The default block-filling algorithm that most miners are running is:
+ Fill up part of the block with the highest transactions, regardless of fees
+ Then fill up the rest of the block with as many fee-paying transactions as possible, highest fee-per-kilobyte first.
... so flooding the network with high-fee transactions won't "stall Bitcoin." Well, except for people playing SatoshiDice or doing something else that results in lots of low-priority fee-paying transactions (and even there, they could always opt to pay a little more in transaction fees).