Apples and Oranges

The world is filled with "false equivalents." Not all of them can be spotted as easily as in "Both the rich and the poor have the right to sleep under bridges at night."

Some examples:

• The nation that responds to a nuclear attack will not have the same type of targets as the nation that launches a nuclear attack.
• The larger political party does not have the same strategy as the smaller one.
• The employer that discriminates on the basis of race is not the same as one that discriminates on the basis of age or disability.
• The defender is not the moral equivalent of the attacker. [Beware the old "cycle of violence" nonsense.]

An important stage in conducting an analysis is to see if there are any false equivalents in play and if there is any reasonable rationale for their existence.