Guo Songtao was very curious that President Meng didn't continue to talk about letting him go to China, but he was a little embarrassed, and he didn't meet in person, but it seemed that he was amorous himself. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info

Guo Songtao also talked about his own diplomatic philosophy, and one of the basic contents of Guo Songtao's diplomatic outlook is to oppose the Western countries as "Yidi" and advocate treating them as independent civilized countries. In view of the "arrogant" habit of feudal scholars, Guo Songtao believes that China has no other way than to "take the law" from the West.

Guo Songtao had a strong worry about his family and country, but his patriotic feelings and nationalist consciousness were presented in an extremely rational form, and were closer to the concept of modern nationalism, so they were misunderstood by people at that time. This is first manifested in Guo Songtao's views on Huayi's distinction. At that time, traditional scholars still emphasized the distinction between Ming and Huayi, and Guo Songtao, through his own actual observations, believed that the West must no longer be regarded as barbarians.

He believed that "the two thousand years since the founding of the Western state, the cultivation of politics and religion, and the end of the world, and the rise of Liao and Jin for a while, the prosperity and decline of the situation, the situation is absolutely different", refuted the traditional scholars' concept that "China has a way, but Yidi has no way", and further pointed out that the relatively backward regions and nationalities in the past can be transformed into advanced regions and nationalities.

Regarding the traditional view of the center of China, Guo Songtao also put forward his own different views. The traditional Chinese centric view believes that China's inhabitation of heaven and earth is the result of the practice of regular education and etiquette and civilization. Because the pattern of Chinese and Western civilization has been dislocated historically, and the people of the time still look at the world with the old eyes of tianxiaism, Guo Songtao felt the national crisis contained in it.

Guo Songtao denounced the scholar doctor for "being the only one who is arrogant, taking the righteousness of Yidi as righteousness, and ignoring the people's father; He called on the people of the country to abandon the traditional "distinction between Yixia and Xia," rationally analyze Western affairs, put down the frame of "the heavenly kingdom" and learn from the West, establish a new world consciousness, and take the modern nationalist road of making the country rich and strengthening the people.

Guo Songtao was born in the old camp of feudal scholars, proficient in traditional culture, and also understood foreign affairs, and did field investigations of Western civilization, which provided objective conditions for him to evaluate and compare Chinese and Western cultures as a whole. He was superior to his contemporaries in that he objected to the re-evaluation of the Western countries of the time, admitting that "they also had a civilization of 2,000 years." "Although this civilization is not perfect, it is better than the Chinese civilization as a whole. This breaks the traditional "Yixia view", "body use view", "Taoist view", "essence view" and so on.

Guo Songtao's thought played an active role in "the spread of Western learning to the East, the spread of Western thought and culture to China, and set a precedent for the vigorous rise of the reform and reform ideology behind him."

President Meng had a conversation with Guo Songtao, and I had to admit that Guo Songtao was a modern Western-style thinker and a pioneer of China's professional diplomats.

"These ideas of yours are completely in line with the spirit of our new learning and diplomacy in China, and I still have the question just now, is there any soil for them to be implemented in the Qing court? If the royal family does not take the lead, can it have the effect of forming a general trend in the country just by relying on the improvement at the bottom? President Meng then asked with a smile.

Guo Songtao groaned, not knowing how to answer, and said after a long time: "I believe that the imperial court will wake up when it sees the changes in Huaguo and the model of Huaguo." ”

President Meng smiled and nodded, "Thank you for your high evaluation of Huaguo, but I want to tell you, and you, it is impossible, because Huaguo is the Huaguo of all the people, and the power of Huaguo is in the hands of the people, which can be seen from the tens of millions of Huacui Party, Huaguo is led by the Huacui Party, and the Huacui Party is composed of thousands of people, so the representative of Huaguo is the national interest, how is it beneficial to the development of the country, how will Huaguo develop!" And the Qing court is only in the hands of a small number of princes and ministers and the royal family, even if there are a few members of the royal family who, as you said, wake up, but how much weight can they occupy in the royal family? This collective was originally built at the top of the pyramid, and it was the representative of the big landlord class, and could it stand up to the power of the state by relying on the strength of the individual alone? Don't say that this possibility does not exist, even if from today onwards, the Qing court has all woken up, everyone has begun to reform, and has begun to imitate Xinxue, can the feudal ministers agree? The bureaucrats with vested interests, the landlord class, can they agree? They could have lived a life of lying down and counting money, and you asked them all to start all over again, would they be willing? It's like if you guys suddenly say that you want to replace the prime ministers, will the ministers agree? ”

President Moe's words, although simple, are also easy to understand, and the key is that they cannot be refuted.

"It's still the same sentence, knowing that you can't do it, being loyal to the monarch and loving the country, is the truth that my generation of scholars should respect." Guo Songtao said angrily. "President, you are also a scholar, I heard that the president was a talent at the age of two, don't you not understand this truth?"

President Meng smiled, and continued: "Loyalty to the monarch and patriotism is a proposition that has been passed down for thousands of years in China, and it has almost become a basic principle of compulsory courses for subordinates. If you don't obey, you will be a thief. However, there are many ambiguities in this proposition that are worth mentioning. First of all, it is worth clarifying that in the traditional concept of Chinese, "loyalty" and "patriotism" are basically the same thing - because of loyalty, we must be patriotic; To be loyal is to be patriotic. Therefore, it is not surprising that there is such a concept, and it is not surprising that traditional Chinese society is a **** society: the emperor is not only the head of state and the boss of the government, but also the ideological coordinates and behavioral norms, and the cultural representative of the national symbol. By virtue of being loyal to the king, it is patriotic; To love the country, you must be loyal to the king. Therefore, even when he knows that the other party is wrong, he shows his loyalty, Yue Fei is a typical example. He endured severe pain and asked his old mother to ask someone to tattoo words on his back, and regarded "loyalty to the monarch" and "serving the country" as the spiritual unity of his life. For the stability of the Southern Song Dynasty and the recovery of the rivers and mountains in the north, he galloped on the vast battlefield, bravely killed the enemy, and won one victory after another, which caused the Jin soldiers to be frightened, so there was a saying that "it is easy to shake the mountains, and it is difficult to shake the Yue family". In May and June of 1140 AD, the Yuejia army and the Jin army fought several major battles, resulting in more than half of the 100,000 horses of the Jin army killed and wounded, and recovered Caizhou, Zhengzhou, Luoyang and other places for the Song Dynasty. At that time, many Jin generals were already preparing to surrender to the Great Song Dynasty. In this favorable situation, the Southern Song Dynasty court retracted its order and ordered Yue Fei to "choose a day to divide the division, not to enter lightly", and within one day he issued twelve gold medals to urge the withdrawal of the army. In this case, the contradiction between "loyalty to the monarch" and "patriotism" has been exposed: if you want to be loyal to the monarch, you must obey the emperor's will and return to the court. However, the result of this is contrary to the interests of the country, that is, it is contrary to "patriotism", because doing so will bury the great opportunity to regain the lost territory in vain, and it will not benefit the country or the people. However, confined to the traditional Chinese concept of "loyalty to the monarch and patriotism", Yue Fei's only choice was to obey the order. As a result, not only did the recovered Dahao rivers and mountains fall again, but Yue Fei himself also died unjustly on "trumped-up" charges. Yue Fei's death is generally attributed to the traitor Qin Hui. However, as long as anyone with a little bit of brains will understand that Qin Hui is just a pawn of Song Gaozong, can Qin Hui really be the master? You must know that this order to "go under the knife" can only be given by the emperor Lao'er! His death was actually the result of Emperor Gaozong's selfishness. Song Gaozong was a selfish and cowardly emperor, he didn't want Yue Fei to defeat the Jin people and smash the Yellow Dragon - the reason is very simple, if he defeated the Jin people and smashed the Yellow Dragon, then the two emperors of Song Huizong and Song Qinzong, who were originally captured by the Jin people, would come back, and then he, the new emperor, would not be able to do it. Therefore, on the one hand, he pretended to actively resist Jin, and on the other hand, he secretly sent people to negotiate with Jin, and the successive victories of the Yue family army undoubtedly seriously threatened his interests, so he recalled Yue Fei in such a hurry - the emperor's own interests are not necessarily consistent with the interests of the country, and many times it is the opposite. At this time, you, and all of you here, do you still know that you are wrong and do it on purpose? Is this loyal and patriotic? ”

President Meng's tirade made a group of people speechless, not because President Meng's eloquence was good, but that the feudal rule had come to an end, and if you understand a little reason, you can't follow this kind of rotten thinking, and if you want to argue with President Meng from the point of speech, it's just an egg hitting a stone.

"This is just a special case, it was done by the faint king." A young official retorts to President Moe.

President Meng smiled and said, "When there is a contradiction between loyalty and patriotism, and your subordinates do not choose loyalty, but choose patriotism, what will happen?" The result will not be better than Yue Fei - Yu Qian of the Ming Dynasty is an example. Yu Qian, the word Tingyi, the number of the festival, the official at least the guarantee, the world is known as Yu Shaobao. In the Ming Dynasty, Zhejiang Chengxuan was a political envoy from Qiantang in Hangzhou. Because of his meritorious participation in the pacification of the Han King Zhu Gaoxu's rebellion, he was valued by Xuanzong of the Ming Dynasty and served as the governor of Shanxi and Henan in the Ming Dynasty. During the Ming Yingzong period, he was imprisoned for offending Wang Zhen, and was later released and became a squire in the military department. In the thirteenth year of orthodoxy, Yu Qian was recalled to Beijing and served as the left attendant of the military department. In July of the following year, the Warat people also attacked first, and Wang Zhen held the emperor hostage. Yu Qian and Kuang Yu, the secretary of the military department, tried their best to persuade them, but the emperor did not listen. Kuang followed the emperor to manage the army, leaving Yu Qian to preside over the work of the military department. As a result, Ming Yingzong was captured by the Warat people at Tumubao. When the news came, Jingshi was shocked, and everyone didn't know what to do. The king of the servant supervised the state and ordered his ministers to discuss the strategy of battle and defense. Many of his subordinates suggested that the capital should be moved to Nanjing. Yu Qian said sharply: "Those who advocate moving south should be killed!" Jingshi is the foundation of the world, and if it shakes, the country's plan will be over. Have you forgotten the incident of the Song Dynasty's southern crossing (but not the Song Nandu incident)? At the same time, he also agreed with his ministers to support the accession of the king to the throne. stabilized the situation, and personally supervised the battle when the Warat troops approached the Beijing Division, and repelled them. From the perspective of national interests, Yu Qian is undoubtedly a hero and a patriot. However, his move harmed the interests of Yingzong, who was captured by the enemy at the time, and made him unable to become emperor. Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty negotiated peace with Yexian, so that after Yingzong returned to the dynasty and successfully restored, Yu Qian, who was patriotic and meritorious, had to be killed in the first year of Tianshun for the crime of "rebellion". Yu Qian is patriotic, and, if he wins, history will prove that he is right, and then what will be the result? Or killed, such are the limitations of feudal rule. ”

President Meng gave this example, which is more typical than Yue Fei's example just now, the royal family kills people, and they will never ask you whether you are right or wrong, this is the limitation, irrefutable, the person who just said what the faint monarch did, did not speak.

Guo Songtao looked at President Meng in surprise, President Meng is only five years old.

President Meng stood up, took a few steps back and forth, and said with a smile: "To fight for personal freedom is to fight for the freedom of the country; To fight for the individual's personality is to fight for the national dignity of the country! A free and equal country is not built by a bunch of minions! This sentence will be published tomorrow in the Huacui Evening News. ”

Princess Katrina Kafu nodded, "Yes, President." ”

The charm of President Meng is here, he always loves to talk about democracy, on the other hand, he always loves to take the credit for the initiation of democracy, all to his own personal head, to promote his own personality cult, in the nineteenth century China, in this era of feudal ends, President Meng did not do anything wrong, this set of methods, very domineering, but also very effective. (To be continued.) )