On Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:58:26 -0700, "Steve B"
wrote:

You are either honest or you aren't. It doesn't matter what anybody else
does.

CWM

And he's already told us which he is.

And never made the claim to be anything other than what I am. Unlike people
here who have never cheated or taken a discount for a mistake.

You have to get over the idea that it matters how honest the people
criticizing you are. This is about you and how others act doesn't
matter.

Are you claiming that no one who has ever done the same thing can
criticize someone else for doing somethings wrong, whether it is
illegal, immoral, unsafe, unhealthy, or unkind?

Because it's not true. Sometimes they are in the best position to
know what is wrong.

In a few cases, there is no one else present to say what is wrong
except people who have done it. Are you saying they shouldn't say
anything? Someone has to speak up.

It's also nonsense when people say that if the parents when teenagers
or 20's used drugs, committed vandalism, etc. they can't tell their
children not to do those same things. Of course they can, if they now
think that their kids shouldn't do drugs or commit vandalism. Do
people who were vandals have to raise children who think there is
nothing wrong with vandalism? Of course not. If that were the case,
the world would get worse and worse and never and nowhere would it get
better.


Back to the original topic, if people have gotten money the way you
describe or outright stolen, if they've done it and don't tell people,
that probably means they are ashamed, and if they haven't stopped
already, being ashamed is the first step towards stopping.

What makes your case worth criticism is that you are talking about it.
You weren't ashamed at all. And talking about it is worse than the
original act. When you take 61 dollars that wasn't meant for you,
it's a straight 61 dollars. But when you talk about it in public, you
encourage who knows how many people to do the same sort of thing. So
the transgression multiplies by a factor of 4 or 10 or 100. And if
they see you talking, they may talk about it themselves after they do
it, or even if they don't do it and only you announced that you did.
So that spreads the encouragement to everyone those 4 or 10 or 100
talk to.

If one is going to do things like this, he should be ashamed of it and
not tell anyone, because hearing that someone else did some thing like
this makes other people jealous, of the money, and they'll want to do
the same thing. It mitigates the instruction their parents or their
religious teachers may have given them not to do such things.

So get off your high horse, that you imagine you are one, complaining,
and learn to keep your less than right things to yourself.


I'll give you credit for not using the word hypocrite, which most
people use where it doesn't apply. A person would only be a
hypocrite if he, for example, acted like he had never stolen anything
when he had, or acted like he didn't now when he still did.

But no one here said how honest they were, and no one was a hypocrite
even if some are dishonest.