I'm sorry to hear that the "linguistic descriptionists" have kidnapped Fowler! LOL

I agree that language changes, and that this is a source of wonder, and also often of improvement. But not every change is a good one, and there's nothing wrong with opposing a change for the worse, especially when there is still a chance to turn the tide against it.

I don't know much about current trends in linguistics, but "linguistic descriptionism" sounds like a psuedo-scientific effort to be evaluatively objective. In reality, every dictionary and manual of usage is normative. (We wouldn't need them if they weren't.) The descriptionists seem to have taken as their norm something like majority usage (or more likely the majority of written sources, or written sources that were in their database, or ...) and based their norm on that. I prefer to use a norm that weights more heavily the usage of those who are acknowledged to be good writers and eloquent speakers.

Oh, and I have contributed to several dictionaries and encyclopedias, so I "ought to garner a certain degree of credibility" myself. ;-)