...put a </rant> in your oh-so-self-righteous stream of consiousness, and consider two real-world scenarios: byte stream serialization of greater-than-bytewide values, and integer type conversions.
Got that? Good.
Now, do you want to moderate your rant just a little bit? (Of course you don't, and I wouldn't expect you to. However, just between you and no body else in particular, it does give you pause, doesn't it?)