I hauled the nose up to beyond the theoretical point of a stall, and managed not only to get over him, but actually to get the nose going down instead of up, theoretically beyond the certainty of stalling in, and land safely..........
......
So I guess I could have done the same thing in an Airbus? Just by remembering which half-dozen buttons to press, in which order?
In Normal Law you can get to the edge of the stall. There is no advantage to going beyond that, as even if you can get to higher angle of attack in Direct Law, there is no additional lift to be found, so no possible way to change the flight path angle. All you would do by manually going to Direct Law is give yourself the possibility to lose control of the aircraft.
I don't agree with every aspect of the Airbus flight control law protections (I would like the option to pull more than 2.5 g in emergency, possibly by pulling through a "soft stop", for example), but the limits on angle of attack seem very well founded in my opinion.