For those who want to interpret yourself in privacy. Personality test.

What would you leave behind?

It is far more likely that these quotations from our illustrious leaders refer to the idea that our fellow citizens should not be asking what manner of welfare and free rides their country can provide for them, but what they can provide for their government. Assuming this is the case, then we are left with a bit of a quandary.

A government is not an independent entity with its own inalienable existence. It is instead that collection of individuals who exercise the rule of the government over its constituents. In other words, governments are that collective of the elite and powerful.

Ask not what the elite and powerful can do for you -- ask what you can do for the elite and powerful.

That speech was one of the best political chicanery I have ever seen. Kennedy was pure charisma. Machiavellians make the best politicians.

And this, too, is why Singapore will always have a nanny government; simply, unlike America and other large countries, we cannot afford political dissent.

It is catch 22. The more they handhold us, the more we will become like whining kids unable to fend for ourselves. But if they do NOT handhold us, what is risked is a country that falls apart. Unlike America, what would we have? Bedok as one country, Jurong as another? It is simply unfeasible.

So for all the talk about initiatives, we necessarily remain as what Juvenal said, about government: panem et circenses.

ie, "bread and circuses". Feed the people, entertain them, and they will obey.

Governments run their populations on obedience, not on thinking men. THe danger for the ruling elite, always, is a thinking man. Which is why, when governments assume power, the first thing they do is to suppress the arts.

1. a non thinking person.....a blind follower
2. a person who is totally unconcerned with the future of the country.