Respect

Over the years I have learned to respect other people separate from whether I agree with them or not, or sometimes, even like them or not. I was doing that since before I came to know Christ as my personal Lord and Savior, and trying to walk with Him helped to cement that way of being towards other people. It is extremely hard for a wordy person as myself to put the brakes on my responses, in other words, to let someone else have the last word rather than myself, but I have gotten to the point where I can usually do it with a minimal of effort. I thank God for that.
Because I choose to hold my tongue on many occasions, I do believe that people form opinions of me (judging) and this I deduce by their snide, sarcastic and sometimes downright hostile attack of words towards me personally. Rarely do people that respond in this manner to something they disagree with show respect for the person, indeed they show they have very little respect for themselves as well when they aggressively attack someone personally, rather than disagree with the other person's views or opinions and state theirs in a rational manner. These would be the people I would not bother defending myself to because they are the ones that don't really care what you think, all they know is that they don't like what you are saying and therefore they don't like you. These are the people that don't mind spreading lies and rumors and other inaccuracies about other people, sometimes ruining a person's reputation, because they cannot accept the other person's right to disagree with them.
They display not only a lack of respect for other people's opinion's or other people, but they reveal their own ignorance as well, not to mention lack of self-control, which is very telling on the character of themselves.
The scary part about ignorant and disrespectful people like that is they vote. I thank God for my right to vote, but there are a slew of people like that who get their opinions from rock stars, Hollywood celebrities and shameful and biased news reports rather than investigate issues for themselves.
I would even go so far as to say that this type of person is the one who will step on you, shove you out of the way, or trample you in their haste to escape a disaster of any kind. Some call them the mindless masses and other such names. I, because of the Lord, like to think that these are people who simply do not use their minds in a beneficial way to themselves, society or another individual. But I also use my mind as well and stay away from them; up to and including refusing to respond to their personal attacks when they don't agree with my opinion and stand on the issues of today.