Two quoted parts from the book "From Dawn to Decadence" 1500 to the Present, by Jaques Barzun.

On the influence and the cultural consequences of the downhill dance of "correct" spelling and writing.

The loss of grammar and the dogma that anything said is to be treated with respect due to life itself have had the further cultural effect of encouraging the natural carelesness
of talk; it even made it an asset: a new president of the United States in 1988 gained in popularity when he was found halting in speech and loose in grammar. In the same spirit, the linguists attack anybody who speaks up for saving threatened meanings and especially distinctions among words. This rebuke is paradoxal, since as scientists they should remain neutral toward influences acting on language. That it is a social institution for exchanging thoughts and at its best when its terms remain clear, as in the sciences and other technical fields, does not seem to be a part of the linguistic creed, nor that language has aesthetic powers and uses that also depend on conversation.

As for the life in language, that phrase is not science, but metaphor. Language is not alive, only those who use it have life, and when they stop speaking it, their language, if written, remains whole, readable and usable like classical Greek and Latin. To decide whether the living users should be encouraged to preserve or to tamper, one must judge by results. Establishing a standard spelling abolished the old democratic right to follow one's own fancy, and the result is that we can still read with relative ease the literature of the last 500 years. During that same time the vocabulary has suffered losses and changes, the increase in distinctions being much for the good; while the losses and confusions, many due to ignorance in a world of illiterates, were not then cheered along by specialists. The present order of things is not likely to keep the written word readable for another five centuries. But, it is only fair to add that the laxity now favored and fostered came in parallel with the poets' games with vocabulary and syntax in the Nineteen nineties, a recreation soon taken up by the writers of prose, and pursued in the 2OC by advertisers, journalists, and corporate managers.

From Dawn to Decadence
500 years of Western Cultural Life
J. Barzun