Change, to continue with my sea metaphor, affects only the tidal margins. The vast expanse of the linguistic sea remains unaffected. Once in a millenium, maybe, a tsunami wreaks havoc with a fundamental feature of a language system - and then we recognize it, paying it special respect by giving it titles, such as the Great Vowel Shift. And we survive. A sense of proportion is, however, conspicuous by its absence.
People argue against tiny matters of language change with great emotion.
The issues are blown up out of all proportion. These are the arguments of those who belong to Academies, Queen's English societies, and the like. The views are often linked to an imagined deterioration in society as a whole. These tend to be the arguments of older people, who recall their earlier dialect norms with nostalgia. Even linguists will occasionally be heard inveighing about this last issue, and there is a nice recent local example to make the point.