And I'll just add this: I often don't bother responding to opinion columns in much detail because they are NOT efforts to use evidence and reason effectively. They are not designed for that. They are rhetorical devices, many of which have transparent motives and assumptions and biases and lapses in logic. I should know. I teach classes that study this, and I have done so for 35 years. Opinion pieces rarely effect the reader beyond confirmation bias. They aren't usually designed to do any more than that (sometimes they are, but certainly this column was not).

I enjoy some opinion pieces, but I am rarely ever persuaded by one. I can admire their sentences and expressions sometimes, but as anything "reasonable," they tend to fall short.