Although it’s not always the case, when you hear someone say, “That’s your opinion,” you’re hearing someone who can’t disagree with what’s being said without sounding selfish or foolish.

Knowing they can’t get people to agree with them, they focus instead on getting people to feel sorry for them by asserting the idea that to be questioned or criticized is a violation of their right to think for themselves and they are now a victim of a cruel and unjust environment.

It looks like this:

• I can’t get people to agree with me…
• So I’ll get people to feel sorry for me…
• Now should someone criticize me…
• Everyone will side with me.

This is how bad ideas and distorted perspectives get introduced into our society as noble concessions.

You can’t criticize someone who’s in pain without being labeled cruel and intolerant. So by posing as a victim, you don’t have to answer any questions or take responsibility for your actions.

This is the signature tactic of someone who doesn’t have something to say as much as they have something to hide.

But how can you argue with someone who maintains that their reasoning can’t be challenged without you being categorized as hateful and intolerant?

Ask them questions about other situations and let their own answers reveal the lack of logic that characterizes their beliefs.

For example…

Was Hitler justified in killing six million Jews because he was entitled to his opinion?

Of course not.

In the same way, just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean you’re always right.

If you believe yourself to be correct in the way you think, you have to prove that in the context of what happens when your perspective is put into practice. In other words, you have to run the play and show how it moves the ball down the field. If it doesn’t work, then you’re not trying to win the game as much as you’re trying to validate a self-serving mindset.

That’s your opinion.

Not everyone feels that way.

Separation of Church and State.

You can’t force your beliefs on me…

None of these phrases constitute an argument in and of themselves as much as they’re used as way to conceal one’s inability to defend their viewpoint without sounding selfish or absurd. And in some cases, not only do they not have a point as much as they have a hole in their shoe because they’ve shot themselves in the foot and now they want to blame all their pain on the person or the principle that told them not to pull the trigger to begin with.

They don’t have something to say as much as they have something to hide.