[[Freedom of expression]]

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?



I feel that Szilagyi's view on social responsibilty should be adopted. As Singapore is a multi-racial society, the people of different races and religions have their own cultures. Thus, even though freedom of expression may be accepted in our society, it is necessary for us to exercise social responsibility, so as to show respect to the other races and be sensitive to their feelings. By doing this, not only can we built a more harmonious community, peace can also be preserved. According to Szilagyi, an example of anger caused by the freedom of speech would be, the offence cartoons in a Danish paper had caused to the Muslims in the world. Even though the Danish paper did apologise, they still insisted that their publications was justified under the freedom of speech principles. Thus this shows how easily a simple publication can spark off tension among different races. Though 'freedom of speech is, no doubt, an essential foundation of any democracy, newspapers or other forms of media have to understand that they do not create the context and lifespan of their messages'. Szilagyi is trying to say that in most cases of achieving democracy, there is a need for freedom of expression, provided that it is used to a small extent. Most of the time, these people do not know their limits and thus not know what is the impact or consequences of their words. Therefore, it may cause a momentary dissatisfaction among others, which the person responsible of the controversy may not have thought of before- hand.


On the other hand, Singer believes that freedom of expression is essential to any democracy and should not be limited. In his view, he felt that it is alright for people to speak whatever they have in mind. But he did not consider the fact that some people may be more sensitive than the others. In this way, I feel that he is rather self-centred. From his views, we can see that he speaks without consideration of others' feelings. In the context of a multi-racial Singapore, we have to take into account of others' feelings, rather than our own. An example of an insult would be 'we must be free to deny the existence of God, and to criticize the teachings of Jesus, Moses, Muhammad and Buddha, as reported in text that millions of people regard as sacred'. If this were to be allowed in Singapore, this will immediately cause tension or even racial riots among the races. Just this sentence alone would have illustrated the impact of the abuse of freedom of expression.

Therefore, in conclusion, I feel that though the freedom of expression may be acceptable, there should be a limit to which it can be used. Especially in a multi-racial society, like Singapore, freedom of expression can only be allowed to a certain extent, as focus should most importantly be placed on each person's social responsibility.