This is so interesting. Today discounting that we are a day ahead, America will celebrate its 237th year of independence. Somehow in her pursuit of self interest and paradoxically high ideals places like Singapore has benefited tremendously. Meanwhile China hope to use her and eventually challenge and overtake her. America allows this willingly, accepts that any alternative would leave us all much worse off. She also believes she can beat or peacefully coexist with China.
Former minister George Yeo is also a curious example if much less so. For the life of me I cannot imagine him putting this up were he still in government. Does he believe this to be a viable ideal for us? Why the Singapore psyche is respected but grudgingly admired sometimes but rarely loved is because we do not strive for ideals. Therefore nobody wants to journey with us. With the memory of the Haze still fresh in my mind, I can imagine some Indonesian leaders felt that it was totally in our long term self interest that we pulled out all stops to go to their aid in the 2004 Tsunami. How I wished we are more than just bread and butter.
We must have less fear and more faith, hope and courage. We cannot get there with our wealth gap is huge. Most people will not sign on to anything beyond bread and butter issues until we achieve high averages and small standard deviation.
"For the life of me I cannot imagine him putting this up were he still in government."
ReplyDeleteWhen you have one standard when you are a government official.
And another standard when you are a private citizen.
What does this make you?
Did I hear a former Minister say that it was hypocrisy?
The Gettysburg Address
versus
“Remember your place in society before you engage in political debate...
Debate cannot degenerate into a free-for-all where no distinction is made between the senior and junior party...
You must make distinctions – what is high, what is low, what is above, what is below, and then within this, we can have a debate, we can have a discussion...
people should not take on those in authority as ‘equals’”. – Straits Times, Feb 1994.
Like Lincoln, you have made your mark in history with your own famous speech.
Isaiah 57:7-17 (New International Version)
7. You have made your bed on a high and lofty hill; there you went up to offer your sacrifices.
8 Behind your doors and your doorposts you have put your pagan symbols. Forsaking me, you uncovered your bed, you climbed into it and opened it wide; you made a pact with those whose beds you love, and you looked on their nakedness.
9 You went to Molech with olive oil and increased your perfumes. You sent your ambassadors far away; you descended to the grave itself
4th of July is the date that America declared its independence with these famous words;
ReplyDeleteI dare George Yeo to put up these words in his facebook.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
"That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
"That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."