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I'm not sure why the admission that one is unable to understand how a rational person could hold Viewpoint X is a problem. My admission was certainly not intended to be any sort of normative statement.
I believe that there is a point at which dialogue breaks down. We would all agree (I think) that reasoning with someone who is physically attacking you is not always possible. Likewise, reasoning with those who completely reject the system within which the argument is occuring is sometimes not possible. In the specific instance above, I was relying on the following premise:
"It is always a bad idea for a people to topple their own functioning constitutional republic with the intention of replacing it, in the short term, with a non-elected government."
This is a difficult point to argue for because it is of such a foundational nature. The limited empirical argument (Allende in Chile, eg) seems to support this view. However, I am fully willing to admit I cannot prove the statement to be true.
If someone disagrees with the truth of the statement, the debate simply ends. Doubly so when I become derided with labels. There is a point where all of us, and I do mean all of us, step back and say "That's just crazy talk. I can't reason with someone who holds that opinion." My flattering quotation above is an example of me reaching that point.
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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