Inevitable Decline?

Inevitable Decline?

Throughout the past year of debate on health care reform, the conservative fear and the liberal hope were identical -- that passage of a huge new entitlement program would prove irreversible. "No one now dares touch Social Security or Medicare" crow the Democrats, and it will be the same with Obamacare. Once the hammock has been strung, they reason, a lazy and comfortable electorate will bestir itself only to defend its place at the trough (forgive a mixed metaphor). At election time, a "kept" electorate will obediently choose the party of entitlements.

Conservatives have imagined the same result, though...