VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 4, SECTION 2

Lawmaking, Departments, and Fines Can Only Ever Be for Protecting the People

The last section set up the true nature of the government: an administrative machine the people hired to protect the people, and practiced the eye of reading the intent, not the letter. This section takes up this yardstick of protecting the people and goes to measure a few things on the machine of government (lawmaking, the rules the departments lay down, and fines) to see what they were meant to be and how they most easily turn crooked.

And at the last, it nails down a thing you have probably never in your life thought of this way: that in this world, you could never even think up such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus.

Look first at the most important one: lawmaking. A society always has to have someone lay down rules, lay down laws. This matter of laying down laws falls to someone, and that position is called lawmaking. Let me ask you: the lawmaking body, laying down laws, what was it meant to be for?

With that eye from the last section, this is easy to answer. The intent of the law is to protect people. So the calling of the lawmaking body has only one thing in it: to lay down the laws that protect people. To protect that inborn freedom of the people, to protect the people's lives, the people's homes, and to protect the people's being able to live and work in peace. The whole meaning of a lawmaking body's existence is to lay these people-protecting rules down clearly and completely. Just that one thing. The lawmaking body is not there to manage the people, to rule the people, or to wring money out of the people. It is there to protect the people.

Then what does it most easily turn crooked into? It turns crooked into this: day in and day out, thinking about bringing in revenue. If the lawmaking body, instead of pondering what laws will protect the people, spends its days pondering what laws will squeeze a little more money out of the people, bring in a little more revenue, lay down a new heading to collect money, or lay down a new rule to fine money, then it has turned its whole calling upside down.

It has gone from protecting the people to scheming against the people, to raising money off the people. It has taken that position that was meant to protect the people and sat in it as a position for finding crafty ways to dig into the people's pockets.

On this thing, let me pass a very heavy judgment. A lawmaking body that spends its days thinking about bringing in revenue is anti-human. Do not feel these words are laid on too heavy. Let me tell you why it reaches these words.

Lawmaking is the most important, the largest position in a society. The rules it lays down, its laws, cover the heads of every person, and not one person can get out from under them. A department being a little corrupt, fining a little: that is rot on a branch. But if this position of lawmaking rots, and turns protecting the people into raising money off the people, that is, from the most important place, using that largest tool which covers the whole of the people, turning around and, systematically, lawfully, in an endless stream, scheming against the very whole of the people it was meant to protect. That hand which was meant to protect all of humanity, turning around and coming down on all of humanity: if this is not anti-human, then what is?

Look next at the rules each department of the government lays down for itself. Below the government, one department after another often lays down for itself a great pile of rules and regulations. Take that eye and look at their true nature. Those rules, what are they in their true nature? They are a suggested use. They are that department, out of its experience in handling matters, giving the people a reminder, offering an idea: that to do it this way is better, safer, smoother. It is there to help the people, to guide the people, and this is exactly what administration ought to do: to serve the people. It is not a compulsory tool that fines you if you break it.

But now? These rules that were meant to be suggestions have been turned, one clause at a time, into grounds for fining you if you break them. Then I have to ask a question on the people's behalf: the people, by their inborn freedom (the one set up last section), did a little something beyond those suggestions. A fine? On what grounds? That rule was only a suggestion. A suggestion is a suggestion, and the people have their inborn freedom, and may choose not to go by that suggestion. You, one department, taking your own suggestion for a law that fines the people if they break it, on what grounds? This is you taking your calling to guide the people and making it into a trade of fining the people, raising money off the people.

Does this then mean nothing can be fined at all? Here I will not seal the matter shut. Whether there should be fines, and what should be fined: that is a thing to be told in detail later. Here let me only nail down, upright, the most important thing, the thing that sets its position straight: even if there is to be a fine, the money the fine brings in can have only one destination, to be used for education. It absolutely must not be for the government to bring in revenue, and absolutely must not become money that keeps officials, that lets officials line their pockets.

Why can the fine money only be used for education? Follow it along and it comes clear. A fine, if its intent is upright, should not be about punishing or raising money. It should be about leading this person, leading everyone, back onto the better road, and at bottom, it is education. And this joins straight to the intent of the law chapter later: that the intent of the law is to lead every person to keep himself in check.

The true nature of a fine is the raising of people, not the raising of money. And since it is the raising of people, then the money the fine brings in can, as a matter of course, only flow back into education: be used to raise character, to teach this person, to teach everyone, to do better, joining the second chapter (the raising of people, the school).

The other way, once a fine becomes income for the government, then it is spoiled. A government department sees that fines can bring in revenue, can go into the coffers, can keep officials, and at once it has a motive: to lay down more rules, set up more grounds, levy more fines. The more rules laid down, the harder the fines struck, and why? For the revenue.

At this step, the fine has turned, from a reminder that raises people, wholly into a money-raising machine, into a source of corruption for officials. This is exactly what the end of the last chapter spoke of: that hand, that lock, in the shape it takes on a fine.

So to dam the outlet of the fine dead, to nothing but being used for education: this one damming cuts off the source of that money-raising chain of lay-down-rules, fine, bring-in-revenue, line-pockets. A government department sees that not one cent of the fine can go into the coffers, can keep an official, that it all has to flow back into education, and it has no motive left to find crafty ways to lay down more rules, levy more fines, raise money off the people.

You see these three (lawmaking, departments, fines) measured with the one yardstick. Lawmaking: it can only lay down the laws that protect people, and thinking about bringing in revenue is anti-human. A department's rules: they are only suggestions, not a compulsory tool for raising money. Fines: they can only be used for education, not for the government to bring in revenue or to keep corrupt officials. Three things, coming down to one line on this machine of government: from lawmaking, to departmental rules, to fines, not one is there to raise money off the people. Every one, in its true nature, is to protect the people, to serve the people, to guide the people.

With these three set up, let me ask you a question, a question you have probably never in your life asked this way, because you have always taken it as only right and proper. The question is this: in this world, on what grounds is there such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus?

You are taken aback for a moment. A law-enforcement apparatus? The police, those bodies that hold coercive power to arrest people, fine people: is this not only right and proper, does not every society have one? How could there be an on-what-grounds? Let me ask you to follow along and ask it, slowly, a few times. Ask it through, and you will find that this thing you took for only right and proper was never a thing you could think up as needing to exist.

In your whole life, from small to grown, not one person ever taught you to doubt whether a law-enforcement apparatus ought to exist. It just sits there (the police, the courts, the prison cells) as though only right and proper, as though a society, by its very birth, has to have this set of things holding coercive power, to hold everyone down, to manage everyone. But the more you take a thing for only right and proper, and never doubt it, the more you have to stop and, earnestly, ask it once: on what grounds should it exist? This asking is not idle contrariness; it is to take a thing that has long been taken for granted and that in fact cannot stand, and, from its head, ask it down.

Ask it the first time: what is the government for? Nailed down above, the government is only an administrative machine, handling public matters for everyone, protecting the people, serving the people. Its calling is administration. Administration is handling matters, is serving, is settling people well.

Ask it the second time: then law enforcement, what is it? Take the two words apart. Enforce is to carry out, to hold. Law is the law. Put together, it is to hold the law and go carry it out. But savor that flavor: it presupposes a band of people breaking the law, breaking the rules, and so there has to be another band, holding coercive power (handcuffs, batons, prison cells) to go arrest them, fine them, hold them down. The thing at the bone of law enforcement is coercion; it is suppression.

Then let me ask the third time: this coercion, what law is it enforcing? Look back at the intent this book has set up all along. The intent of the law is to lead every person to keep himself in check. As the second chapter set up, where everyone has character and torments no one, there is next to no need for so many laws. The highest reach of law is that every person keeps, of himself, to that people-protecting bottom line.

Then if everyone keeps himself in check, what law is left that has to be enforced by coercion? There is none. The law stands there, paired with character education, and everyone knows it in his heart and keeps to it himself, and it has no need at all for a set of coercion, to go arrest, to fine, to hold down. This thing, law enforcement, presupposes coercing people, suppressing people, using a set of coercive power to force people to keep the rules, and this is exactly the thing this book, from its first page, does not want. Use the pen, not the knife. In this book, there is no knife. Without this set of coercion, where does a law-enforcement apparatus come from?

You may get anxious. Then in reality, those people holding coercive power? The police? The prison guards? What are they? Are none of them to be wanted? Here it is not said none of them are to be wanted. Let me take you to see what their true nature really is.

Take the role that looks most like law enforcement, most like suppression (the prison guard) and make him an example. The prison guard is the one who watches over inside the prison. You think: is that not just the jailer holding the keys, holding the prisoners down? Is that not the most solid, real law enforcement? But look back at the second chapter, at what was set up: the school is a prison. The number one function of a prison is not shutting people up, not punishment; it is settling people well, it is safekeeping, it is, in this place where people are settled well, raising people into people of character. The true nature of a prison is a school.

Then in this prison, that one who watches over, the prison guard, what is his true nature? He is not a jailer holding a gun on the prisoners. He is a teacher in this school. He is a teacher, settling people well, teaching them character, slowly leading this person who has strayed for a time back to keeping himself in check.

Ask these three times through, and that answer stands plainly before you: in this world, you could never even think up such a thing as a law-enforcement apparatus. The government's calling is administration: handling matters, serving, settling people. The intent of the law is to lead every person to keep himself in check, resting on character, not on coercion. Even that prison guard who looks most like a law-enforcer, his true nature is a teacher raising character in a school: administration plus the raising of people.

That law-enforcement apparatus, that thing that rests on coercive power to arrest people, fine people, hold people down, was never meant to exist, and you cannot think up on what grounds it should. In this world, there are only two kinds of matters to be handled: either administration (the government handling matters, settling people well) or the raising of people (the school, the prison, patching character, leading people back to keeping themselves in check). There is no third thing called law enforcement. That whole set of law enforcement, coercion, suppression, is dissolved; dissolved into these two things: administration and the raising of people.

Then when someone really does stray off the bottom line, step out of bounds? He is not handed to a law-enforcement apparatus to be forcibly held down, fined. He is handed back to these two things: administration, to settle him; the raising of people, like that prison guard, to lead him back to keeping himself in check, to patch his character. To a person who has stepped out of bounds, the thing done is to settle him, teach him, lead him back, not to hold him down, fine him, treat him as an enemy. "Use the pen, not the knife," used here, is exactly this shape.

This is the true nature politics ought to have. With the true nature set upright, the next section takes you to see what thing, in the human world, has bound this machine that ought to be so clean, bound it crooked: that lock which for thousands of years has bound politics, and is not at the mercy of any person's will.

Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.