WARNING: Fascism overhead!

There are some things that are better left unsaid, and yet you wonder whether some atrocious claims ought to be made, just so that people can get aware of the rot that eats at the heart of this world. Still, the all too familiar Shakespearean figure of Hamlet reminds us that this rot can run very, very deep indeed...

In logical argumentation you commonly have to deal with what we call fallacies; a fallacy is a statement that may appear rational, unless someone makes the effort to check up it's logical continuity and validity - a test all fallacies fail. Some of the most common ones are, of course, appeals to non-logical attributes, like popularity, emotion, authority, ignorance, force in case the opponent does not conform to our own attitude, and lots more, but one of the most insidious and outright disgusting is what we call an argument against the person.

Argumentum ad hominem, or ad hom, as it's commonly called, is a supposedly logical argument that fails to address the original point but attacks the claimant instead; by trying to make his or her integrity suffer, the fallacious argument does nothing to counter the original argument but runs an entirely different course instead: a dirty attempt to discredit your opponent.

What amazes me more and more these days is how some people so easily gobble all sorts of fallacies and particulary ad hom up as if it were valid! I guess the world needs a lot more to learn...