To the Editor:
In "Slippery-Slope Logic, Applied to Health Care" (Economic View, May 13), Richard H. Thaler criticizes the slippery-slope arguments of those who question the health care law's mandate to buy insurance. But the column overlooks that such arguments are often invoked with good cause. After all, sometimes slopes really are slippery.
Yes, logical fallacies are a thorn in the side of rational discourse. We've all seen slippery slopes become colossal mudslides. However, history vindicates others. British appeasement of Nazi Germany during the late 1930s really knocked down the rest of the dominoes. Critics of the initially modest Social Security legislation of the 1930s predicted the entrenchment of a new entitlement with remarkable accuracy.
No one reasonably thinks that insurance mandates will lead to broccoli mandates. But those concerned about health care reform's expansion of federal power are not slipping down a speculative slope. Rather, they know that the road to serfdom is traveled one step at a time.
Brett J. Gall
Washington, May 14
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To the Editor:
We've heard them before — the cries against a nanny state forcing us to do things it says are for our own good. Recall the debate over requiring people to wear seat belts? If we allowed the government to tell us what we had to do in our cars, opponents warned at the time, what would federal bureaucrats be sticking their noses into next?
As it turned out, not much. Not only is it hard to see what all the fuss was about, but who can believe that seat-belt laws have led to increased government intrusion in our lives?
Most of us reflexively buckle our seat belts when we drive and insist that our passengers do so as well. It took a federal law to make us more aware of the benefits. Over time, we will feel the same way about acting responsibly when it comes to health insurance. Our Supreme Court justices should be more concerned with allowing sensible solutions aimed at making care more affordable than with protecting us against the phantom menace of storm troopers forcing us to eat broccoli. Libertarians who fear a nanny state should be equally suspect of a nanny court.
Louis Montesano
Manhattan, May 14
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To the Editor:
The column failed to distinguish fallacious slippery-slope arguments from the crucial ability to think in principle. When the purported justification behind a particular action is a specific principle, it is perfectly logical — and good practice — to explore what other types of actions would be permitted by adopting that principle. That exploration can help us determine whether the principle, and the immediate action in question, are truly justified.
Tara Smith
Austin, Tex., May 13
The writer is a philosophy professor at the University of Texas.
