"Keep them dependent and we shall rule forever!"

News Real’s Managing Editor, David Swindle, has asked me to do a series on how collecting debts for a living has contributed to my conservative outlook.

He did the same kind of work himself in his wayward youth, and he has written to me of how it changed him in ways he couldn’t have foreseen.

The collection business is a microcosm of the foment that is currently taking place in this “United” States of America – the battle between those who want “protection” from their own potentially stupid decisions, and those who relish working without a safety net.

We all know what camp most Democrats are in, and if you viewed the House roll-call on Obamacare this past Saturday night, you saw who wants to keep us captive to a huge meddling bureaucracy, and who doesn’t.

I watched the vote on Geraldo At Large – after all, no one bloviates with more style and pizazz.

For Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and her squadron of inveterate trough-feeders, the answer to all of our problems is more: more taxes, more surcharges, more regulation. Which of course will lead to more: unemployment, unrest, and disorder in the body politic.

If you want a weak and debased citizenry that clings to the Government for direction and sustenance, then the Speaker’s  interminable “victory lap” (Rivera’s term) was a preview of circuits to come.

The collection industry is actually ahead of the curve as far as these things go.

The day I first got on a phone in 1991, I got an earful of what victimhood means.

And It has only accelerated since then.

Most delinquent customers are decent sorts – many of them have been hit by one of the nasty sliders that life throws at us from time to time, and they do what they can to recover and get back in the batter’s box.

But lots of others seem to have been educated in the Tawana Brawley school of  fake innocence.

For them it is all about blaming the world for what it “did” to them - and how they’re going to use whatever regulatory body that’s in vogue that week to “get out” of their responsibilities and “get even” for their (totally random) sufferings.

And Nancy just smiles.

Coming soon: Freedom Doesn’t Guarantee An Outcome and Cease And Desist: I’m A Vulnerable Adult!