Citizenship means...American vs Singaporean

Link to David Brooks' op-ed in NYT.

I am impressed with the clarity David Brooks have put across the meaning of citizenship. Like the Americans, we also do not share a common ancestry. How they feel and lived up to the status of citizen is an example for Singaporeans. In fact we were building our equivalent quite nicely until LHL and his Cabinet feckless ideas of rapid immigration and over obsession with economic matters. This is what I used to complain in this blog that we traded away our most valuable intangibles for cheap songs.

When we have too many foreigners here in a hurry we quickly erode the essence of citizenship along with our identity. When we prioritize economic growth above values of culture and cohesion, we divide our society and bring on anomie.

Obviously our faith starved PM despite his fine education and erudition have no blinking idea the good and evil behind the economic theories we look up to running this place. I am still waiting for the children to be old enough to read Tomas Sedlacek: Economics of Good and Evil: The Quest for Economic Meaning from Gilgamesh to Wall Street. Perhaps the older girl is almost ready.

To the PAP leaders, values are means when they ought always to be ends. Keep up this egregious obsession with money and we will end up with no place for the huge wealth they have accumulated. From 2011 to 2016 they will be fully caught up with damage control and repairs. Since five years is too short for proper fixes, we see them using masking tape to patch up here and there without the deep thinking and insight. In other words they are just striking a balance between staying true to their business minded selves and appeasing voters. Business is good but it is not god. Like money it is not everything even if everything costs money. This fact they never understood and now they are too busy try to win the next elections to understand.

Nevertheless despite David Brooks' praise, President Obama is no where near as effective as PM Lee but boy he has the right values compared to our PM. But we must remember Obama does not have a free hand to act like Lee Hsien Loong. Now at least LHL is not corrupt like so many of this counterparts in our neck of woods. This alone is often enough to help us out perform them.

Update: June 7 9:45am

Got up early this morning at 5am and was soon greeted by this via my Facebook feed: an open letter from Catherine Lim to the PM. The Dame of the pen cannot tahan already lah!

The image of George Yeo pointing out to all of us after he had lost the last elections became vivid in my mind: the PAP need to rebuild trust.

Fast forward three years, I kept lamenting how could a party which is out of touch and unable to communicate cement trust?

One might be born here but unlike race or civilization nations, we also at some point have to decide to be Singaporeans. You must give people reasons beyond the economic to want to sink roots here or in a matter of one or two decades nobody would want to do NS. Now if trust goes, the rock on which we built this place will also break apart and no firm foundation can be laid even as what was erected before begin to lean and topple.