In "The Three Principles of People," Sun Yat-Sen analyzes the meaning of the word "liberty," and how the word is perceived. Sun Yat-Sen defines liberty as "the freedom to move about as one wishes within an organized group," and uses a handful of sand as an example, saying that the sand slipping about without any tendency to cohere, making it loose sand, is like freedom. However, if the sand is cemented together, it is not liberty. Many revolutions in the world have come upon because of liberty, but liberty is not the word used for fighting. The French Revolution was fought for liberty, the American Revolution was fought for independence, and the Chinese Revolution was fought for The Three Principles of People. It seems like everyone is just fighting for the same thing. Each of these countries wants the same thing, and that is the definition Sun Yat-Sen uses to define liberty. .
The message that is trying to be conveyed through this passage is that this ideology of liberty is what modernizes China's society, and Sun Yat-Sen's attempt to make China a free, prosperous, and powerful nation. He does so by using his three principles to implement a new order to China, to end the Qing Dynasty. His ideologies of nationalism, democracy, and the people's livelihood were influenced and contain some elements of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to modernize China. His use of nationalism is used to free China from imperialist domination. He wanted to unite all of the different ethnicities of China: Han, Mongols, Tibetan, Manchus, and Muslims. Democracy was implemented to allow the people to have power. He divided this concept into two sets of power: the power of politics and the power of governance. The power of politics allows people to express their political wishes, and the power of governance is the powers of administration, by implementing a five-branch government.