144 How to Win Every ArgumentSomeone boards a runaway train when they are so concerned
about direction that they forget to attend to distance. They can
continue happily on their journey until their reverie is broken by
someone calling 'Why stop there?'
The state should subsidize opera because it would be too expensive to
mount productions without the extra support from public funds.
(And as the train heads off into the distance, wait for the stations
marked son et lumière concerts, civil war re-enactments, and gladia-
torial displays. If opera is different, we need to know why.)The fallacy is often committed when someone advances a
general argument for something he regards as a special case. If
the argument has any merit, the listener immediately wonders
why it should be limited to that case. To combat a runaway train,
it is usually sufficient to point to some of the absurd stations
further down the same line. If good schools are to be banned
because they give children an 'unfair' advantage, why not pre-
vent rich parents from doing the same by buying their children
books, or taking them on foreign holidays?
To lure people on board the runaway train, simply appeal to
things which most people favour, like saving lives, aiding widows
and orphans and having better-behaved children. Use the gen-
eral support which such things enjoy to urge support for the one
proposal you favour which might help to achieve them, even as
you carefully ignore the others.
In a very specialized use of the fallacy, you should gain
acceptance of the principles to support a reasonable objective,
and only when that point has been reached, reveal the unrea-
sonable objective also supported by the same principles.
You agreed to allow a bingo hall in the town because people should have
the choice to gamble if they want to. I'm now proposing to have gaming
machines on every street corner for precisely the same reasons.