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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   27370 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 6, 2023

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Canada has proved that conservatives will meme about euthanasia being a slippery slope given the slightest provocation.

It's not like every hospital ward is flooded with sarin gas once a week, I haven't heard any actual horror stories beyond 'someone mentioned to someone that this was one of their many options' or 'someone who was probably a high risk for suicide anyway got to do it painlessly'.

Let me know if you know of something more substantial than that, it's admittedly not something I follow closely but I don't ever remember being impressed by this narrative when I've seen it and gone to read the original source.

Offering euthanasia for anything other than a terminal illness is breaking of the original promise for what it would be used for, and thus a vindication of the slippery slope. If you want to shift the goalposts even more, go ahead.

I don't know what you mean by 'original promise', whether that's a single specific document or a general sense that most of the public got from reading hundreds of politicians and pundits talk about the matter, or what.

Not that I'm totally disagreeing, I'm sure there are some specific groups involved who were either lying or mistaken about what course things would take and didn't project it looking exactly like it does today. Which isn't teh same thing as the whole enterprise being deceptive from the start, I don't know enough of how it was proposed to judge that either way, would be interested to learn more if you are thinking about a specific document or speech.

I think there should be a principled difference between 'this is a slippery slope' and 'this was sold using deceptive rhetoric'.

If so far nothing crazy has happened, and nothing that the original proposers wouldn't have been happy with has happened, and it's only been a short time since it was implemented, then I'm not sure that's evidence that it will slide into crazy things that the original proposers would not want.

It just sounds like original proposers were downplaying how big the change would be, which is bad because it's dishonest, but not strong evidence of an ongoing trajectory.

Anyway, if the proposition is 'Canada has proven that the government can't be trusted with medical decisions involving life or death', then I think I'd have to see the Canadian government do something objectionable before it was strong evidence of that. Not just 'it's being used in sensible ways that weren't originally specified'.

(of course, maybe you believe the current way Canada is using it is objectionable in and of itself. That's something I'd be interested to hear more about, but it's a different argument than the slippery slope argument)

I don't know what you mean by 'original promise', whether that's a single specific document or a general sense that most of the public got from reading hundreds of politicians and pundits talk about the matter, or what.

The latter, and I think it's disingenuous to imply only the former should be relevant in a democratic society.

Which isn't teh same thing as the whole enterprise being deceptive from the start,

"Slippery slope" does not mean an enterprise is deceptive from the start. It's possible for people to really honestly believe it will not go further than the point discussed when pushing through a policy. I actually was on the pro-euthanasia side until recently, and it is because I believed they will be limited to people suffering from a terminal illness.

However given the history of policies growing beyond the originally discussed scope, I think it's justified to assume most enterprises put forward today are deceptive from the start.

I think there should be a principled difference between 'this is a slippery slope' and 'this was sold using deceptive rhetoric'.

One is a subsection of the other. If you asked me for a definition of "slippery slope" it would boil down to "selling a social change through a type of deceptive rhetoric, where the scope of the planned change is much larger than originally discussed".

If so far nothing crazy has happened

(of course, maybe you believe the current way Canada is using it is objectionable in and of itself. That's something I'd be interested to hear more about, but it's a different argument than the slippery slope argument)

Yes, I do believe that. Crazy things have already happened. Even crazier things would have, were it not for public backlash. They're also scheduled to relax the rules even more next year, which will again, ensure even more crazy things happening.

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