In "Good Morning, Vietnam" the Adrian Cronauer character argues with the two tough Gis who want to throw out his Vietnamese friend. "If you throw out the gooks, next you'll have to throw out the spics, the kikes, ... And pretty soon we'll have nothing left but two brain-dead rednecks."

Then there's the Catholic who lamented that when they came for the Jews, he was not alarmed. When they came for the Protestants, he was not alarmed. But when the Nazis came for him, it was too late.

If the slippery slope is never valid, then the old Arab proverb about "Give him an inch, he'll take a mile" is just foolishness.

And we can tell Al Gore to give it a rest about the PATRIOT Act being the "first step" in the gradual erosion of US civil liberties, right?

And if we don't nip it in the bud, it'll grow until it chokes us: I mean this habit of stopping all business on the list to have lofty abstract arguments over rhetorical techniques.

Anyway, whether or not any PARTICULAR argument using the slippery slope or "give him an inch" is sound is all that matters. I'm not exalting or critiquing the principle here.

Can we get away from abstract arguments about rhetoric now, and return to our noble task? Oh, yeah, now I remember: writing neutral articles about all topics, lofty and trivial.

Ed Poor