Love the Country, Love the People (Part One)

The selection of material for this series primarily follows these principles: (1) Uphold critical inheritance: retain the essence and discard the dross. Neither endorse everything wholesale nor reject it wholesale. Inherit ideas in the abstract, develop them through interpretation, remain grounded in the present, and put them to use. (2) Uphold the principle of a systematic, holistic approach. Pay attention to representation across historical periods, exemplary figures from every ethnic group, people from all walks of life, and the many facets of each person. In other words: look vertically across five thousand years of history, tracing each thread through time; look horizontally at the practice of virtue, leaving no aspect unexamined. (3) Uphold the principle of applying the past to the present and putting it to use. When uncovering resources in the form of virtue, pay special attention to the stories and sayings of historical figures, and to traditional public, shared, and common virtues across social classes and ethnic groups. Emphasize their popular, democratic, progressive, developmental, universal, and abstract qualities, without trying to cover all of antiquity or every individual.