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NO ONE is forced to use a credit card.

First off, in many cases that's simply not true.

Second off, are the banks FORCED to issue credit cards? No? Then they need to shut up and clean their own houses.

I thought, "Some alleged conservatives will smugly say 'it's the bankruptees' own fault; they should be made to suffer.'" I was right. That is the kind of attitude which hands elections to liberals and populists. Justice - a virtue conservatives are supposed to support - demands that we not jerk our knees, and look beyond the face of the situation.

I am being a compassionate conservative when I tell you that you are dead wrong. It is your kind of attitude that breeds tyranny. According to you people aren't responsible for their own actions. They need someone to take care of them, like the government. To hades with that thinking. And no, properly explained it won't lead to mob-rule (populism) or socialism.

First off, in many cases that's simply not true.

True, although technically people are not forced at gunpoint to get credit cards, but if they have them and poppa loses his job and mom only makes so much, if one of the kids needs something like braces or the car breaks down, unfortunatly out comes the credit card.

Second off, are the banks FORCED to issue credit cards? No? Then they need to shut up and clean their own houses.

Exactly, either they should be more tight with issuing credit cards or don't issue them at all. Again, some do issue credit cards to "X" amount of people knowing that "X-Y" will eventually default and declare bankruptcy, they still know that "Y" will still pay and yet they still make record profits. I was born at night but not last night.

I thought, "Some alleged conservatives will smugly say 'it's the bankruptees' own fault; they should be made to suffer.'" I was right. That is the kind of attitude which hands elections to liberals and populists. Justice - a virtue conservatives are supposed to support - demands that we not jerk our knees, and look beyond the face of the situation.

Exactly. Many conservatives unfortunatly adopt such a smug attitude and that makes the rest of us look bad. Yes, there are people who misuse and abuse it, you'll always have that but there are other people who get into economic trouble with little or no fault on their own. Maybe I'm speaking from my roots here, my father's side of the family are "Pittsburgh Democrats." At one time, the idea of the Democrats being the party of the poor and the Republicans the party of the rich was largely true, of course there have always been exceptions. I think what saved the Republican's bacon in the last generation was not economic issues, sure that was a part of it, but because of their social conservatism. If there were proponents of abortion, homosexual marriage and man hating feminists on a roll in the 1930's, the Republicans would have chewed them up and if there was anything left of them to crawl around to the Democrats, the Democrats would have finished them off and tossed them off the bus.

Bringing up "Pittsburgh Democrats," well really, any Democrat from industrial areas and prior to the "hippiefication" of the Democratic party would scoff at the far left's agenda. In short, it is OK to have social security and a welfare safety net but touch my guns, shove the homosexual agenda down my kid's throat, and get in bed with Michael Moore, that would never fly. If the Democrats of today keep their 30+ year strategy of following the rabid feminist and homosexual agenda, the uber anti-war ideas and so on, they will still lose but there could be a day when they will see this issues as turkeys and toss them off the bus (and under it) and that would be trouble for the Republicans.

Trouble is, I do believe America is going down the toilet and maybe some form of collapse in the long term. There are two wings to this, the Democrats with their current, uber lefty social policy and the Republicans hold on the idea of free trade and other such economic issues that do make them look smug. I've been registered Republican since I turned 18 in 1984, I admire their stance on social conservatism as well as support of the military but economically, they are kind of iffy but I certainly can't stomach the Democrats in their current form so the choice is easy for me but there are others who due to economic reasons as well as traditional would vote Democrat even if they disagree with the social policy.