It's an oldie, and there's no link, but this passage from Irving Kristol's "The Shaking of the Foundations," published in his On the Democratic Idea in America (1972), leaped out at me today:
It is less comforting but more realistic to reflect that we don't live in the world; we live in a particular world; and history records many particular worlds that did indeed come to their ends-sometimes abruptly, more often slowly and insensibly, but always painfully for those who felt themselves to be part of what was being destroyed.
These words ought to resonate with conservatives as they study the Obama budget and begin to understand the president's ambition.