The biggest thing I can say is to point you towards your own final paragraph. "To me, Commander is...". That already comes across as narrow minded. Now, that isn't a personal attack, but you have to realise that regardless of what Sheldon and the RC say, Commander isn't an MTG philosophy, it's a set of rules for playing magic and building magic decks. Those rules allow for a wide variety of decks and play styles, so as long as the decks being built and played follow those rules there's going to be an audience for it.

As for why I prefer higher powered games, I enjoy EDH, I enjoy the rules and the deck building restrictions that define the format. I wouldn't want to play an EDH game with flavour based decks because it's too slow and clumsy for my personal taste. If my games can fit in roughly the same number of game actions in 6 turns as a casual game can in 9, then I'd prefer the shorter game with more action packed turns and sequences because that's just more interesting to me.