Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Unrighteousness at the top, chaos at the bottom” is the English version of the Vietnamese “Thượng bất chánh, hạ tắc loạn” – when the leaders are unrighteous, the people are in anarchy.

People always look up to their leaders to imitate, be they government officials, business executives, teachers, priests, monks, nuns…

The problem “at the top” now is that too many government officials are involed in major corruption cases. Of course, the current government has been doing a more than superb job in fighting corruption. But the constant news stream of anti-corruption victories is also the evidence of so many bad apples at the top.

And when the people see unrighteousness at the top, they imitate and become unrighteous, immoral, and illegal.

How do we fix this mega-problem of the country?

Of course, the obvious solution is to fix “the top.” But we need to expand the meaning of “the top.”

Everyone of us is already at the top – parent, teacher, supervisor, company director, boss… Each one of us is at the top of some entity and has many followers or “lính” under us. Thus, we need to be righteous, for the people under us to have order, peace and goodness.

The top of any entity – family, school, class, company, company department, government office, Internet network, association, group, church, pagoda, temple – needs to be righteous for their followers to be good.

We cannot simply point our finger at the top of the government while we don’t do our job at the top of our own entity. The government is a very small minority, the people is everyone in the country – that is a colossal number of people, which truly determine the state of the nation.

The minority simply cannot do the job of the collosal majority.

Think about it. And do our job.

With compassion,

Hoành

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Trần Đình Hoành
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