Fallacy

36 The Wicked Alternative
There is a legitimate form of argument which defends one thing b) attacking its opposite. If a speaker can prove that heavy consumption of alcohol is harmful, he gains support for the thesis that temperance is beneficial, provided that he can show that temperance is the opposite of excess and if we allow that it is beneficial to avoid the harmful.
It is clearly irrelevant to support A by denouncing B, unless B is the opposite of A. Yet people often do this. They praise San Francisco by running down Los Angeles, just as if allowing a merit to one city would involve disloyalty to the other. They seek to win admiration for so-called serious or classical music by sneering at so-called folk or popular kinds of music. If they are in the other camp, they call classical music "long hair" or "high brow." It must not be supposed that all occurrences of this common fallacy are as lightweight as these instances.
EXAMPLE COMMENT
A famous modern poet, in an essay on "poetic truth," sought to establish his claims for the importance to our culture of the poet's vision and insight. He soon ran out of instances to praise, so turned his rhetoric to an intemperate attack on "positivism," and "the substitute truths of science," which, he said, lead only to "goof pills," to the vivisection and "torture" of dumb animals, and to "the mushroom cloud of death." What this poet should be doing is making clear what distinction he intends to draw between "scientific truth" and "poetic truth." Attacks on selected instances of scientific practice that elicit his disapproval are irrelevant unless it can be shown (a) that this practice is typical of the application of scientific truths, and (b) that this truth is so related logically to poetic truth that the disadvantages of the one are the advantages of the other.
Peter writes an article attacking the British system of socialized medicine. He concludes, "The difficulties experienced under the National Health Service in Britain should confirm the opinion that the organization of the medical profession in America is satisfactory." Peter is right in assuming that British experience with socialized medicine can be applied by analogy to the United States (see #4). If the British system has not worked well, then a system similar to it would not be likely to succeed in this country. But a pointing out of shortcomings in the British system does not establish the affirmative merits of medical organization in America unless it can be shown that the American system is the opposite of the British plan.

EXAMPLE	COMMENT
A famous modern poet, in an essay on "poetic truth," sought to establish his claims for the importance to our culture of the poet's vision and insight. He soon ran out of instances to praise, so turned his rhetoric to an intemperate attack on "positivism," and "the substitute truths of science," which, he said, lead only to "goof pills," to the vivisection and "torture" of dumb animals, and to "the mushroom cloud of death."	What this poet should be doing is making clear what distinction he intends to draw between "scientific truth" and "poetic truth." Attacks on selected instances of scientific practice that elicit his disapproval are irrelevant unless it can be shown (a) that this practice is typical of the application of scientific truths, and (b) that this truth is so related logically to poetic truth that the disadvantages of the one are the advantages of the other.
Peter writes an article attacking the British system of socialized medicine. He concludes, "The difficulties experienced under the National Health Service in Britain should confirm the opinion that the organization of the medical profession in America is satisfactory."	Peter is right in assuming that British experience with socialized medicine can be applied by analogy to the United States (see #4). If the British system has not worked well, then a system similar to it would not be likely to succeed in this country. But a pointing out of shortcomings in the British system does not establish the affirmative merits of medical organization in America unless it can be shown that the American system is the opposite of the British plan.