VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 13
Politics Back in Its Place, the Machine Turned Back to Its True Shape, and a Thousand Labors Come Down to One Thing, Letting the People Live and Work in Peace
The sections before took you, from a height, through a whole road, seeing clearly what this machine of politics was meant to be, seeing clearly that it was bound crooked by a lock, and at the last, for the first time, resting not on striking people but on undoing the lock and saving people, going to undo that lock, saving those caught in it. This section, this road begins to come back down. Before it lands, let me take you to look back once, to see what that machine has become, after this round of undoing the lock and saving people, and set up a total yardstick for weighing it. And then to see clearly, what one plainest thing this whole chapter, with its thousand threads and thousand labors, comes down to.
Before it lands, let me take you to look back once, at what that machine has become after this round of undoing the lock and saving people. It has turned back to its true shape. One thing at a time, let me show you the shape of it back in its place.
The government is back in its place. It is no longer that giant standing high above, managing you, fining you, raising money off you. It has turned back to the true nature set up in the first section, an administrative machine the people hired, to handle matters for the people, to protect the people. It builds the roads, puts out the fires, runs the schools, settles people, on everyone's behalf. The tax it collects has come back onto the people, turned into the peace to live and work, no longer drawn off by that chain to feed that hand. It has turned back to the proper place of administration, service, protecting the people, clean as can be.
Lawmaking is back in its place. It no longer spends its days thinking about bringing in revenue, thinking what laws will squeeze a little more money out of the people. It has turned back to its calling, to lay down only the laws that protect people, to protect only the people's inborn freedom, protect the people's lives and homes, protect the people's living and working in peace. That crooked bent of thinking about bringing in revenue being anti-human is gone.
The departments are back in their place. The rules they lay down have turned back to the true nature of a suggested use, there to guide the people, to serve the people, no longer a compulsory tool for raising money that fines you if you break it. The money the fines bring in, if there is any, flows back into education, no longer poured into those private coffers, one after another. Those private coffers everywhere have dried up.
That set of coercion of law enforcement, which ought not to be, is gone. No administrative department confers on itself the title of a law-enforcement body, holds coercive power, goes around the court, watches the people off a car rather than a person, persecutes owners off anonymous reports. The matters to be handled have turned back to those two, administration, settling people well, and the raising of people, leading people back to keeping themselves in check. That line of the first section, that in this world you could never think up a law-enforcement apparatus, comes true here.
Those hands, one by one, that torment you behind windows, are loosened. Because they have been put under the sunlight, the oversight spoken of before, everyone watching, and they no longer dare, and no longer need, to torment you by habit. You go to handle a matter, and you need no longer wear a smile, swallow your grievance, run back and forth.
And the most important, the people sitting inside that machine are changed, a crop of them. Those caught in the lock, corrupt, benefit-takers, are invited out of the door of holding power, reforged and becoming people, but that door, on them, is welded shut. The ones who sit up are the ones carrying a heart for the people, the good people of character and ability culled down by this great AI turning, the honest who in their day were pressed and could not rise, and now can. They hold a license, are reviewed yearly, and go back regularly to be reforged, keeping that heart.
The people sitting in the machine are changed, from the ones who skimmed along that lock, to the ones carrying that heart and doing the people's work. You see, this machine, inside and out, has turned back to its true shape, it was meant to protect the people, and now it truly is protecting the people.
Set the machine before and after it is bent back to its proper place side by side and compare, and the difference is heaven and earth. The former machine stood high above, tormented you, took your heavy taxes, levied your fines, seized your home, and before it you bowed your head, wore a smile, took it lying down, and it was meant to protect you and turned around to bite you. This machine now crouches down, holds you up, protects you, builds your roads and puts out your fires and runs your schools, protects your freedom and your home, gives you the peace to live and work, and before it you need no longer smile, no longer swallow, because it is the hand you hired to protect you. The same machine, that lock coiled, and it is a people-biting giant, that lock undone, and it turns back to the shape it was always meant to be, a hired hand honestly doing your work, keeping you whole. Between this one forward and one back is the heaven-and-earth difference of whether millions upon millions of people can stand up straight and get on with their days in peace, the heaven-and-earth difference of whether a world is warm or not, upright or not.
Then how to weigh it, whether it has truly been bent back, whether it is truly protecting the people well? There is one yardstick. This yardstick, set up in this volume, the close of this chapter on politics, let me set it heavily before you, to serve the people with all one's heart. To weigh this machine, to weigh every person holdingpower sitting inside it, is this one yardstick, has he, with all his heart, protected those three things for the people, freedom, the safety of life and property, the peace to live and work? Done it, and he is doing the proper work the people hired him to do, and he should go on doing it, should be continued. Not done it, or turned around, not protecting the people but invading the people's freedom, seizing the people's homes, driving the people to where they cannot live and work in peace, then he has betrayed the calling he was hired for, and that machine, that person, should be adjusted, swapped, changed. This yardstick, simple, but it is the guiding pole of the new order for politics, however the system is set, however the machine turns, whoever sits in the position, measure by this one yardstick, serving the people with all one's heart, and it is continued, betray it, and it is changed.
Do not look down on this yardstick for being only a few words. It is the most just, and the most formidable, yardstick. It does not ask what your origin is, what your background, what flag you fly, what name you chant, it asks you one thing, have you, with all your heart, protected those three things well for the people. Protected them, and you stand, and should be continued, whoever you are. Betrayed them, harmed the people, and you do not stand, and should be changed, though your flag be raised higher than the sky. This yardstick sweeps aside all the empty, frightening, pleasing names, and recognizes only that one solid thing, whether there is a true, real, wholehearted good to the people. This is the final, and hardest, yardstick for weighing a regime, an official, a machine. Done it, and it lasts. Betrayed it, and it falls. Down all the ages, without one exception, none excepted.
The machine bent back to its place, the yardstick set. Let me take you one step further in, to see this machine bent back to its place, its thousand threads and thousand labors, its thousand-headed undoing of the lock and saving of people, come down, in the end, to which one thing. Look back over this whole chapter, at how many things I led you to do, seeing clearly the true nature of politics, making out that lock, seeing through how it bites people in the human world, and then step by step, oversight, saving people, reforging, barred for life, choosing officials by that heart, set after set, laboring a whole great round.
This great round of labor, coming down at the last, is for what? For one thing, letting the people live and work in peace. Letting every person, real person and real person, live steadily, get on with the days on solid ground.
Do not scorn this one thing for being too plain, too unremarkable. I led you to fly this high, see this much, undo a deadlock this hard, and in the end it is for so homely-sounding a small matter, letting the common people get on with the days in peace. But think, the millions upon millions of people in this world, what they seek, is it not this one thing? A steady mouthful to eat, a home to keep off the wind and rain, the children able to go to school, someone to lean on when old, the days going on, one at a time, on solid ground. This is no earth-shaking great wish, this is the plainest, and most fundamental, thing. However many earth-shaking great principles, great systems, if in the end they do not land on this one thing, and the common people still cannot live in peace, then it is all empty. This book, fly however high, bites down dead on this one thing and will not let go, because this one thing is the resting place of everything.
Do not think small of these words, to live and work in peace. This whole chapter, all its labor, going a round this great, lands on the ground at this one plainest thing. Undoing that lock, for what? For letting that hand no longer suck the people's blood, no longer seize the people's homes, no longer torment the people behind windows, so the people can live and work in peace. Bending that machine back to its place, for what? For letting it protect the people's freedom, protect the people's lives and homes, so the people can live and work in peace. Inviting out the corrupt, putting in the ones with that heart, for what? For letting the ones sitting in the positions truly do the people's work, so the people can live and work in peace. A thousand threads, a thousand labors, coming down at the last, for letting the people get on with the days steadily, this one thing.
And this one thing, look back, is exactly the common root of this whole book, from its first page. The first section, setting up the government's true nature, of the three protects for the people, the last, and warmest, is to give the people an environment to live and work in peace. The third chapter, things being enough, the non-labor share returned to the public, was for letting every person have a way to live, a floor under living and working in peace. The second chapter, the school settling people near at hand, raising them into people of character, was for letting people be settled, be able to live and work in peace. The first chapter, saving the life first, was for letting people live on, and, going forward, live and work in peace. Further back still, this whole book, from beginning to end, that root, is settling people, letting people live and work in peace.
You see, this chapter on politics, having gone a round this high, this great, comes, at its close, steadily back onto that common root of the whole book, to live and work in peace. And not only this chapter on politics. The new order for the economy, the new order for culture, the new order for politics, and the new order for law to come, how the systems run, you will see, it is still for this one thing, letting people live and work in peace. The four systems, culture, the economy, politics, law, a thousand threads, each minding a patch, lending one another a hand, but coming down at the last, all for the same one thing, letting the people, real person and real person, get on with the days, steadily.
This is how deep that root of this book is nailed, how steadily it is rooted. However high, however cold a place I lead you to look from, that lock, that mechanism, undoing a deadlock however hard, a lock that in thousands of years was never undone, it always, at the last, has to land back on this one plainest, warmest thing, letting people, well, steadily, live, get on with the days.
See this one point, and you have seen through many a thing fought over for thousands of years, quarreled over until heads broke. How many people, for which name is right, which system is good, fought to the death, and fought to the end and no one could say clearly what it was all for. This book pushes all this aside and tells you, do not fight over those empty things, look at one solid thing, whichever can let the common people truly live and work in peace, that one is good. A system was never the end. A system is a means. The end is forever those living people, one by one, whether they can live and work in peace. Every design, every undoing of a lock, every labor, is for these people, one by one, and this is the heart this book, from beginning to end, does not depart from by half a step. The next section walks this road steadily to its end, points a line of transition to the fifth chapter, and leaves the door, does not seal the chapter shut.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.