FOLLOW US

Imagine for a moment that you are a 16-year-old young man. Your family is wealthy. You attend a prestigious private school, you have expensive hobbies like travel, motorcycle riding and guitar lessons. You play hockey and lacrosse and drive a BMW. You expect to attend an elite institution for college.

Life is good for you. You have this lifestyle because your family is fortunate, but also because both your parents work very hard to provide for you the very best things in life, so you are prepared to succeed on your own one day. You work hard in school to make your folks proud.

Assume you have a very dear friend who lives down the street from you. He attends school with you, makes good grades and plays on your sports teams. His family also does very well, and they expect the very best for him in the future.

One day, you wake up and you read that your friend’s father has been arrested. 20 years ago, the father embezzled $20 million dollars and the police finally caught up with him. Sadly, there was no doubt the father was a thief. The father had no documentation for how he earned the money and never showed the income on his tax returns.

Your friend tells you that his family has been living off that stolen $20 million dollars. The investments from that money are how your friend and his family sustained their lifestyle.

As the legal mess with his father drags on, your friend gets desperate and then becomes outraged when authorities seize the stolen funds. He goes out and starts to protest, demands justice and tells the world that he MUST be able to keep that money, it is his right, that he is a now a victim as this is the only life he knows and has ever known.

Your friend says to deprive him of this lifestyle is unfair, horrific even.

You ask him why he is doing this, and he tells you: “Please help me. This is the only life I know. I simply cannot live without our nice home, our nice cars, and our private school. Taking these things from me is wrong, I had no choice over my father’s behavior years ago. I must be able to keep this money and the only life I know.”

You try to rationalize with your friend and tell him that yes, he is indeed in a very difficult position. While you feel bad about his situation, you remind him that his father broke the law.

You tell him that while he may choose to say that his father has “undocumented income,” most people would simply say that his Dad is a thief and that his money was obtained illegally.

You further share with your friend that people should not be rewarded for breaking the law.  You remind him that you learned this lesson in civics class together, that America is a nation that respects the rule of law and that this concept is one of our greatest strengths as a nation.

Reality check

Now, stop imagining and wake up. If you actually believe the young man should be able to keep the $20 million his father stole, then please read no further. We are wasting our time with you.