You share an opinion. Someone responds, not by addressing your point, but by dismissing you. “What do you know?” they scoff. That’s an ad hominem attack – Latin for “against the person.”

When people can’t counter your ideas, they often go after you instead. But as Ralph Waldo Emerson said:

“It is only when they cannot answer your reasons, that they wish to knock you down.”

Insults don’t win arguments – they end them. If we want stronger conversations, we need to challenge ideas, not each other. Make it a great day, dear reader, and argue the point … not the person.