"and older browsers are not 'faulty' because they don't recognise standards that were implemented after they were written"

That's not the complaint against Netscape though. Rather than ignore it (as I think any standard would suggest), it believes it can support things it doesn't properly.

Personally, I do have "@import url(extra.css)" to try to avoid the stuff I know Netscape gets wrong and try to at least have things useable with no css but I'm pretty much with treewind these days.