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Interview with a Legalist

Interview with a Legalist. …by a fairly clueless reporter Written borrowing heavily from: Bentley, Jerry H . and H erbert F. Ziegler. Traditions and Encounters: A global Perspective on the Past . Boston: McGraw Hill. 2008.

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Interview with a Legalist

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  1. Interview with a Legalist …by a fairly clueless reporter Written borrowing heavily from: Bentley, Jerry H. and Herbert F. Ziegler. Traditions and Encounters: A global Perspective on the Past. Boston: McGraw Hill. 2008.

  2. Why does China need something new? What’s wrong with the Confucianists and Legalists? Neither of the two has ended the Period of the Warring States. Ethics, morality, and codes of behavior are of little importance. Who cares about the place of human beings in nature? We need action!

  3. So what will end the Period of the Warring States? One state needs to finally be strong enough to defeat all the others and unite China by force.

  4. And you have a plan for that…? Yes. If people can be made to serve the state and expand it at the cost of everything else, becoming strong enough to end the Period of Warring States can be done. There must be no sympathy and no selfishness.

  5. But what will make a state stronger? All resources must be used for the only two important professions: the military, and farming to feed the military. All else is a waste of labor and resources. Worthless activities like business-for-profit, scholarship, art, education, and philosophy are a waste and therefore hurt the potential of the state.

  6. But will people want to serve the state in the military or farming? What if they do not want to? Then they will be made to do so. If people want to act selfishly, they will be made unselfish. Anyone breaking the rules, no matter how small, will be punished severely, either by death or forced labor until they die.

  7. You can’t possibly mean that! Absolutely, I do. We’re talking about a lifetime of hard labor for littering or amputation of one’s feet for stealing. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

  8. But what is the point of that? There are two. First, harsh penalties for small crimes will give the government the large supply of bodies it needs for large-scale military campaigns and projects. Second, it will scare people so badly that they will do what the state wants them to do without question.

  9. But how can these rules be enforced? You’ll need a huge police force that will be expensive. No, and that’s the genius of Legalism. We’ll use collective punishment, meaning that if one person fails to report a crime, his or her whole neighborhood will be punished. We won’t need a lot of policemen since everyone will be forced to be a police informant! They’ll be too scared NOT to turn people in.

  10. And you really think this will make you popular? Not at all. People will hate us. But future generations will thank us for unifying China, making it great once again, and for finally ending the Period of the Warring States.

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