i cant tell if burning a US flag is either free speech or an act of terror

it was only for three weeks anyway

I can't fucking stand you

stop using " "
that's my icon.

die

is that a theat?

No, but this is:

I will fly a plane into you.

That might have something to do with you being a fucking idiot.

Philosophy types here - I have a general question -
Are there logical flaws, in your opinion, with arguments based on the 'slippery slope' principle?

Dude: "Hey buddy, let me tell you somethin.. my daddy died for that flag!! "

Bill Hicks: "Pshh really?! Wow! I bought mine! hehe... yea... they sell them at, you know... k-mart and shit..."

Dude: "yea he died in the Korean war for that flag!"

Bill Hicks: " Oh! what a coincidence... mine was made in Korea! wow! the world is that big!"


Bill Hicks: " No one, and i repeat, no one... has ever died for a flag... a flag is a piece of cloth. They might have died for freedom, which, by the way, is the freedom also to BURN the fucking flag.

sup feedback

I've never thought much about the style of argument in general, and I know a lot of it deals with the situation you are applying it to, but I'd be interested to hear people's take on them in general...

Here's my long-winded take:
I've always brushed off such arguments as baseless because the slippery slope will only occur if the collective populace allows it. For example: banning gay marriage. The typical argument is that it will lead to people marrying more than one person, or marrying minors, or relatives, or animals, etc. Of course those things won't happen because nobody will allow them to happen. So my response to opponents goes like this:
ME: "So you don't want gays to marry because your neighbor might end up marrying his dog?"
THEM: "Yes. Where will it stop?"
ME: "Probably at the marriage of gays, because will you (or anyone you know) vote to allow marriage between a man and a dog?"
THEM: "Uh...no of course not!"
ME: "Then there's nothing to worry about. If nobody condones bestiality, then we won't go down that slope."

Of course at this point they change their argument.

If you happen to point out the fallacy of the slippery slope, a response might be that there's no way of knowing that the general populace WON'T stop at the first step. My answer to that is if society has reached a point where such behavior is acceptable, then what is the problem with it happening? If in 50 years someone introduces a bill to allow polygamy, we only have to worry if it is a popular bill. And if it is popular, then it must be widly accepted in society, and what would be the problem then? When interracial marriage happened, most people probably said, "Oh, don't worry. We'll never let something unnatural happen, like two men marrying." Well, now it's gaining public acceptance, so yes, it has become a slippery slope, but it will only happen as quickly as society allows it to. Now we've moved on to the marriage of gays, but it's not neccessarily a bad thing. Same with legalizing pot -- sure, in some time it might be that some groups demand we legalize crack. If society has reached a point that this is acceptable behavior, it will happen, and there will be no problem. If society still thinks it's moronic to legalize crack, it won't.

The problem is when the Gov't makes laws that promote themselves -- such as stifling dissent. That's a slippery slope because public opinion doesn't matter at that point, since it's slowly being silenced. It would be the same with revamping the House Ethics Rules. The more power a law gives a gov't, the easier it is for them to PULL us down the slippery slope.

[/soapbox]