If you believe as I do that vices are virtues in excess, any tendency to essentialize vices and attack them in at their faintest sign in weakest form is, in fact, 1) an attack on an embryonic virtue and 2) is itself a vicious excess.

Example: to be excessively egoic at the expense of empathy is sociopathic. But to be excessively “empathic” at the expense of ego is to be borderline.

*

I imagine slippery slopes as teflon see-saws, with vicious abysses on either side.

Nothing in excess.