Freedom of Speech

In the context of Singapore's multi-racial society, where there is cultural and religious plagarism,i think that Szilagyi's view should be adopted.

Szilagyi states that people have to be responsible for what they say and not freely express themselves without considering the undesirable effects it may bring about. In Singapore, this multi-racial society, we should be careful in what we are saying. We must take into account the feelings of the other races whenever we speak. For example, we should refrain from cracking racial jokes, especially in the presence of our friends or people of different races, to prevent hurting their feelings, should the content of the jokes is disrespectful to their religion or culture. This is true as there was a case when my primary school friend, who is a malay, is deeply hurt when she heard our other friends cracking jokes about the malays, they do not feel good about it, and if we were in thier shoes we will also be hurt.

Besides, there was once when a student was taken into court for committing the offence of being insensitive to other races' feelings by putting blogging his comments that are disrespectful to the malays. Our country also has representatives in the parliament to represent the voices of the minority races.These show that Singapore is very concerned with affairs that threaten our racial harmony. Anyone who attempts to do so will have to be punished by the law, which is the social responsibility Szilagyi states , that people have to pay a price for what they say.

On the other hand, Singer believes that freedom of expression is essential to any democracy and therefore should not be limited, but i do not think that it is absolutely correct.I agree that everyone should have a say in a democratic country like Singapore. However, Singapore is a country which sees the importance of racial harmony more than anything else since the racial riots that occur in the past. We do not hope to go through the riots again which we believe will affect our economy and peace adversely.

Therfore, there has to be a limit to what people can say, and for us, this limit is controlled using laws.Some people,like Singer, may think that this is being not democratic enough,but if everyone in Singapore were to speak freely without any considerations, our country may not have come thus far. We may have ended up offending many people of different races, whether they are our friends or colleagues. Under this circumstances, it is difficult for the different races to work together and bring about a better Singapore.

As such, i think that Szilagyi's belief is more suitable for Singapore, which is still quite conservative in what its people can say, due to the racial considerations. Hence i think that Szilagyi' s belief should be adopted rather than Singer's, in order to preserve Singapore's racial harmony.