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From: radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Censorship in Canada (The Myth of the "Slippery Slope")
Message-ID: <31@vaxb.calgary.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 23-Mar-86 17:01:21 EST
Article-I.D.: vaxb.31
Posted: Sun Mar 23 17:01:21 1986
Date-Received: Mon, 24-Mar-86 04:04:04 EST
References: <1725@decwrl.DEC.COM> <858@alberta.UUCP>
Organization: U. of Calgary, Calgary, Ab.
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In article <858@alberta.UUCP>, ken@alberta.UUCP (Ken Hruday) writes:

> >   This is what I was trying to show [the danger of censorship] and 
> > my point is that to even start allowing the government this power 
> > is starting on the road to trouble.
> 

> I think that underlying your thinking is a conceptual model of how 
> democratic governments turn totalitarian.
> Pardon me if I take the liberty of dubbing it the "slippery slope" 
> model (sorry Clayton :-). See figure 1 below:
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> 
>                                   |             _____________
>   \ <---- social anarchy          |             |//////////// <-- democratic
>    \                              |             |                   range
>     \ <---- "democracy"           |             |
>      \                            |             |
>       \                           |             |
>        \ <---- "totalitarianism"  |  ///////////| <-- totalitarian range
>                                   |
>   figure 1: "The Slippery slope"  |    figure 2: "The Bistable Model"
> ___________________________________________________________________________
> 
>   In the "slippery slope" model democracy must keep a constant fight to 
> keep from slipping down this slope to the pit below. This model would 
> predict that *ANY* erosion of rights is a movement to the bottom.
> 
>   All through out the discussion that we've been having I have also had
> a "model" of this process, although I have never "formalized" it until now. 
> I'll call this the "Bistable Model" and it features two essentially stable 
> states.

I agree with both models. The "Slippery slope" model represents the ideology
of the people. The "Bistable" model represents the institutions of society.
You are right that societies cluster in the two camps - it is hard to imagine
free speach and torture coexisting - but the ideological basis of a democracy
can vary quite a lot. 

Consider voting. One justification is that men are free individuals who have
a right to a say in how they are governed, through the vote. Another
justification is that society as a whole has priority over individuals, with
the will of society being determined by voting. Both ideologies seem to
oppose dictatorship, but the second can easily be streached to justify
totalitarianism - just substitute another judge of society's will.

>      The gap indicated in diagram 2 could also be considered the point where
>   the government ceases to represent the people in favor of some other cause
>   or, usually, its own self interest. Thus in a totalitarian system
>   the government makes laws which protects the government, in a democratic
>   system, laws are made which protect the people. In between the lower
>   range and the upper range lies a great gap because these laws are 
>   incompatible. Any movement into this range will result in a quick 
>   polarization to one end or the other...

I think this is rather naive - "laws are made which protect the people". 
Really? 90% of the laws in democracies are there to provide special 
priviledges to those with political clout. Elections are a very crude means
of *limiting* the amount of damage done by politicians. The basic purpose
of government, plunder, is the same in both systems. It's just more 
tolerable in a democracy.

> How then do democracies make the transition? 

My answer: They slide down the ideological slope to a totalitarian state
of mind, and the institutions follow sometime later, often triggered by
some shock.

>   1)  Nearly all the governments that have shifted to a totalitarian state
>   have done so violently. There are few if any that simply legislated 
>   themselves into existence.

Not surprising. Impatience will lead to action while there are still a
few people willing to resist.

>   2)  Very few democratic governments shift into a totalitarian state.
>   Nearly all governments that have adopted some form of totalitarianism
>   have merely changed their form of dictatorship.
> 
>   3)  Of the few democratic governments that have shifted, nearly all the 
>   transitions have been imposed externally - few had done so on the basis
>   of internal politics and pressures alone.
>
>   4)  Of the very few governments that had changed "spontaneously" there
>   was a set of "exceptional" circumstances involved. The only case of this
>   spontaneous transition that comes to mind is NAZI Germany. But I have a
>   tidy explanation for this below. Evidently, self interest and democratic
>   values have a very strong anchoring effect! 

>   There seems to be a strong societal instinct in almost every human being.
> This manifests itself most clearly in times of great threat to a society.
> In times of war the people "pull together"...

>   This "societal threat response" has been abused...

>   I believe that this was the mechanism by which Hitler was able to secure
> a totalitarian grip on his government...

I largely agree (based on no great depth of historical knowledge :-)

> So, how do I relate this to censorship in Canada?
> It seems to me that the major objections held by most "netters"
> is not the intent of the law but the fear that it could open the door to
> government abuse and eventual totalitarianism. As you can see from my model,
> I don't believe that this could happen...

If there is a "Slippery slope" in ideology, then it can. Hate literature
laws weaken the view that truth is for citizens to determine, not the
government. They can be used even in a largely democratic system to stifle
debate. Of course, they should also be opposed because they are morally wrong.

> "Isn't this law an erosion of democratic values", you might ask...
> A certain amount of deviation within the 
> democratic range is harmless and even when this range is pushed to its 
> limits, a stress situation is required for the transition. In addition, 
> this law is not an erosion of democratic values in the sense that it's 
> based on the belief that no minority in the society should be victimized 
> by government or by other groups. In this light, the law is an affirmation 
> of democratic beliefs *NOT* their erosion.

And here we have an illustration of the Slippery Slope. The above seems to
be based on an ideology that looks at *groups*, not *people*. If minority
groups can be harmed, then surely they can also *do* harm. Now in the
case of the Jews...

>                                        Ken Hruday
>                                   University of Alberta

      Radford Neal