An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:
How does Madam Loh define giving one’s life for this country? Must one be a prime minister or a minister to qualify as giving life for the country? If that is Madam Loh’s definition, then nearly all Singaporeans have not given their lives for the country. That would be most unfair to Singaporeans who would effectively be condemned as jiat liao bis.
Or perhaps Madam Loh defines giving one’s life for this country as having worked in the public sector. If that is Madam Loh’s definition and Madam Loh wants to encourage all to give life for this country, then either everyone has to work for the public sector or the private sector has to be completely nationalized. Either way is impossible without ruining the country.
So the only fair and sensible definition must be that anyone who has worked hard to contribute in his or her small way to nation building in whatever capacity should be deemed as having given one’s life for the country. That will mean that almost everyone has given his or her life for the country. Whether it is 50% or 25% will depend on the person’s age and life expectancy. But by the end of our lives, we would all have given the bulk of our lives for this country. Even Mr Lee himself never gave 100% of his life for the country for how could baby Lee Kuan Yew sucking milk from his mother’s breast be considered as giving his life for the country?
But even with that definition, we run into problems as youths who have not taken part time jobs would not qualify as giving their lives for the country. In that case, why does Straits Times provide youth forums for youths to make noise when they don’t meet the qualifying criteria of having given their lives to the country?
So in the end, the definition has to be that there is no life giving requirement before someone can qualify to make noise. Otherwise our children will be mutes until the day they start working.
Madam Loh wrote:
http://www.tremeritus.com/2015/04/07...longer-silent/
Click here to view the whole thread at www.sammyboy.com.
07-04-2015, 05:00 PM
Madam Loh, how do you define "giving life for the country"?
