I'm not sure he is misunderstanding anything so much as out and out misrepresenting the entire premise of the position;
Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power.
This is nonsense, it would be like me claiming that bastiat and hobbes were just spinning the same tired old bullshit that statists had always spun before, attempting to push forward with the divine right of kings idea as justification for totalitarian states, and if we don't accept their logic we'll all just devolve into a state of eternal war amongst all humans.
You could make that argument about those positions, but in doing so, you make it clear that you're not attempting to accurately portray anything bordering on nuance, you're just trying to join a chorus portraying them in the worst possible light.
Politely responding with "Well don't you think you might actually have missed this little point here on the side" is to validate the position being offered as if it had any kind of bearing on reality. It's simply not an appropriate response to this kind of reality warping polemic.
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I'm not sure he is misunderstanding anything so much as out and out misrepresenting the entire premise of the position;
Selfishness, it contends, is good, altruism evil, empathy and compassion are irrational and destructive. The poor deserve to die; the rich deserve unmediated power.
This is nonsense, it would be like me claiming that bastiat and hobbes were just spinning the same tired old bullshit that statists had always spun before, attempting to push forward with the divine right of kings idea as justification for totalitarian states, and if we don't accept their logic we'll all just devolve into a state of eternal war amongst all humans.
You could make that argument about those positions, but in doing so, you make it clear that you're not attempting to accurately portray anything bordering on nuance, you're just trying to join a chorus portraying them in the worst possible light.
Politely responding with "Well don't you think you might actually have missed this little point here on the side" is to validate the position being offered as if it had any kind of bearing on reality. It's simply not an appropriate response to this kind of reality warping polemic.