Therefore, the Governor's plan is bad public policy. The problem here is that although the flowery language of the premise might arouse strong feelings in many members of its intended audience, the widespread occurrence of those feelings has nothing to do with the truth of the conclusion. Each of the next three fallacies involve the mistaken supposition that there is some connection between the truth of a proposition and some feature of the person who asserts or denies it. In an appeal to authority , the opinion of someone famous or accomplished in another area of expertise is supposed to guarantee the truth of a conclusion. Therefore, spiders are insects.
Personality is irrelevant to truth.
The mirror-image of the appeal to authority is the ad hominem argument , in which we are encouraged to reject a proposition because it is the stated opinion of someone regarded as disreputable in some way. Harold maintains that the legal age for drinking beer should be 18 instead of 21. But we all know that Harold . . . . . . Therefore, the legal age for drinking beer should be 21 instead of 18. In any of its varieties, the ad hominem fallacy asks us to adopt a position on the truth of a conclusion for no better reason than that someone believes its opposite.