Changes We Encounter

Do you want to be here?
I'm not sure if I do, so we'll make this quick.

There were a bunch of thinkers/writers throughout history. "No ship, Sherlock," you might say, and I would retort by saying "touche."

Swift didn't like the changes in the English language. Ha. If he were alive now, he wouldn't be, considering all the LOLs, ROFLs, TTYLs, and PBYOBOBs.

Samuel Johnson liked dictionaries, and I guess he wasn't too much here nor there. He put all kinds of words in them dictionaries.

William Cobbett thought English was key to moving up the social ranks.

Wordsworth thought a language widely in use (English!) should be used. This is reflected in his poetry, which unsurprisingly, are in English.

Finally, Jane Austen used "proper English" and tried very hard to not sprinkle her writings with supposed "vulgar" words and such.

The problem here, as I see, is that many were not happy with the changes, the changes that were inevitable, especially in a language such as English. I'm fine with the use of "proper English," although not allowing for the use of nonstandard or informal English would not be right. Today, if people who have ever used an "informal" English term in their entire lives were to be executed, we'd be left with a smaller population consisting of non-English speakers and babies.

I guess we are more liberal with these things now...
But who are "we"?