Slippery slope arguments are for those who are incapable of thinking and can only handle bumper sticker reasoning.
I think experience clearly demonstrates that one situation in which slippery slope arguments are perfectly applicable is the case of powers of enforcement. If you give someone the power to do something in order to acheive a specific aim, they are then faced with an overwhelming temptation to use it to accomplish anything they consider important. This is why checks and balances are essential.
My examples are drawn from the UK, since I know it better, but I think they apply much more generally.
Example 1: The Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act (2001) gave the British government the power to freeze assets of foreigners in the event that someone was seeking to harm the UK economy. At the time the bill was passed, there was a motion in the House of Lords to amend it, such that it specified this was only to be used against terrorism. The amendment failed - as Lord McIntosh assured us:
quote:
The qualification that only unlawful or intentional actions against the UK's economic interest is unnecessary. There are extensive provisions to test that there are reasonable grounds for freezing orders through parliamentary scrutiny and appeal to an independent adjudicator through judicial review.
He warned that the powers should not be restricted, since
quote:
At the time when action had to be taken, it would not necessarily be possible to prove that terrorism was involved. That is why we seek these broader powers
Of course, seven years later, these powers were used to freeze the assets of an Icelandic bank, without any pretention of any criminal intent. Why? Because the government wanted to do it and the power was there.
Example 2: The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (2000) gave public bodies rather extensive powers to spy on people, with the justification that this was necessary to prevent terrorism and serious organised crime. However, the powers are also used by certain local councils (with Poole being the most famous for doing so) for all manner of things. People have been surveilled to discover whether they clean up after their dogs; whether they're really sick or just bunking off work; whether they're watching TV without a licence and whether they're inappropriately using disabled parking badges.
Example 3: Anti-social behavious orders were are measure first brought in back in 1998. The idea behind them was that it was a way of stopping people from threatening and anti-social behaviour, by essentially allowing the police to criminalise legal behaviour. For example, if someone is threatening and hassling somebody, they could be banned from going near their house.
However, they have been used for a vast range of things that police and local councils consider annoying. Mobile soup kitchens were banned from feeding the homeless in Manchester; homeless people have been banned from begging in an 'earnest or humble way'; a girl was banned from spitting in public (and jailed when she broke her ASBO's terms; a woman who attempted suicide several times was banned from high bridges; an alcoholic was banned from entering pubs or carrying alcohol in public; a woman was banned from answering the door in her underwear or sunbathing naked in her own garden - this list could go on for quite a while.
This post is far too long, but the upshot is that if you give someone powers to deal with a specific problem, they often will use it to deal with any problem they consider worth dealing with - even where it's clearly disproportionate.
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