Ladies and Gentlemen,
I am wrting below a comment I received to my blog from Anonymous, on Thursday, August 26, 2010, "Dissent is simmering under the brim in Singapore".
These are words of wisdom which we should all keep in mind. They succinctly describe present day Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew's rule.
"A society that robs an individual of the product of his effort, or enslaves him, or attempts to limit the freedom of his mind, or compels him to act against his own rational judgment-a society that sets up a conflict between its edicts and the requirements of man's nature-is not, strictly speaking, a society, but a mob held together by institutionalized gang-rule. Such a society destroys all the values of human coexistence, has no possible justification and represents not a source of benefits, but the deadliest threat to man's survival. Life on a desert island is safer than and incomparably preferable to existence in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany, (or present day North Korea).
If men are to live together in a peaceful, productive, rational society and deal with one another to mutual benefit, they must accept the basic social principle without which no moral or civilized society is possible: the principle of individual rights"
Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/
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5 comments:
You are listening to the mind of Ayn Rand, the Russo-American philosopher whose legacy today is the Ayn Rand Institute, a think-tank located in Irvine, California. Those stirring words are from her The Nature of Government which has more than a few trenchant observations about individual rights and which states bluntly that "if a society is to be free, its government has to be controlled". Interestingly, Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan was a follower and cited her as one whose ideas influenced him.
I suspect Lee Kuan Yew and his toadies probably wouldn't like her, nor she, them. What a pity she passed away before they could meet in debate on the philosophy behind his cunning 'Asian Values' concept to justify authoritarian rule - I'd have paid good money to attend that discussion! But then again he always was a political coward, as Said Zahari tells us, and would never risk the loss of face should she make a monkey out of him in an intellectual contest.
Ayn Rand wrote her treatise in December 1963 and a reading today shows us how accurately she foresaw the Singapore of 2010:
'Instead of being a protector of man?s rights, the government is becoming their most dangerous violator; instead of guarding freedom, the government is establishing slavery; instead of protecting men from the initiators of physical force, the government is initiating physical force and coercion in any manner and issue it pleases; instead of serving as the instrument of objectivity in human relationships, the government is creating a deadly, subterranean reign of uncertainty and fear, by means of nonobjective laws whose interpretation is left to the arbitrary decisions of random bureaucrats; instead of protecting men from injury by whim, the government is arrogating to itself the power of unlimited whim so that we are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.'
Let's hope that PAP's fall from electoral grace won't trigger that final stage and usher in Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four dystopia.
my english may not be so so good to write such eloquent words, but when you write individual rights - i have 2 sens to contribute.
the simple singapore mind will try to associate it with something he understand within his limited exposure, even if it is wrong.
so what is individual rights?
1. chaos because everyone doing his own thing.
2. strikes and street protests - like bangkok.
3. loss of peace, harmony, drunken idiots, fights. more crimes.
thanks to the great singapore mind manipulation and tabooing campaign, individual rights has became a bad word.
To Anonymous of Aug 30, 11:17,
Your observation of Singaporeans is not only simplistic, it is a downright insult to a vast number of Singaporeans who I venture to guess, are far more informed than even you are.
In every society, especially a third world country like Singapore, you have the masses who are uneducated or half educated who have not been exposed to the the ideas of freedom and democracy.
But I can assure you, just as you understand these sonoric words in this blog, so do a large segment of the Singapore polulation who are aware they are living under dictatorial rule.
That is why Lee Kuan Yew is finding it increasing diffuclt to justify all his propoganda in the state controlled press, that Singaproe is one super society.
Remember, the ideas of the those who are ignorant did not move societies. It is the edcuated and learned that matter.
In fact it is Singaporeans like you that matter, not the dishwasher who prefers the status quo, to riots in Bangkok.
A quote from a movie, "Brave Heart":
"Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you'll live... at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willin' to trade ALL the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they'll never take... OUR FREEDOM!"
~William Wallace~
I think the point that many people miss is that the highly sexualised punishment of caning is a tool for the government to stay in office. The PAP has a history of bankrupting and in some cases caning its opposition. When you have been stripped naked and caned you are nothing. Your education is limited to PAP Party doctrine and should a man ever be accused of fondling a woman, whether he did or not then he is done for. I wonder how many men have been stripped naked and degraded in that God awful little state? It is not a safe place at all.
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