VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 6

VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 5, SECTION 6

Robbing That Cuts Life Off, Hounding That Takes Life, the Last Two Links of the Chain That Harms the People Lawfully

The last section lit up tormenting that grinds life, crushing that breaks life. This section lights up the last two links of this chain, the thickest, the coldest, robbing that cuts life off, hounding that takes life. The two links before wear away your days, press down your back; these two links directly take your property, take your home, and then drive you onto the road to death. But this robbing, this killing, is not like the one on the street with a bared knife, it lifts no blade, shows no blood, and wears besides a full skin of the law, warm, proper, lawful robbing, lawful killing.

One. Two Golden Lines, Set Side by Side

Before making this reasoning clear for you, let me first set two golden lines out side by side. Someone before us said a golden line, taxation is robbery of the people. Here is said a line, paying tax is the people's donation. Savor the difference between these two lines. That line from before strikes hard. The anti-tax side in the West says this line again and again, denying this thing, tax, wholesale, looking on it as robbery of the people. This is said standing on the side that opposes the government.

This book is not on that side. Here, this line is caught, and then turned upright, paying tax is the people's donation. What is a donation? It is the people, willingly, out of what they earned by their own labor, taking out a share, pooling it, and giving it to the government to handle public matters, to protect the people, to give the people the peace to live and work, to hire police, firefighters, to run schools. It is given, it is for the public, it is done with that heart. The people hire the government to handle matters, and this donation is the pay for that hired machine. This is not being robbed, it is given out by the people, gladly, of their own will.

Two. Why Turn It into a Donation

Why turn it into a donation, and not leave it at that line from before, robbery? Because the root of this book, all along, is not to bring down, but to turn the intent upright. The one before us opposes, tax equals robbery, denying it wholesale; here the intent is recognized, tax was meant all along to be a donation, and it is turned upright. Tax in itself is not wrong, what is wrong is that it was used backwards by the illiterate in the law.

Then in reality? Is the tax of reality the people's donation? It is not. The illiterate in the law twisted the people's donation into a forced, harsh-taxes-and-sundry-levies, lawful robbery, taken to feed that chain. Look back again at that line from before, taxation is robbery of the people, and his curse is right, his curse is on target, the tax the illiterate in the law use backwards is exactly robbery of the people. What the one before us cursed is exactly what the illiterate in the law do. Only, the one before us took this using-backwards for tax itself, and so he opposes. Here it is told apart clearly, the intent of tax is donation, and should be recognized; what is used backwards by the illiterate in the law is robbery, and should be undone. Once this is told apart clearly and the intent stood up, then that lawful robbing can be seen for what it truly is.

Three. The Account of the Land Tax, Eating Up Your Home Lawfully

Then this lawful robbing, how fierce is it, in the end? Let me take the one you know best, and the heaviest, and reckon it for you, the land tax. What is the land tax? In the fourth chapter it was nailed dead, it is a protection fee. You pay this money, and the government should protect your home, give you an environment where you can live and work in peace. This is a trade, an exchange, an even one. You paid, and did the government protect your home? Did it give you the peace to live and work? It did not. The front-line torment, the harsh taxes and sundry levies, that lock sucking blood, the procedure driving people to death, not one item made good. But this protection fee still has to be paid, year after year.

Then this protection fee that has to be paid year after year, how heavy is it, in the end? Let me reckon it for you. The land tax is collected by a rate, year after year, a rate on the current price of this house of yours. Whatever that rate is, so long as it accumulates year after year, and with inflation added, money losing value year after year, house prices rising along with it, what you pay year after year rises with the house price, the tide lifting the boat, more and more. Reckon it out, and after a number of years, the total you have paid in already exceeds this house itself. What does this mean? You labored a lifetime to earn this house, and thought it was yours; but this protection fee by rate reaches out its hand to you year after year, and after a number of years, in the form of land tax, you have handed the whole money of this house to the government all over again. It is as if the government has already bought this house once, and still it goes on collecting from you year after year. You think you own this house, no. You are only renting, renting from the government, the rent is the land tax, the lease is for life. The house you thought, generation after generation, was yours has all along been rented to you by the government to live in, and through the land tax, without a sound, it is lawfully, tenderly, year by year, eaten up by it.

Four. Refuse to Pay and Lose the Home, and at Last a Person Is Driven to Death

Change one word, eaten up. Not confiscated, not seized, eaten up. Year by year, mouthful by mouthful, slowly swallowed down, this machine, the government, wearing the skin of a lawful land tax, eats up the home you labored a lifetime to earn. And if you refuse to pay? You do not pay the land tax, and by the procedure, the house is auctioned, taken away. To refuse to pay is to lose your home.

This joins tight onto that misery from the fourth chapter, the one who guarded his home a lifetime, could not pay the land tax, and in the end stayed there along with the home. Lit to here, it is clear as day, this is what the illiterate in the law, in the name of the law, do to the people in this matter of the land tax, lawful robbing.

Five. Picking the Weakest to Strike Is Anti-Human

But a thing more deadly still, which you may not have thought of, the illiterate in the law do not rob the rich. The ones the illiterate in the law rob are, precisely, the people who cannot even get enough to eat, who have no roof to live under. Think, the truly rich can hire the best lawyers, find the cleverest ways to dodge tax, put the house into a trust, and this land tax, those harsh taxes and sundry levies, they can mostly hide from, dodge, shift. Then this lawful robbing, in the end, who does it truly rob? Those who cannot hide, cannot dodge, cannot shift, those who have only one house, one small business, one pension, a whole family, old and young, to feed. It is this side that is robbed the hardest.

The illiterate in the law are not without eyes. They smash this robbing down on the weakest, the least able to resist, the side of the people who most cannot get enough to eat, who have no roof to live under, and wear besides the skin of lawful, compliant, for-everyone's-good. Let me set one verdict on this thing, anti-human. Hearing this word, you may feel it is heavy. Let me break open for you why it is enough to earn this word. What is the most basic bottom line of humankind? To let people have food to eat, a roof to live under, and live. This is the bottom layer of what makes a person a person, and without this bit, a person cannot even be a person. What do the illiterate in the law do? From a person who is not given even this most basic thing, they still, by force, lawfully, dig money out of him, and this is not making things hard for him, this is pushing him out past the bottom line of being human. A person without even food and shelter, and you still dig tax out of him, what you dig is not his days, it is his life. The government, the law, which were meant to protect people, turn around and push people out past the bottom line of being human, and this is enough to earn the name anti-human.

Think how chilling the upside-down in the middle of this is. A truly good world should protect the weakest side, whoever is poor, whoever suffers, whoever cannot get enough to eat, should be given an extra hand, an extra lift, so he too can live, he too can catch his breath. This is the most basic conscience in the human world. But what the illiterate in the law do is exactly the reverse, he lets off the rich and powerful, the ones who can hide and dodge, and picks precisely the weakest, the most suffering, the ones with the least strength to strike back, and digs at them to the death. It is like a crowd of people fallen into the water, and the one who cannot swim, about to sink to the bottom, should be saved first, and he instead steps on the one about to sink to the bottom to fish out the one who could swim all along. How is this still protecting people? This is picking out the one with the least strength to strike. Taking the side of this world that most ought to be protected as the side easiest to rob, this is the most anti-human thing about this lawful robbing of the illiterate in the law.

Six. Once the Property Is Robbed Clean, a Person Has Come to the Link of Hounding

Lit to here, the shape of this nest of the illiterate in the law in this matter of robbing is seen clear as day. Twisting the tax that the people should donate willingly into forced, harsh-taxes-and-sundry-levies robbing; taking the land tax, that protection fee, by rate plus inflation, and eating up the people's homes lawfully year after year; lifting broken code as high as law, and robbing the people's money by criminal means; picking precisely the weakest, the least able to resist, the ones who most cannot get enough to eat, to strike, anti-human. All robbing, all lawful robbing.

But look back, this robbing, what it robs is money, is home. The person, is he still alive? Rob your money, eat up your home, drive you out, and you stand in the street, no food to eat, no roof to live under, not even one steady breath left. Where do you go? You go, and you go into the next link, hounding. Robbing is taking your property; hounding is driving you onto the road to death.

Seven. Hounding, Run Over All the Way, Driven onto the Road to Death

What is hounding? It is driving a person until he has no way out, onto the road to death, until he no longer wants to live, until he is truly gone. The three links before, however heavy, the person is still alive, ground by tormenting, pressed by crushing, robbed by robbing, the person can still grit his teeth, can still hold on. At this link, the person cannot live on. This is the end of this whole chain that harms the people, and where it lands on the ground is a human life.

A person, how does he come to this step? Look back at the three links before, link locked into link. First tormenting, he goes to handle a small matter, and is tormented by the low-level official's broken code into running back and forth, his days worn away, a layer of his spirit ground off. Then crushing, he does not accept it and sues, and the court, by the letter, judges him the loser, and he wants to appeal, cannot afford a lawyer, and his back is pressed bent. Then robbing, that home he guarded a lifetime is, by the land tax by rate plus inflation year after year, more than half eaten up; that bit of money he saved through hard work is dug away, a little at a time, by harsh taxes and sundry levies, by fines. The home, gone; the money, gone. At this step, what does he have left? No food to eat, no roof to live under, no money to spend, no one to speak for him, nowhere to file a complaint, no strength left to resist. He stands in the street, stands in the wind, he lifts his head, no hope; he lowers his head, a dead end. He has been driven onto the road to death by this nest of the illiterate in the law, lawfully, link by link, in plain sight. It is not that he wants to die, it is that he has been driven until he cannot live.

Eight. Lawful Killing, No One Bears the Blame, No One Speaks for Him

And the illiterate in the law who did this? No one feels he did anything. The judge who ruled his home taken, by the procedure, by the letter, does not know that this one signature signed away a human life, and he gets off work and goes home to dinner. The lawmaker who laid down that tax law, on the reason of for-everyone's-good, gets off work and chats and laughs with colleagues. That lawyer who drilled the loophole won the case, collected his fee, goes home and sleeps soundly. That low-level official who robbed him of his money with broken code clocks out and leaves when work ends. No one feels he did anything. Each finished the matter by the procedure of his own stall, but these people who finished their matters by the procedure, the share in each one's hand, a share of tormenting, a share of ruling, a share of tax law, a share of fines, added together, sent a living person onto the road to death, lawfully, inch by inch, with reasons and grounds.

This is lawful killing. In the age of blades, one blade comes down, who was struck, why he was struck, plain as day, the one who struck has to bear the blame, and the one who died has someone to speak for him. But this lawful killing lifts no blade, shows no blood, no one can be blamed, the judge by the procedure, the lawmaker by his duty, the lawyer by his contract, the official by the rules, every one compliant, every one not wrong. The one who died, no one speaks for him, there is no killer, who is the killer? Every person on the whole chain says, not me. This life is not entered in any account, this world runs on as usual, and the next day that nest of the illiterate in the law sits back down in their positions, and goes on pinching the next person's road to life or road to death. This killing is far more frightening than the killing of the age of blades, it is soundless, and yet every day, in this world, it is happening. Lit up, this whole chain, tormenting that grinds life, crushing that breaks life, robbing that cuts life off, hounding that takes life, four things stepping up one after another, every stroke harming the people to death. The next section puts these four together and nails dead that death order, this chain must be cut.

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

Seven. Every Stroke Drives the People to Their Deaths, This Chain Must Be Cut