Although Zhu Youxiao said this, the meaning was very clear, that is, I still don’t know what people in the world think?
There's no way to say this. So, as a subject, what should you do?
The answer is simple, which is to let Your Majesty know what people in the world think.
As for who these people were, they were not the Donglin Party members, but the people recruited by Wei Zhongxian. There was no doubt about what the people Wei Zhongxian recruited would say. Basically, they would say whatever he told them to say.
Watching Wei Zhongxian's back as he left, Zhu Youxiao sat back in the wheelchair, reached out his hand and gently tapped the armrest, his expression calm.
In fact, Zhu Youxiao had already made up his mind to take action against the Donglin Party and he was going to start cleaning up the people.
Originally, Zhu Youxiao wanted to see if there were any useful people in the Donglin Party, such as Yang Lian, who was one of the six gentlemen of Donglin in history. However, he found that Yang Lian was completely unusable.
When Yang Lian faced Wei Zhongxian, he naturally shouted for war and was willing to sacrifice his life to defend his own cause.
But in other areas, they seem to be lackluster and helpless. The case against Xiong Tingbi has been going on for so long, and yet they still haven't gotten to the bottom of it. A mere recantation of his confession is enough to make them helpless.
He values his reputation, refuses to torture people, and has no other way to find out the truth. At the same time, he is used to compromising with his own people and has strong factional prejudices. Naturally, such a Yang Lian is useless.
If Yang Lian couldn't be used in the Donglin Party, who could be used? Zhu Youxiao no longer had the mood or the desire to sort through them one by one.
In that case, let's just defeat them.
Of course, this overthrow is not only physical annihilation, but also ideological annihilation. The Ming Dynasty needs new ideas.
"It seems that I can only go further and further down the path of a tyrant!" Zhu Youxiao sighed helplessly and leaned back.
The ideological debate in the late Ming Dynasty was actually a very important issue, and was called the new thought in the late Ming Dynasty.
This new trend of thought is closely related to the political and economic situation and changes in cultural trends in the middle and late Ming Dynasty.
Since the School of Mind broke through the ideological shackles of Neo-Confucianism, the economic foundation of the literati in the Ming Dynasty, especially those in the Jiangnan region, was no longer a simple agricultural economy, but a collection of umbrellas for large landowners, slave owners of bankrupt farmers, handicraftsmen and merchants.
Their political demands were inevitably characterized by deregulation and weak administration, but because the Ming Dynasty's own system determined that the commodity economy in the Middle Ages was limited, all the wealth of these literati was restricted to land. The larger the national fiscal deficit, the more taxes were imposed, and all taxes were passed on to ordinary farmers. The more effectively the Single Whip Law was implemented, the more likely it was to exacerbate farmers' bankruptcy.
At such an urgent time, new ideas were inevitably needed, and the trend of lecturing became popular, so the Donglin Party came into being.
Politically, they advocated clean governance, meritocracy, and exceptional promotions for talented individuals. As for who were the talented individuals? Of course, they were their own people.
On taxation, they advocated not competing with the people for profits, collecting less tax, and if any tax was to be collected, it should only be collected from self-cultivating farmers. The heavier the tax on self-cultivating farmers, the faster they would go bankrupt, and the faster they went bankrupt, the more powerful the landlords and bureaucrats led by these Donglin Party members would become.
By then, there will be war everywhere, the world will be in turmoil, and then everyone will be doomed.
But even knowing this, these party members can't control their hands. If money is right in front of you, would you not make it? If you can save tax money, would you not save it?
Not to mention this era, people in later generations don’t have this awareness either.
If we want to deal with these landlords and gentry, we can only rely on strict laws and force. If you don't pay, then I will confiscate it.
This is what these people fear, so they seize the power of the country, put the army under their own supervision, put the imperial power in a cage, denounce the eunuch party as heresy, and beat the nobles into waste!
When everything is done, it seems that it is time to enjoy the fruits of victory.
The world is in turmoil, the country is overturned, and it is replaced by a high-pressure alien rule. The right thing to do is for everyone to learn to kowtow honestly.
Zhu Youxiao was thinking about this in his mind, and suddenly he laughed, and laughed so loudly that he started coughing.
There is both sarcasm and sadness in the laughter.
After a while, Zhu Youxiao stood up and walked to the door. He looked at the sky in the distance and sighed softly.
As the saying goes, killing someone destroys their heart. If you want to destroy the Donglin Party, killing people alone is not enough, unless you do something like the Qing Dynasty did, such as the Three Days in Yangzhou, to completely cleanse the world and kill all opponents.
Zhu Youxiao would not do so because it did not conform to his ideas.
The Ming Dynasty was facing the Earth in the colonial era, and it was impossible for it to reduce its own strength in this way.
Another crucial point is that Zhu Youxiao could not accomplish something like staying in Yangzhou for three days.
The Qing dynasty could do this, but I couldn't, because one was an invader and the other was a ruler. The same thing would be done differently by different people.
However, Zhu Youxiao also had a way. As the saying goes, killing someone is like destroying their heart. If he wanted to destroy the Donglin Party, he had to dig out their roots, starting from their thoughts, and directly dig up their ancestral graves.
Zhu Youxiao was naturally no stranger to ideological debates and disputes over the orthodox doctrine.
Whether it is Emperor Wu of Han's "abolishing all schools of thought and respecting Confucianism alone" in China or the Renaissance abroad, people in later generations have read about them.
Banish all other schools of thought and respect Confucianism alone. Although Confucianism may seem like a way to gild itself, one can also do the same.
Which one to choose?
That’s very simple. The Taizhou School of Mind Learning, specifically the thoughts of Li Zhi.
Li Zhi himself had already died, and he was forced to death by Neo-Confucianism.
Now it was Zhu Youxiao's turn to use Li Zhi's ideas to kill Neo-Confucianism and the Donglin Party.
Li Zhi's ideas were in line with the historical trend and general trend. Once promoted by the royal family, they would be absolutely unstoppable by Neo-Confucianism and the Donglin Party.
As for why Zhu Youxiao chose Li Zhi's ideas, the answer is simple, because Li Zhi had followers.
Even after his death, he still had successors and die-hard fans, people who defended his teachings. Even until the end of the Chongzhen period, he still had die-hard fans.
These people will become Zhu Youxiao's men, and they will ruthlessly attack the Donglin Party.
The Qi-Zhe-Chu faction was similar to the Donglin faction, but the descendants of the Taizhou School of the School of Mind were different from both the Donglin and Qi-Zhe-Chu factions. They were very powerful. The only thing that the emperor could not accept was their arguments about the emperor.
For example, Li Zhi believed that according to the principle of the unity of all things, there was no distinction between high and low in society. The common people were not humble, and they had their own merits; the princes and nobles were not noble, and they also had their own humbleness.
He also said, "Heaven establishes the monarch for the sake of the people," meaning that God establishes the monarch for the sake of the people, not because it is a destiny.
The emperor did not like such ideas, and it was even more impossible for him to accept them.
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