Package Deal

"You can't have A without B, and B is bad, so A is bad." (The antidote is to show that you can indeed have A without B.)

A PackageDeal is an attempt to bring in two completely different or unrelated ideas or concepts under the same roof. For one example, see WithFreedomComesResponsibility?.

Sometimes a PackageDeal can take the form of a single word, such as "extremism," which is often used to unite "extreme good" with "extreme evil," and praise or denounce both at the same time. Even such things as the "extreme right wing" or "extreme left wing" can have good and evil components together. It is important to clarify which components you are attacking.

Another example is commonly found in anti-trust law, where the essential distinction between earning customers by merit, and forcing them away from competitors at gunpoint, is often obfuscated and blurred. The latter should be illegal; the former should not.

The cure for this fallacy is to separate the components being packaged together and point out the essential differences between them. Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Typically this argument depends on a carefully-chosen word, such as "extremism" or "isolationism," which is designed to join together two concepts that ought to remain separate. Such a word is the package deal.

See other FallaciousArguments.