"JJM, you're a real cowboy. Do you just say any ole stuff just to see what kind of reaction you can stir up?"

1. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, I cannot be initimidated by insults to my web persona.

2. Is there anything wrong with stirring up a reaction? Or should people complacently accept that there are "rules" and if you don't observe them, your English is somehow "incorrect"?

"Do you REALLY believe that ALL native speakers of a language are of equal fluency, simply by nature of being 'native'? That, BY DEFINITION, if someone is a native speaker of a language, then that ALONE makes them maximally fluent?"

Yes, with due consideration for those handicapped and the very young. And drop the unnecessary "maximally"; you're either fluent or you're not.

"Even if different native speakers have different size vocabularies, breadth of experience, intelligence, education?

Yes. These are entirely extrinsic factors that have little or nothing to do with native fluency. All native speakers possess the vocabulary they require to speak; a plumber is no less fluent in his language than a doctor simply because he does not understand a corpus of specialized medical vocabulary. Conversely, is a doctor is less fluent than a plumber because he hasn't got a clue about plumbing terminology? Fluency is based on one's unconscious ability to simply speak in a language; all native speakers can speak their language without a moment's thought about it. That's fluency.

Unless you are suggesting a remote Amazonian tribe, with no writing system and no contact with the outside world, is not fluent in its own language because its vocabulary is "limited" and none of its members have ever visited the Uffizi or attended Harvard.

"Are you making up your own definition of the word, fluent (something you seem quite ready to criticize others for, by the way)."

Oh, I don't know; you would seem to have the edge there on criticism, I'd say.

I should add as an example, "The Reason Why" which is the title of a superb book on the Charge of the Light Brigade by Cecil Woodham-Smith.

If the title were "The Reason" it would lack a certain stylistic quality and emphasis.

Yes, it's redundant.

But it's not necessarily wrong. It's simply a way of providing more emphasis to the statement. Languages have a tremendous capacity for seemingly redundant constructions.

"Logic is, by definition, not subjective."

Er, no kidding.

QED.

And by the way, when we say "double negative" we mean only one thing: the use of two negative particles/words together.

Thus, ipso facto, French relies heavily on double negatives just as many English dialects do.

The irony here is that so-called "Standard English" despises double negatives while so-called "Standard French" insists on them.

Et - juste en passant, mon ami, je suis francophone, moi. L'orthographie requise est donc "je ne parle pas" et non "je ne parl pas". En plus, la phrase "je ne parle pas" veut dire (si l'on prend le temps de la traduire littéralement - c'est-à-dire, mot-par-mot - en anglais) "I not speak no(t)."

For me, the modal "should" is doing all the subjunctive-cum-conditional work here. The verb "be" is just sitting there in its "base form" letting "should" shoulder the semantic load.

If nothing else, this should (ha!) at least show how ridiculous it is to attempt to hammer English into Latin grammatical formulas.

"A few of you seem to forget that mathematics, specifically, logic and set theory, has an orderly and consistent set of formal rules that apply, well, to mathematics. Language is not mathematics."

Amen to that.

Language is logical of course, but in the holistic sense rather than the particular.

That is to say, the logical output of all languages is successful communication and in this they succeed, despite grammatical usages which may not in themselves appear "logical."*

Take the poor old much reviled "double negative" in English. There are those who say this is wrong on the basis of "mathematics": two negatives make a positive so it's logically incorrect, blah, blah.

There are two problems with this approach:

1. Does anyone truly believe that someone who says "I ain't sayin' nothin'" is slyly employing a neat logic trick and really means "I am saying something"?

2. Logic is universal so the laws of logic should apply equally in any language. If the "double negative" is wrong in English grammar on the basis of "logic," should it not be wrong in French as well? And yet, in French, the "double negative" is the standard and it's colloquial to use a "single negative." This is the complete reverse of English usage.

* And anyway, what is "logical" or not at the level of individual grammatical usage is a highly subjective question.

"Secondly, 'be' [in 'should be'] is not an infinitive, it is subjunctive."

Nope. It's an infinitive - a "bare infinitive" if you like but an infinitive nonetheless.

Though given the limited inflection of English verbs,* you could also call it a "base form."

* The verb "be" has the most forms: eight (nine if you're one of those who considers "art" to still be a vald form in English).

Of course "you and me" is redundant.

But that doesn't make it wrong.

Languages commonly employ redundancy as a means of emphasis.

"One usually splits an infinitive with an adverb and that is
grammatically correct altho it can be done in varying degrees of obscurity!
Now in writing 'try and jump' instead of 'try to jump', one is
either substituting the conjunction 'and' for the preposition
'to', which is not grammatically correct or one is leaving out
the 'to' and thinking it's implied. Then the phrase means
'try(to) and jump which is saying two different actions,one
incomplete:'try to ...(what?) and jump'. So both are in-
correct."

Yes, yes, yes.

Blah, blah, blah.

In all your "grammatically correct" pontificating, you are completely missing the point:

Is the speaker's intended meaning any less clear because the idiomatic expression "try and" is used instead of "try to"?

No.

You are guilty of that age-old grammar pedant's complaint:

"That's fine in practice but how will it work in theory?"

"The verb 'to be' does not take an object."

Then "him" in the following example should be "he"?

I would not want to be him