There's good news for Americans who believe in a smaller federal government: The law of unintended consequences is alive and well in the Obama age.

Take health care, for example. The intended consequence of the campaign for Democratic health reform has been to expand government into the most intimate, most consequential parts of our lives.

But the unintended consequence has been to drive more Americans away from the idea of government-run health care and toward more personal responsibility. The latest polling data from Gallup show a stunning, 22-point shift among Americans away from believing that government is responsible for health care toward believing that individuals are responsible for their own health care.

What's more, this shift against government health care has actually been fueled by the campaign to federalize it. In 2006, 69 percent of Americans believed government was responsible for health care. Today, that number is 47 percent.