Headed for trouble? Or are we?

I ran across this on the Prairie Home Companion web site, in a letter to GK:

I hope for their sake you're a tough grader, since a nation that loses the distinction between "lie" and "lay" in its own language is surely headed for trouble.

Are we?

English has thousands of verbs where the transitive and intransitive forms are identical. Are we really "headed for trouble" if we lose that distinction in a couple more pairs? (I say a couple, because although no one ever complains about it, I hear "sit" and "set" being used interchangeably, too. And, in fact, I've seen an increase in transitive "rise", as in this Terry Bradshaw - Tiki Barber exchange earlier this year:

Bradshaw: "Tiki, I've noticed it seems you're able to elevate your game when the Giants play against team's featuring the league's elite running backs… Tell me if there something subconsciously inside of you that says, ‘Hmm. I'm going to rise it up a little today.'"

Barber:"Without a doubt. When going up top-flight backs on this league, and Larry Johnson is fast becoming one of those, you want to raise your game to the next level and outplay that person.

"Rise/raise" are exactly parallel to "lie/lay", and it looks like we're losing that distinction, too ... really headed for trouble.

Or just losing the difference between transitive and intransitive forms of these small set of verbs, the verbs of placement. English is a language which is (as all languages are) changing through time. One of the changes English is undergoing is a massive loss of grammatical inflections, and a use of word order to make those distinctions.

People complain (and often violently) about those changes that occur during their lifetime, but I've yet to hear any of these folks who go ballistic over "between John and I" complain about the fact that "John" is no longer marked for case. Or, for that matter, that "you" and "it" have no objective form any longer (or rather, that "you" has no subject form and "it" no object). Nor do they complain about having only one verb conjugation (he knows, but all others, singular and plural, know) where once we had several (I wit, thou woost, he woot, they wooten for example). Or about any of the many, many other "distinctions" lost over the centuries. Instead they focus on those lost since they started paying attention.

But surely the distinction between "lie" and "lay" is important? Yes, but do we need different verbs to make it? That's the question. "Lie" is intransitive; it takes no object. "I lie on the beach." "Lay" is transitive; it takes an object. "The hen lays eggs." That the past tense of "lie" is "lay" adds to the confusion between forms, of course, but not fatally. After all, the word order and context in the sentence make it very clear whether the transitive or intransitive meaning is meant. If it's the transitive, the object is supplied. The sarcastic "You lay on the beach? What are you, a hen?" is just that, sarcastic - that "lie" was meant is clear to all who hear it, otherwise there would be honest confusion, and there never is.

The distinction between "I raise" and "I rise" is likewise context driven. You're not likely to confuse them.

I'm not arguing for the loss - the ability to say "I raise" without needing to supply the object is a nice one, though hardly earth-shaking. And, come to think of it, losing the confusion between "lie" and "lie" could arguably be worth it - though we'll lose a lot of puns.

I'm only asking, are we really headed for trouble because of it? At all, let alone "surely"?

Or is this just another case of language change being resisted to the death?