More Grammatical Anarchy

I noted in the previous post that Mark Liberman of Language Log is a grammatical anarchist. Perhaps grammatical anarchism is a condition of blogging at Language Log. Arnold Zwicky of that blog corrects a writer who refers to the subjunctive mood as the "subjective tense." So far, so good. But Zwicky then goes on to excuse those who insist on using

the ordinary past rather than a special counterfactual form (often called "the subjunctive" or "the past subjunctive") for expressing conditions contrary to fact....

...There's absolutely nothing wrong with using the special counterfactual form -- I do so myself -- but there's also nothing wrong with using the ordinary past to express counterfactuality. It's a matter of style and personal choice, and no matter which form you use, people will understand what you are trying to say.

But somehow preserving the last vestige of a special counterfactual form has become a crusade for some people. There are surely better causes.

There may be "better causes," but Zwicky's ceding of grammatical ground to "personal choice" leads me to doubt that he will fight for those causes.