undesirable policy. It can be countered by articulating a principle that includes one policy and not the other, but that does not seem contrived for that purpose (e.g. we can invade countries that have WMD and end with the letter "Q.")

Another type of fear mongering is what we have below -- picking an unpopular portion of the opposition's agenda, and saying that if we let them win this, the next thing you know they'll be going after that. So, if we let pro-lifers gain any victories, they'll come after your birth control pills. If we allow an assault gun ban, they'll come after your hunting rifle next.

Now it's true that many pro-lifers don't like birth control pills, and if they had their absolute druthers would live in a society that doesn't have them. And it's probably also true that many that advocate assault weapon bans don't like the whole hunting culture and wish everyone shared their views.

But it's also true that these are the extremists, and are not powerful enough to enact the entirety of the agendas, and they understand that. There is zero chance that birth control pills are going to be banned in any state in the next 10 years. And there is zero chance that hunting rifles will be collected in the next 10 years. Yet these tactics continue to be effective.

And it makes compromise impossible and good policies impossible. If we agree with any part of the pro-life message, that would put us on the same side as Tom DeLay, and he wants to lock all women up except to go to the hospital to have babies (and he'd prefer they used an in-house midwife for that), so we better wag our finger at pro-life counseling centers for pregnant women, even though we've been lecturing pro-lifers about how this is the type of thing they should be doing if they're really "pro-life."

If there's a princple we're breaking through in enacting a new policy, then we need to debate whether that's a good idea, and what it would lead to. But to turn our back on compromise because people we don't like want it too invites doom.