The duty to remonstrate is the tradition's answer to the charge that it is simply a doctrine of obedience, and it is explicit in the sources. The Classic of Filial Piety devotes a chapter to it, concluding that a father who has a son who will argue with him will not fall into what is wrong, and stating flatly that merely obeying a father's commands cannot be called filial. The Analects specifies the manner: remonstrate gently, and if the parent does not accept it remain respectful and do not become resentful, and continue. The political version is the memorial to the throne, and the historical record of it is grim and celebrated in equal measure — officials who submitted knowing the likely outcome, and were beaten at court, exiled, or executed. The Ming practice of court flogging made this literal. The tradition's own canon of heroes is heavily populated by men who told an emperor he was wrong and were destroyed for it, which is a real counterweight to the reading of Confucianism as pure hierarchy, and it did not prevent the hierarchy from functioning.