Confucius in 2008

A disciple once asked Confucius what would he would do to reform a corrupt State.

"We must correct language," replied the scholar, "if language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant , then what ought to be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate, justice will go astray. If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion.
Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said.
This matters above everything."

Confucius, who was a skilled diplomat and political adviser as well as a philosopher and teacher, was making an argument that society's leaders must, above all, be honest and forthright; and that the consequences of deceit and miscommunication would include moral entropy and societal decay.

Confucius disliked 'spinning' the truth.

Confucius would have loathed George W. Bush and his forked-tongued cabal of serial liars.

1) "...if language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant..."

Here are some of the major arguments used to support the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq:
We need to invade Iraq because Saddam has WMD...we are spreading freedom... we need to stay the course, otherwise all the pointless death and destruction that has already occured would be even more tragic and futile than it already is...

What those words really mean:

There were no WMD and we knew it. We are using the war as a means to redistribute the nation's wealth upward and outward- for instance, we'll give billions of dollars to war profiteers like Halliburton, who will then re-locate to Dubai in order to avoid paying taxes on the $22.6 billion in annual revenues generated by the no-bid contracts awarded to them as a result of this unjust war...we will also give billions of dollars in tax subsidies to oil companies who are already experiencing record-breaking profits - this war is too profitable to consider halting . BTW, you will never pay less than two dollars for a gallon of gasoline again, ever.
Vote for us.

2) "...if what is said is not what is meant , then what ought to be done remains undone..."

K-A-T-R-I-N-A . Undone.

Stem cell research. Undone.

What we should be doing is building schools, hospitals and factories in America. We need a Health Care plan that works and the $15 billion dollars we just gave to Exxon, Conoco et.al.
ought to be enough money to pay for that. We don't need to cut spending on social services, we need to curtail funding on war, warfare being essentially an anti-social disservice to humanity.

We can also extrapolate this from #2 : 'what ought to remain undone gets done'.
The endless occupation of Iraq would be a good example of something that should have remained undone. Monetary gifts to the world's wealthiest corporations would be another.

3) "... morals and art will deteriorate, justice will go astray."

Morals? Modern morality is dictated by self-appointed arbiters like Ted Haggard, a self-loathing , homophobic cock-sucking meth-sniffer; Tom DeLay , an unrepentant money-washing embezzler and all-around political tool and William Bennett, a gambling addict who blew over $8 million dollars on slot machines and call girls before declaring himself America's "Values Czar."

Our chronically moralizing President is an alcoholic whose re-election was , in part, due to the fact the more Americans would rather "have a beer with" Dubya than with John Kerry.
Drinking with alcoholics is a bad idea. Electing them is worse.

Art? Who needs art? We have entertainment. If we ignore art and concentrate on entertainment , we can simultaneously dismiss and ensure the deterioration of art.
One of the most popular entertainments of our time is little more than a glorified Karaoke contest, punctuated with petty insults and laden with contrived and grossly undignified debasements and humiliations, self-inflicted and otherwise. Americans know more about their Idols than they know of their Congressional representatives...another famous ancient philosopher warned us against the worship of false idols, but today few pay more than self-serving lip service to that man's words.


Justice? In my estimation, the only noteworthy accomplishment of Paris Hilton's entire lifetime is her inadvertently calling attention to the obvious inequity of our Justice system.

I have my own experience with Justice:
In 2000, I was facing 25-125 years in prison based on some seriously trumped-up Federal drug charges- I had five charges arising from possession of under .8 of a gram (two roaches) of marijuana.
My expensive lawyer told me flat-out: " If you were black, I could probably get the minimum sentence- 25 years- for you. Since you're white, I may be able to get you off."
I served 18 months of supervised probation- which I violated twice without serious punishment- and was discharged. It's not fair, but it did work for me.

Since then, I've had no illusions about the 'justness' of our Justice system.

4) "If justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion."

Confucius didn't mean that the people would literally come to a halt and stand in the streets, scratching themselves. He meant that people would lose sight of the Way, that they would lose the ability to think critically and act effectively and would therefor be defenseless against the machinations of malevolent leadership. In essence, they'd be too busy tracking the irrelevant activities of their False Idols to notice what their leaders were really doing.
Confucius would have hated 'reality' TV.

5) "Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. "

Modern leaders aren't just arbitrary- their words are surreal, inarticulate and incoherent.

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns."
-Former BushCo Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on those elusive WMD's, and why we went to Iraq in the first place.

"Success is not no violence."
- Current Resident George W. Bush, using a double negative to describe his Iraq 'strategery'.

The prognostications and observations of Confucius were not couched in ambiguity and political doublespeak.
What he said would happen, has happened.

Is that clear?