Isn’t the “justice” system over there severe? I recall hearing about whippings for people who do graffiti. The “tolerance” of any disorder—however small—is severely punished? As I said earlier-—you tend to think of mass conformity and fear as “trust”.
Totalitarianism creates a “safe” “trusting” environment also-—but freedom is not an element of that culture.
I say—as the Ancient Greeks, Cicero, Adam Smith, the Founders, that without Virtue there is no trust. (Liars, cheaters, adulterers, etc. never create trust). Only Moral people can be trusted...and with the overwhelming Christian paradigm in Western Civilization, trust has been the greatest—even with a diverse population of groups who from other countries had no tolerance of groups that in America they took as friends.
The freedom in America—like NO other country—was because of a moral citizenry-—of the masses. We had far more moral people than immoral—and the immoral used to be punished. We used to have a Rule by Law instead of arbitrary laws which Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. helped install to destroy our Constitutional Republic.
As I said— Singapore Laws are based on the English Common Law—which is based on Christian Ethics. What are their laws on homosexuality? On littering? etc. It seems that their built in laws promote Christian ethics in practice. That is my point. Christianity is rational. it makes a civil society. Irrational laws—laws which promote deviancy —promote unjust law and, thus, chaos and “Might makes Right” will devolve in chaos and tyranny.
Singaporean laws are extreme only where they need to be so. The result is significantly cleaner streets, crime-free neighbourhoods from end-to-end, and the such. The laws there are still much tamer than say, Old Testament laws that were derived from the earlier Hammurabi edicts.
If America really used to be as virtuous as you claim and believe, how do you explain the draconian laws that actually had been implemented and executed during its colonial times? A so-called virtuous society surely wouldn’t need heavy laws to tame it down now, would it? And Europe always, Christian or not, had heavy-handed laws as a hallmark of its existence, which later transferred onto the early colonial Americans as well.
For that matter, Australia was once Christian Britain’s continent-sized prison. Are such historical facts to be considered aspects of a supposedly virtuous society?
New York, for most of its early years, used to be a filthy place. It is so even today, only somewhat better than it was in the past. Some of the photos they have of the place from the mid-1800s have raw sewage flooding the city streets. This wasn’t atypical of New York - most American cities used to be like that. Singapore’s laws are “draconian” when it comes to littering, sure, but the result is you are far, far less likely to step on filth over there than you would be, elsewhere. Singapore is a democratic republic, and the people there overwhelmingly support the measures they take to keep their country pristine. Look at how crazy the drug situation has always been in America. Likewise with alcohol.
Ignoring the cultural differences which has lead to these divergent outcomes will do nothing to repair the damage that has trapped American cities in literal squalour and violence. Singapore is without doubt in a better position to lecture others on how to keep cities crime-free and drug-free than any other country, and best of all, they do it with the mandate of the people, and not through heavy-handed authoritarianism as you earlier implied. Even in the realm of running a business, Singapore certainly enjoys greater freedoms than America. To have done it all by what’s little more than a “pagan” Buddhist society, credit must be given where it’s due.
If it is British “Christianity” that got them these fruits, for Singapore to have done so without actually being Christian nullifies the claim that only Christianity produces such outcomes, and that was the point I had mentioned as the logical derivative of your implication earlier that Singapore is so-and-so because of the ‘Christian’ British. Singapore, in reality, is what it is because of its wisdom in taking the best out of others’ experience and implementing them on home soil.