From page four of Michael Katz's The Price of Citizenship:
The positive connotations of "welfare state" were so entrenched that The Saturday Evening Post's editors advised critics to avoid the term when discussing President Truman's plan to extend social benefits. "The opponents of such a system," they wrote, "have an excellent case, but they do not help it by adopting precisely the words which put it in a favorable light. 'Welfare' is the key word. Who's against welfare: Nobody...Fighting an election by opposing welfare is on par with taunting an opponent for having been born in a log cabin.
We've uh, regressed a bit.
