Package-Deal

A package deal is the error of treating as a single conceptual unit things that differ essentially in nature, truth-status or value — so that accepting the term commits one to the association without the association ever being argued for. Ayn Rand regarded it as one of the most effective devices for corrupting a debate, precisely because the work is done before the debate begins.

How it works

A valid concept groups its units by a genuine common characteristic and omits only their measurements. See Concept formation and Measurement omission.

A package deal groups by association instead — by what tends to be found together in a particular culture, or by what the coiner wants found together. The elements are then carried as one, and any attempt to separate them looks like special pleading:

The evaluation travels with the word. Whatever the package's worst element deserves, the whole package receives, and vice versa.
It cannot be answered inside the debate. Someone who accepts the term has already conceded the grouping. Disputing it requires stepping back to ask what the word refers to — which is not a move most arguments make room for.
It usually contains one legitimate element. That is what makes the package plausible. The illegitimate elements ride along on the credibility of the real one.

Examples

"Selfishness". The dictionary meaning is concern with one's own interests. The package adds brutality toward others, so that there is no clean word left for a person who neither sacrifices himself to others nor others to himself. Rand's introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness is an extended dismantling of this one. See Egoism.
"Extremism". Packages together consistency in an idea with the use of force to impose it, so that holding a position firmly is classified with terrorism. Rand analysed it in "'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing".
"Duty". Packages the concept of an obligation freely undertaken with the notion of an unchosen moral claim, so that repudiating the second appears to repudiate the first. See Is-Ought Dichotomy.
"Sacrifice". Packages any cost or trade-off with the surrender of a greater value for a lesser one, which makes the second look like an ordinary feature of life. See Sacrifice.
"The public interest". Packages the sum of individual interests with a collective entity that can have interests opposed to those of every individual in it. See Collectivism and Rights.

Related errors

Anti-concept — a package deal engineered for the purpose, to displace and obliterate a legitimate concept. Every anti-concept is a package deal; not every package deal was coined deliberately.
Frozen abstraction — the reverse operation, narrowing an abstraction to one of its concretes rather than widening a term to cover incompatible ones.
Floating abstraction — the condition that makes package deals hard to detect, since a person who has not identified a term's referents has no way to notice that they do not belong together.

How to break one

The test is the same as for any concept: name the units and ask what they actually have in common. If the answer is "they are often found together", or "people who approve of one usually approve of the other", the term is a package deal.

Rand's own procedure was to insist on the definition first and refuse to argue on the term's own footing — not to accept "are you an extremist?" and answer it, but to ask what the word designates. See Definitions, Rule of Fundamentality and Objectivity.

Common misunderstandings

That any broad concept is a package deal. Wide abstractions are how conceptual knowledge works. The charge concerns units with no common defining characteristic, not units that are far from the perceptual level.
That it requires bad faith. Most package deals are inherited rather than coined. The person using one usually learned the word as a whole and never examined it.
That pointing one out settles the substantive question. It clears the ground. What the separated elements actually deserve still has to be argued.
That it is the same as a loaded term. A loaded term carries an evaluation. A package deal miscategorises — it puts things in one concept that do not belong in one concept, which is an error about reality rather than about tone.

Discussion

References

Rand, Ayn. Introduction to The Virtue of Selfishness. New American Library, 1964.
Rand, Ayn. "'Extremism,' or the Art of Smearing", Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.
Rand, Ayn. "Credibility and Polarization", The Ayn Rand Letter, 1971 — on anti-concepts.
Peikoff, Leonard. Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, chapter 3.