Appreciate this. I've posted to similar effect on my nascent blog, The Grouchy Musicologist: http://grouchymusicologist.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/20th-century-developments-in-orchestral-music-killed-orchestral-music/

Indeed, the aggravating nature of the offhanded comment you responded to was what got me off my butt to create said blog in the first place -- there'll be a lot more where that comes from, though. The same standards of rationality that we ask of everything else can apply to discourse surrounding music, even though that seems (incredibly) to be non-obvious to many otherwise very rational people.