Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!ucbvax!decvax!decwrl!spar!baba From: baba@spar.UUCP (Baba ROM DOS) Newsgroups: net.politics.theory Subject: Re: Slippery slope nightmares Message-ID: <403@spar.UUCP> Date: Thu, 18-Jul-85 04:04:48 EDT Article-I.D.: spar.403 Posted: Thu Jul 18 04:04:48 1985 Date-Received: Sat, 20-Jul-85 04:48:29 EDT References: <991@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> <245@ubvax.UUCP> <1019@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 77 In article <1019@ucbtopaz.CC.Berkeley.ARPA> mwm (Less-than-mike) writes: > In article <245@ubvax.UUCP> tonyw@ubvax.UUCP (Tony Wuersch) writes: > >Oh sure there's a slippery slope for anyone who wants to pass prescriptive > >laws. Maybe their lust for more prescriptive laws (politicians as > >capitalists, I guess) will lead to a tightening noose which would > >someday equal dictatorship. > > > >It's never happened (maybe in Switzerland? :-)). Dictatorships are > >established not by politicians following slippery slopes, but rather > >by coups in times of extreme crisis. Dictators come as saviors, > >not as well-meaning limited liberal politicians. The kind of > >dictatorship that mike fears has never happened. > > Coups at times of extreme crisis? You mean like the election that Hitler > won? Hitler was not elected to power. He received only 36.8 percent of the vote in the second ballot of the German presidential elections of 1932. In the crisis atmosphere of the German Depression, with 6,000,000 unemployed, the Reichstag was divided and paralyzed. In return for putting the Nazis into coalition with the Center and Nationalist parties, Hitler secured the Chancellorship for himself. With the power of that office, with effective control of the streets, and with the burning of the Reichstag used as an excuse to assume emergency powers, the Nazi's *still* failed to win a majority in the Reichstag the following year. So they contrived a rigged session in which the Reichstag effectively signed over its authority to Hitler. It was supposed to look like democracy. All good coups do. That small point having been made, on to the comedy... > It isn't the liberal politicians that scare me; it isn't even the > socialist in general. It's the kind of power they want to give to the > state; even if they hide it in the guise of "will of the majority." It isn't the gun nuts that scare me; it isn't even guns in general. It's the kind of power they want to give to people; even if they hide it in the guise of "self-defense". > >This slippery slope of one law leading to a cascade leading to > >dictatorship is a silly nightmare. We should reassure people who > >have these nightmares that the world is not so gloomy. > > It isn't the laws per se. *It's the power.* Once that kind of power is > given over to the government, it can be used by anyone who can gain > control of the government. It isn't the weapons per se. *It's the power. * Once that kind of power is given over to people, it can be used by anyone who can pull a trigger. > >Pragmatic people live on slippery slopes all the time. They just > >carve out horizontal niches for themselves and maybe put up some > >barriers against avalanches. > > Maybe you would like to tackle my as yet unanswered challenge, then. Can > you describe a system where the government can't pass nearly arbitrary > laws, given enough time? [Don't jump at the US constitution; it has been > amended three times to pass laws that would have been "unconstitutional" > before the amendment.] > >