A week ago, if you can remember that far (I, of course, can’t), I said that I would resume the topic of morality.
Specifically, What should you do if you find a money clip with thousands of dollars in it?
I wouldn’t recommend yelling about it, or giving it to a corrupt Democrat politician. I would sit on it, and try to go to confession.
Confession, for those of you not in the Catholic faith, is a sacred discussion of morals and penalties between a sinner and a priest. Ideally, only one is a sinner. This meeting is held in holy confidence, and no judge or jury can compel the breaking of this bond.
However:
The priest may wonder how you got these thousands of dollars, and what you are going to do with them. This goes double for any spiritual advisor who is not Catholic. They will just ask you, and everyone they know, outright.
Which brings us to your publicizing it. “I just found thousands of dollars,” you might put in the newspaper, which is not a smart move, or “If you lost something worth thousands of dollars, please contact this address.” Good luck with that. IMAO can’t advise this, unless you have a CCW permit.
A gynecologist I know, who is a very smart man, suggests you might turn the thousands in to the local police department, but then you are depending on them to be more moral than you are, which is, quite frankly, a lot to ask of them.
So what is the moral solution? A church or a charity would be nice, but so would a steak dinner at a swank restaurant. The Bible offers no guidance on this, beyond “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” but Caesar is dead (and rightfully so), so the answer becomes:
Enjoy your damned steak.
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Do you have something you’d like to share? A link? A joke? Some words of wisdom? A topic to discuss? It’s our nightly Open Thread, and you have the floor.
Turn it over to the police. The money should be returned to the person who lost it and the police are the best bet for that happening. Yes, you are expecting them to act morally. But no matter how they act, you have done the right thing and that is the best thing you can do.
What thousand dollars Comrade?
Turning it in is for me (and just me, I get it) the only option. I was raised Irish Catholic and the guilt alone would be debilitating. While my head understands the morality of other people is not to be depended on, doing the right thing is my only viable option. Besides my sainted mother would come down from above and haunt me until I turned it in, so there’s that.
Years ago I was driving home from the grocery store at night. As I drove past a median I saw what looked like money drifting in the street. I pulled into the next intersecting street to have a closer look.
Luckily the street I was on wasn’t very busy that night, usually it was. Turns out it was money. $10s and $20s. I kept walking and I kept gathering more and more bills. I was having a good time and was starting to get pretty happy! Then I looked up from the trail of bills and saw… a purse.
My “inside-the-head” voice said something impolite.
I figured this was where the cash came from. I also figured there would be some ID in the purse. Yes and yes. With a sigh I searched the street for more money and it looked like I got it all.
I took it home to my wife and laid it out on the table. It was about $800. We used the ID in the purse to find the owner. Turns out, she simply pulled the cash for her daughter and put it in her purse. She then left it on the roof of her car and it created the money whirlwind on the street that I found.
When she came by to pick up the money she offered us the reward of a discount at her daughter’s hair salon. We politely declined.
I’m not a big steak fan anyway.
Well, it seems like I was preaching to the choirboys (and girls), but my excuse is this: I’ve been so inundated with news about the FBI and their false reports, Portland and Seattle and their false responses, knee-taking departments and Capitol Police, that I forgot that basic truth: turn it in to them whether you know they’re crooks or not, and your conscience will be clear.
But it’s still possible it will disappear from the evidence locker . . . . not my problem. Or is it?
The behavior of some police and FBI is certainly disheartening – particularly those in leadership positions. Probably your best bet is to turn it over to a regular beat cop. He or she is more likely to log it and follow up on it properly. The higher you go in rank the less accountability there seems to be as they act more like swampish politicians and are often able to skate by when caught out misbehaving.
Get a receipt. Get it notarized. Take a video of the hand over. Make copies and upload it. Document, document, document. I believe, though it may vary from state to state, that if you turn in something like cash and it remains unclaimed for a year it then goes to you.
Leftists believe it immediately goes to them, even if the rightful owner is standing right there saying “Hey! Give that back!”