Naughty and Nice

We're always looking for signs to help us make decisions. Does finding a ring on the beach mean marry this boyfriend? What if the rainbow over the "For Sale" sign means buy this house?

Is it just coincidence when an unexpected event occurs as we're weighing the consequences of change? Or is it fate? Are we being tested? Which direction means "flunk," which one means "pass"?

I like news stories that present moral dilemmas I can relate to, such as Kathleen Healy's experience of discovering a money clip full of cash at a Minneapolis department store while trying on a pair of jeans. Healy refused a reward for turning in the windfall, but was persuaded to accept a box of candy from a grateful clerk. Inside, Healy found a contest ticket worth at least $10,000.
Aha! It's a sign! This sort of cosmic joke always brings me up short, like a rambunctious dog suddenly jerked to heel. It validates all those homilies drummed into us as kids which recede from our consciousness as we slog away in the real world, helping ourselves to yellow legal tablets from the office, calling mother on the company credit card, treating ourselves to an extravagant shrimp cocktail appetizer on the expense account.

What if I'd been tested like Kathleen Healy? Surely I would have turned in the money; we all like to believe we're honest and trustworthy. But would I?

If Healy hadn't done the "right thing" she wouldn't have gotten the candy and won the contest. But for every Healy who reaps a serendipitous reward, there are thousands of other honest souls who're lucky if they get a simple "thank you" for being good Samaritans.

Presented with moral choices, our dark side always taunts us: "Aw, go ahead, nobody will know if you pocket that money clip. If you're too guilt-ridden to keep it, just lift a few twenties off the top, they'll never be missed."

Maybe not. But a thief remembers, and no matter what's bought with those "few twenties," it always represents wrongdoing.

Frankly, I'm too weak to risk it.

There are enough "Aha!" stories like Healy's to convince me there's a universal code that can't be violated without penalty. Healy's kind of celestial "I told you so!" keeps me off-balance, tweaks me into believing someone is always looking over my shoulder, "making a list and checking it twice, gonna find out who's naughty and nice."

Naughty and nice. We are both. On any given day, we can go either way. The dark side is always there, just waiting for us to ignore that little voice we've all got in the back of our heads that warns us not to violate the code of the universe.

That's what Attorney General John Ashcroft did when he convinced President George W. Bush to approve prosecuting, by secret military tribunals instead of public jury trials, foreign suspects arrested since Sept. 11. 

If Ashcroft needs a sign -- an "Aha!" moment -- in order to repudiate his decision, he should look to the streets of Afghanistan, where bodies of murder victims continue to stack up as a result of so-called "military justice." Some of the dead are Taliban fighters, but how many are Afghan civilians caught in the crossfire of anarchy?

Without the principles of law and the rules of evidence that support a democratic judicial system -- just what Ashcroft's dark side wants to suspend in America -- there's no legal way to sort the guilty from the innocent. So what are we fighting for?

Ashcroft and Bush should take heed of another law of the universe, which warns us to choose our enemies carefully, lest we become like them.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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