http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2008/06/the_selfjustification_of_elite.php

Deresiewicz does make some valid points in his article though.

Amazing that an article by an ivy league alumnus trying to critique the ivy league system still sounds so smug.

It’s a very simple equation and balance it, something’s got to give…

Besides quantity, quality is also important - I believe a lot of hawkers have turned to cheaper and inferior ingredients - be it the noodles, rice or condiments - to keep the prices unchanged…

Of course, in the absence of other taxes, COE is better than nothing (otherwise the nation will be in permanent gridlock), but there is nothing administratively difficult about raising petrol taxes and ERP, so why not. Yeah, it’s politically unpopular, but if there’s any benefit to living under a benevolent dictatorship, surely it’s the possibility of the dictators implementing good policies that are wrongly detested by the common man.

But, but, the good thing in Singapore is that since we can be so politically insensitive to high ERP, car owners will eventually feel the pinch. I literally count the number of times I get zapped as i drive into the CBD area. So it stil l works.

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