Right, that's what I was assuming from the context.

It looks like the person who originally said that was falling victim to a fallacy:
"A is true."
"By telling me A is true, you must be implying that I am ignorant of A. By emphasizing A to all men, you must be implying that all men are naturally ignorant of A and in need of help understanding A. I resent the implication!"
"Hang on, I'm not implying that, I'm just saying A because someone else was saying B and leaving out A"

I often think that reasonable people disagree on matters of emphasis and priority/ordering, more than they disagree on the basics. Unfortunately, stating something as an absolute or as a generalization is a common way to emphasize something, and even if they're not stating something as a generalization, sometimes the reader infers it anyway. In this case I think it wasn't stated or even implied, but the critic read some motive into it that wasn't there. Sigh.

Anyway, I agree with pretty much everything you posted. And I appreciate the food for thought. All is well.