Opinion

Condemn Caning Authoritarianism

By John Murray | May 4, 1994

To the Editor: There are several rather disturbing misperceptions in Won Joon Choe's '97 column "Judging Asia's Authoritarianism" (May 2). Amid his enthusiasm for what he identifies as that country's political and legal authoritarian underpinnings, he asserts that no government can rightly "claim that it is the best form of government in all cases and for all people." Curiously, this does not prevent Choe from prescribing that very system for the United States, whose crime and environmental problems he attributes to "the proliferation of individual rights." Yet the author fails to consider that Singapore, with its tiny and homogeneous population of 2.5 million, has largely escaped the societal problems posed by a multicultural population ten times its size. To conclude that the current difficulties in this country are the result of its commitment to individual rights is absurd.