VOLUME V, CHAPTER 8
Guilt, the People, and a Way of Seeing the Law
This chapter walks on from the last, from how the law treats an ordinary person to several hotter words. Whom does the people actually include. Can an ordinary person change a thing without spilling blood. And once these are seen clearly, where should a person stand. The chapter before this dug down to output, the root under everything. This one takes several of the truest things that grow out of that root and sets them out, one by one.
The first section is we the people. It begins from that ringing opening line of seventeen eighty-seven and presses one question, whom does this people actually count, and sees that any people is only a position and never equal to all the people. This is the twenty-third layer.
The second section is the photograph taken at a forty-five degree angle, an ordinary person who heard, went quietly and did the thing, and then vanished back into the crowd. It fixes the true position of a hero, that the one who does stands higher than the one who speaks. This is the twenty-fourth layer.
The third section seals the part. It draws the several layers into one web and fixes a clear-eyed stance, defending neither power nor crime, holding one measure to both ends alike. This is the twenty-fifth layer.
These three sections build from the twenty-third layer to the twenty-fifth, and Part Three closes here. This chapter has a heavy side and a warm one, seeing through the made quality of the people, and seeing the road in an ordinary person's hands that spills no blood. The stance has not shifted. It takes neither end, lays out the positions, and hands the judgment and the choice both back into the reader's own keeping.
Contents
Section One. We the People Was Never Truly All the People.
Section Two. The Photograph at a Forty-Five Degree Angle, a Hero Who Vanished into the Crowd.
Section Three. Choosing with Clear Eyes, Defending Neither Power Nor Crime.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.