Singer believes that freedom of expression is essential to any democracy and therefore should not be limited. On the other hand, Szilagyi believes that more focus should be placed on social responsibility.In the context of Singapore's multi-racial society,where there is cultural and religious pluralism,which author's view do you think should be adopted?

Both author’s view have their pros and cons, but I think that Szilagyi's view should be adopted. Singapore is a multi-racial society consisting of people with many different ideals and beliefs. It is easy to offend anyone if you speak without thinking. I think we should respect others just like we respect ourselves. If we were allowed to voice out racist remarks without caring about the other races, Singapore will have many racial riots following the ones in 1964, involving the Chinese and the Malays. The reason why Singapore has been so peaceful with no racial riots is because there is a slightly restricted freedom of expression in Singapore.A good example would be the publishing of the cartoons of Prophet Mohammed in the Danish newspapers. This caused quite a riot in Denmark.

On the other hand, however, I think Singer's view is also applicable to Singapore to some extent. Freedom of expression should be limited where race and religion is concern, but the freedom of expression should not be limited when it comes to how a country is governed. Citizens of a country should have the right to voice out freely their displeasure about the government and their way of governing the country and the government should receive these people's opinions with an open mind. This way, the government can make adjustments to their policies to better suit the country's citizens. Otherwise, they should give an explanation on why a certain policy is like that and why it should not be changed, letting the people understand. This will make Singaporeans voice out more and not keep quite all the time and also to rebut a satire made in Jack Neo’s film where the joke was that fishing in Singapore is difficult because fish in Singapore don’t open their mouths, just like Singaporeans.

If both authors’ views can co-exist in Singapore, our country will be able to become better first class country and where people can live harmoniously.

Hiya! I'm Isabelle , from Kranji Secondary which you all might assume that it is situated in Kranji.B ut, you are all WRONG!!! It's in Yew Tee! Getting into AJC is the sort of thing that teachers in Kranji and my parents will encouraged me to do, and here I am! I seriously am brain dead now. I can't think of anything else to blog about. Well, I guess I shall start with what I like doing. I love to watch TV, I can stay in front of the square box for one whole day with shows to watch. I know this is an incredibly bad habit and you may be glad to know that I now have absolutely no time to watch TV the whole day, except for like 1 hour a day? I am currently in CO which I am totally in love with, after being jilted by some other CCA which i shall not mention. I play the 'erhu' which is some sort of a traditional Chinese instrument that is almost always associated with elderly China men sitting along the back alley, with nothing to do, but just playing the erhu all day.