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Back in our opening, all we lumped Lee Kuan Yew in with some pretty unsavory characters.
回到我们的开场，我们都把李光耀和一些令人讨厌的角色放在一起。
While that was mostly to demonstrate how different he was from other east Asian rulers in this era.
虽然这主要是为了展示他在这个时代与其他东亚统治者的不同之处。
It was also because he at least vaguely belongs in their group.
这也是因为他至少属于他们的团体。
No one, but no one could stay in power for over 30 years without having at least a mild authoritarian streak.
没有人，但没有人可以在没有轻微的威权倾向的情况下继续执政30年以上。
And Lee's streak was sometimes a shade or two beyond mild.
而李光耀的连胜有时也是温和之外的一两个阴影。
For starters, is Singapore functioned under some pretty strict limits on free speech and public assembly.
首先，新加坡在言论自由和公共集会方面受到了一些相当严格的限制。
It also featured a judiciary that was less than independent while judges were free from obvious interference.
这样的特点还包括一个不太独立的司法机构，而法官不受明显干预。
They still towed the PAP party line on nearly all significant rulings and speaking of PAP.
他们仍然在几乎所有重大裁决和谈论人民行动党的问题上坚持人民行动党的路线。
It wasn't just Lee who became a permanent feature of the landscape.
不仅仅是李光耀成为了这片风景的永久特色。
Despite technically being a multi-party democracy with free and fair elections, Singapore effectively became a one-party state.
尽管严格来讲，新加坡是一个多党民主国家，选举自由公正，但实际上新加坡已经成为一个一党专政的国家。
Between 1966 and 1981, not a single seat in parliament was held by a non-PAP politician.
1966至1981年间，议会中没有一个席位由人民行动党以外的政客占据。
When a record 40 of voters backed opposition candidates in 2011, just six of 87 seats went to other parties.
2011年，当创纪录的40%的选民支持反对党候选人时，87个席位中只有6个流向了其他政党。
Part of the reason for this was PAP's ability to spot emerging new talents and co-opt them, bringing the best and brightest into the fold.
部分原因是人民行动党能够发现新兴的新人才，并吸收他们，把最优秀和最聪明的人才带到队伍中来。
Another was the party's genuine enduring popularity.
另一个原因是该党真正经久不衰的人气。
But at least part of it was due to PAP's vice-like grip over society, not just central government but local work brigades, residence, committees and local associations.
但至少部分原因是人民行动党对社会的控制，不仅是中央政府，还有地方工作队、居民、委员会和地方协会。
They all fell under his spell.
他们都被他迷住了。
To take part in civil society, almost by default had to get involved with PAP.
为了加入公民社会，几乎在默认情况下，必须参与人民行动党。
This meant a level of identification with the party that pretty much no one in the opposition could muster.
这意味着对该党的认同感达到了几乎没有反对党人能达到的程度。
And when they tried it often meant trouble.
而当他们尝试的时候，往往意味着麻烦。
Unlike a classic, lock them up or shoot them, authoritarian Lee had a much more humane yet equally effective way of dealing with political opposition.
与经典的要么把他们关起来，要么开枪打死他们不同，威权主义的李光耀有一种更人道但同样有效的方式来应对政治反对派。
Thanks to stringent libel laws, critics of the government could easily be hit with devastating lawsuits.
由于严格的诽谤法，批评政府的人很容易受到毁灭性的诉讼。
Opposition star J.B.Jeyaretnam was repeatedly bankrupted by politically motivated rulings.
反对党明星杰亚勒南多次因政治动机的裁决而破产。
From Lee's point of view, the reason for all of this was clear.
从李光耀的角度来看，这一切的原因是显而易见的。
Loosen things up in society just a little and the demons of ethnic strife or communist agitation might come howling out again.
社会上的事情稍微放松一点，种族冲突或共产主义骚动的恶魔可能会再次咆哮。
As he confessed in an interview long after his retirement, "I'm not saying that everything I did was right, but everything I did was for an honorable purpose."
正如他在退休后很久的一次采访中所承认的那样，“我并不是说我所做的一切都是正确的，但我所做的一切都是为了一个光荣的目的。”
"I had to do some nasty things, locking fellows up without trial."
“我不得不做一些卑鄙的事情，未经审判就把人关起来。”
Still sometimes this obsessive micromanaging of society spilled over into cartoonishness.
尽管如此，这种对社会的强迫性微观管理有时会蔓延到卡通化。
Under Lee's tightly controlled rule, the specific types of trees that could be planted by roadsides were mandated and the government even set up its own dating agencies to try and get high quality graduates to reproduce.
在李光耀的严格控制下，路边可以种植的树木的具体类型被强制要求，政府甚至设立了自己的相亲机构，试图让高质量的毕业生繁衍后代。
More seriously, an aggressive drive to stop families having more than two kids was so successful that it badly damaged the birth rate leading to an ongoing demographic crisis.
更严重的是，阻止家庭生育两个以上孩子的激进举措是如此成功，以至于严重损害了出生率，导致了持续的人口危机。
So yeah, if you're used to Europe or America's focus on individual freedoms life under Lee, it probably would have seemed stifling a democratic hero he certainly was not.
所以，是的，如果你习惯了欧洲或美国对个人自由的关注，李光耀领导下的生活可能会看起来扼杀了一个民主英雄，但他肯定不是。
Yet Lee never really claimed to be a democrat.
然而，李光耀从未真正声称自己是民主党人。
He was always clear-eyed about what he wanted to achieve via his soft authoritarianism and the results speak for themselves.
他总是清楚地知道他想要通过他的软性威权主义实现什么，结果不言而喻。
In Lee's time in power, Singapore's life expectancy increased by 10 years.
在李光耀执政期间，新加坡的预期寿命增加了10年。
Literacy levels skyrocketed, GDP per capita went from relatively low to among the highest on the planet.
识字率飙升，人均国内生产总值从相对较低的水平跃升至全球最高水平。
While the nation he constructed would be one many outsiders found oppressive.
虽然他建立的这个国家将是一个许多外人认为是压迫的国家。
William Gibson famously dubbed it Disneyland with the death penalty.
威廉·吉布森给该国起了一个著名的绰号--判处死刑的迪斯尼乐园。
It was also one in which its citizens were both extremely safe and often extremely uncomfortable.
这也是一个公民既感到非常安全，又感觉不舒适的地方。
But perhaps Lee's cleverest move would have come at the end of his rule.
但也许李光耀最聪明的举动是在他的统治结束时。
Rather than simply staying in power until he died like most authoritarians, he did something that helped prepare this tightly controlled society for life without him.
他没有像大多数独裁者那样简单地掌权到去世，而是做了一些事情，帮助这个受到严密控制的社会为没有他的生活做好准备。
He willingly stepped down.
他自愿下台了。
