If desert claims were justified by the appraiser's positive attitude alone, then the gang leader's claim that the gang member deserves respect would be justified.

This view (presumably not Miller’s) is clearly confused. Suppose the leader of a terrorist gang claims that a member of his gang deserves respect for having set off a suicide bomb in an elementary school. Suppose the leader has great admiration for this the gang member precisely because he set off the bomb. On the current proposal, since the leader in fact has a positive appraising attitude toward the member, his desert claim is justified. That cannot be right.