From the Corner:

From a reader in the Midwest: "About a year ago my niece went to a Dollar General store (a cut-rate retailer similar to Big Lots) late on a Sunday evening. She picked up a few things and went to check out but there was no clerk. She and a few other customers waited at the check out line - still no clerk appeared. They called out - no answer. They looked in the back room - nobody there. They all agreed they had better call the police and then waited for them to arrive. As it turned out the store was closed but whoever was supposed to lock up didn't. They could have robbed the place blind - instead they all behaved like decent honest people. My niece is a 19-year-old college student and I'm sure that most of those other Dollar General shoppers were not exactly rolling in money. Just the sort of people that those snotty thieves at the UN would look down their noses at. The next time those UN weasels get on their moral high-horse I'll be thinking of this."

There are many people like this...people who try to return a wallet. People who don't pick up something and take it just because no one is looking or stopping them. And there are the other kind of people, for whom any unguarded object is an opportunity. Finders keepers.

I spent a day at the local water park last summer. My idea of a great afternoon is to park my ass in a lounge chair overlooking the water rides...I have a favorite shady spot right by the fence, and there is a lake and reeds on the other side full of ducks and muskrats. I read in the shade and the kids go nuts in the water.

Listening to one group of people nearby...adults with kids, not punks...I heard them comment on finding neat sunglasses and other objects "lying around." They tried them on and tucked them away. Finders, keepers. It apparently didn't even occur to them to take it to the lost and found. Not hardened crooks, but not honest either. There are way too many such people nowadays, and I'm afraid I know why.

"You've got it. I don't. I need it more than you. I get to take it." The code by which many live nowadays, and the underlying principle of many in our governments. Small wonder it's becoming more prevalent.

I have found wallets and purses with my kids, and once an old hand-carved walking stick that fortunately had an address on it. We went out of our way to return them. There are few more important lessons to teach a kid, and an example teaches more than a year's worth of talk will.