I don't think that illustrates that promotion of the type system as a useful tool is an "empty platitude". A well constructed syntax is certainly a nice feature

I don't think that illustrates that promotion of the type system as a useful tool is an "empty platitude". A well constructed syntax is certainly a nice feature of a programming language. One might say a language like brainfuck does not have a syntax which makes the code easily readable, and therefore is the worse for it. Similarly, one might say that a strong type system is a useful tool. That doesn't make it a panacea (and I don't think that this was the claim), but that doesn't mean one can't appreciate it as a good tool.