Stardate 20040615.1645

(Captain's log): Daryl writes:

I've been reading through your site lately and yes, I've been chewing on the banquet you've provided me. Really love it, although I won't take everything there as an absolute, of course. I'm a 16 year old guy from Singapore and I just want to ask a few questions.

I'm glad you like my site, and I hope you continue to get enjoyment and mental stimulation from reading it.

But you'd have to be a fool to believe everything you see on it, so I'm glad that you say you don't. I don't actively try to lie, but I have just as much chance of being misinformed as anyone else, and what I write is biased because it passes through the lense of my mind. It isn't objective and I make no pretense to being objective. I am not presenting the truth, I am presenting my opinion and my view.

Use what you read here as a starting point. Think about what I say, but then check out other sources.

When I present an opinion, I try to present the reasoning behind it. Examine my reasoning, and consider it. You might agree with me, and you might not, but when you finish you'll understand your own opinion better, no matter what it ends up being.

I don't necessarily want you to agree with me. But if you disagree, I want you to understand why.

Just a little background information just in case you don't know much about Singapore:

Singapore's a tiny island at the foot of the Malay Peninsula in South East Asia. It is made up of descendants of Chinese, Malay and Indian immigrants who came when the British colonised it in 1819. My race is Eurasian though, which is the general term for any of those who are descended from Western-Asian families. I am descended from the Portuguese settlers who invaded Malacca long ago in the 1500s.

Anyway, Singapore has long been attacked for its restrictions on human rights. You probably know of this due to the Michael Fay incident in 1994.

A complete report can be read here in the USA's report on Singapore.

The government here has often repeated that many of its restrictions are necessary to preserve the peace in a 4 million strong population living in an area smaller than Manhattan. The use of the Internal Security Act to arrest suspected members of a terrorist cell here proved useful and more or less better for all of us.

Life here isn't very bad at all. In fact, in some ways it is better than most places on Earth. The economy is strong, the reserves huge. Standard of living is high, an education system said by many to surpass that of the US. We are completely urbanized, and we have a damn damn damn low crime rate. Checking the almanac, Singapore standards in many ways surpasses the US.

Yet people have condemned it many times for being a near-communist society.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "communist". I suspect that those who do are making the rhetorical point that it is similar to the communist nations, and in some ways Singapore is. In other ways it is radically different.

Singapore isn't socialist, and its economy isn't the basket case that centrally-planned communist economies somehow always ended up being. Singapore has a per-capita GDP comparable to European nations.

But Singapore is much more authoritarian and much less liberal (in the traditional sense of the word) than the UK or Japan or the US, or even South Korea or Taiwan.

For intellectuals, Singapore is the worst place to live in. Censorship is high and the Government can pull the Internal Security Act the moment you publish or even say anything which "threatens civil unrest", a very broad statement indeed. And yes, being arrested under that Act means that you are detained for however long deemed necessary by the Government. I'm opposed to many of the Government's policies here (which I shall not care to mention, too many) and have done some campaigning.

And that is a good capsule description of the biggest difference between Singapore and the US.

I do however feel that Singapore is really a great place to live in, given the amount of peace and development here. My only problems with it are that sometimes, I feel the grip is too tight.

My questions may be a little surprising.

Compare Singapore to the USA, does Singapore really seem so restrictive? Don't you feel that sometimes liberty is abused to the fullest extent in America? Don't you agree that certain restrictions are necessary, restrictions that aren't in place in the USA?

No form of liberty is absolute and unrestricted. As a practical matter it isn't possible, since liberties come into conflict. It's sometime said that "Your right to throw a punch ends a centimeter from the tip of my nose."

There was a Supreme Court decision