Once again you completely miss the purely logical points I am making here. I have no political dog in this fight. I merely hope that if any person wants to put forward a major thesis in public discourse, that this thesis should be substantiated with good arguments. Therefore it offends my sensibilities terribly when Woon puts forward a rather controversial stance and has shitty, dishonest arguments for it. I am actually quite sympathetic to relativists. However, there are good and bad arguments for relativism (or for absolutism). If you put forward a bad argument for relativism, I will whack you just as hard as if you put forward a bad argument for absolutism (e.g. arguments from religious authority).

What Mahbubani writes has no relevance to what Woon said. I am not here attacking what the Sg govt thinks or whatever. I am attacking Woon on the basis of his reply to Siew Kum Hong and the quotes from him in the Today article. You have not engaged any of the things Woon actually said and have merely asserted that how he ‘is not actually saying this’ when he clearly does. He denies that the decision of what human rights are is “a decision is for the rest of humanity” (refer to Siew Kum Hong’s post for these quotes). How much stronger a can that be, as a statement that he thinks there are no universal human rights? He does not, anywhere in his reply to Siew, argue against the *content* of the UNDHR. He argues against the fact that they are universal, and that their proponents (he claims) are incapable of reasoned dialogue. Therefore I am not interested in any arguments about the content of the UNHDR. As I’ve said, I am not myself convinced that human rights exist at all. I merely brought up the UNHDR as a point against Woon’s claim that it is extreme to think universal human rights exist. My purpose in this post is just to point out how shitty, disingenuous, dishonest and hypocritical Woon’s arguments are. I take no side in whether universal human rights exist or what they are.

This isn’t based on the ST’s reporting, for heaven’s sake. This is from a letter that Woon himself wrote to the Today forum. Even if you didn’t follow my links to the sources of my quotes, if I put things in blockquotes, it should be obvious that those are quotes from the person who said those words exactly, and not from the reporter.

Finally, I would bother writing to ask someone his views if he shows some promise of having views worth knowing. And I would not attribute such promise to a person who put forward a string of ad hominems and confused labels as an ‘argument’.

“Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They are privileges.” - George Carlin

I don’t think he is against the concept of absolute moral standard. Human rights are supposed to be universal. I have not heard people talking about human rights for Asia, human rights for Europe etc.

Rather i think he has some issues as to how these human rights are derived and how they are selectively applied. I think he believes that human rights hitherto has largely been defined by the West with very little dialogue by participants from other parts of the world. So maybe, he has some issues as to how representative these human rights are in the first place.

Secondly, he probably has some qualms as to how these human rights are applied. Unfortunately, human rights are convenient foreign policy instruments to marginalize certain countries or score political points domestically. At the same time, when he talks about “hypocrisy” of these fanatics,he is probably referring to Guantanamo Bay and the tacit use of torture by America and it’s European allies.

If you are interested in where he is coming from, I suggest that you read the views of Kishore Mahbubani. I think he is pretty representative of the Singapore government’s view and probably A.G. Woon’s. I found a link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-QkWeD_xqa0

Also note that ST has bad reporting. And why don’t you just write an email to him.

I don’t think he would have supported the Law Society’s effort to conduct a series of lectures on human rights if he is not the least bit interested in dialogue.