Selfless Kim?

re: "North Korean leader Kim 'emaciated', citizens heartbroken: state TV" (BP, June 28, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

It can be no surprise that the loyal citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) should be heart broken and their eyes welling with tears at the sad news that the supremely "devoted, hardworking leader [of] the country" is suffering ill health from so long bearing the weight of his people's cares on his selfless shoulders. Indeed, "in a country where public discussion of the leader's health and personal life has always been off-limits" and any remotely negative or critical comment, however honest, accurate, well-founded, or nationally important is seriously criminal under law made up to suppress any possibility of domestic lawful opinion being well-informed or of any worth whatsoever, it is inevitable that the dear leader will be universally loved, respected, revered and admired by all. 

The illustrious DPRK, aka North Korea, need do no petty polls to discover such obvious truths. One can almost hear the loyal subjects as they beseech the sacred in sincere supplication to protect from his enemies the great, magnificent, benevolent and unspeakably righteous Father of the Nation who has for so long graciously deigned to bestow upon them such bountiful riches from the economic to the spiritual.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 29, 2021, under the title "Selfless Kim?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2140883/tone-deaf-schools
  

Sexism, pure and simple

re: "Tired of PC nonsense" (BP, PostBag, June 25, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Eric Bahrt's "Tired of PC nonsense" exemplifies brilliantly the traditional thinking behind those who object to transgendered people competing in sporting events according to their manifest physical sex characteristics. Mr Bahrt's logic is also an excellent lesson in the persistence of demeaning sexism.

First, Eric makes an excellent point when he emphasizes that competitors in sporting events, as in employment and elsewhere, should be discriminated among according to relevant criteria. In the case of athletics, this is the physical characteristics. As Eric usefully points out: "It's estimated that men generally have 26 pounds of more skeletal muscle mass than women."

There are certainly statistical differences between an average man and an average woman, not only physically, but also cognitively and emotionally. This is precisely the reason just selection for employment, competition, or other positions should be based strictly on relevant criteria, such as skeletal muscle mass, demonstrated academic ability in mathematics or law, or actual empathy. To assume and make judgements, prejudgements (prejudices, that is), based on the argument that women are less competent as lawyers, engineers or mathematicians because of possibly real statistical differences between the averages for males and females rather than to treat each individual person, male or female, as an individual person being objectively assessed according to the relevant criteria is rank sexism.

When Eric adds to his set of relevant physical selection criteria for athletes the extra condition that sex overrides relevant criteria, he assumes that all women are weaker than and incapable of competing with all men. That is sexism. The relevant criteria for Olympic events to ensure a level playing field for all competitors is discrimination based on height, weight, testosterone level, and so on.

There is no reason to bring competitors' sex into it.

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 27, 2021, under the title "Sexism, pure and simple" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2139115/heres-cheers-to-the-fab-6
  

Hung up on gender

re: "New Zealand weightlifter selected as first transgender Olympian" (BP, June 21, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

It could not be unexpected to see an outburst of righteous shock and horror that New Zealand's Olympic's selectors have chosen a transgender athlete to compete in the women's weight lifting events at the games.

But how justified on either rational or moral grounds can such genuine outrage be? The lesson to be learned, and the Olympics and such like suitably revised to account for, is perhaps not that old-fashioned attitudes that segregate women into a carefully cocooned versions of the world in which men are men, and in which white men especially are white men, should be retained for no sensible or ethically defensible reason, but rather that we should get over being hung up on people's sex, whether at birth or later.

If ability to lift weight, or ability to do physics, or ability to run fast, or ability to paint great art, or ability to box, or ability to manage a business is what matters, shouldn't we stop putting males and females into separate categories? What next: the fastest white male runner in a category that keeps different colours neatly segregated along with sex differences lest someone get upset when they lose to a person of the wrong skin tone or sex organs?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 22, 2021, under the title "Hung up on gender" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2136791/embassy-clarity
  

Thamanat for PM?

re: "Rift denied as PPRP revamps senior line-up" (BP, June 20, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Regarding their unopposed election to further high office among them of the most illustrious and famously righteous Capt. Thamanat Prompow, that epitome of the classic Thai virtues incarnate, could it be rational to expect respect for the good morals of democracy from the party created to further the road map of the man who overthrew Thailand's supreme rule of law and its democratic form of government to make himself prime minister?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 22, 2021, under the title "Thamanat for PM?" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2136291/rdf-a-fossil-fuel
  

re: "In Rift With Biden, a Dramatic Show of Force by a Conservative Catholic Movement"

re: "In Rift With Biden, a Dramatic Show of Force by a Conservative Catholic Movement"  (The New York Times, June 20, 2021)

 
Should people who themselves insist with pretensions to absolute infallibility to engage in genuine, truly real eating of human flesh, actual cannibalism, on a regular basis really be taken seriously when it comes to any moral question?

Indeed, with such committed foundational beliefs about reality, can they be taken seriously on any issue? 
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/20/us/biden-abortion-catholic-church.html#commentsContainer&permid=113331127:113331127 

Lessons from history

re: "Govt jab management fails to hit home" (BP, June 14, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

Since his seeming endorsement of it from May 22, 2014 on, perhaps the Bangkok Post's Veera Prateepchaikul has now reached a maturity that will allow him to learn an overdue lesson from history: when you support dictatorship over democracy you get dictatorial values over democratic values.

It does, however, remain a mystery how that lesson, taught by coup after coup, decade after decade, in Thailand's modern history since 1932 should not have been already well known on May 22, 2014. Could official Thai history curricula as indoctrinated in schools and propagated by permitted texts by properly loyal academics impart so flawed an understanding?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 16, 2021, under the title "Lessons from history" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/opinion/2133171/lessons-from-history
  

A moral conundrum

re: "'Rap nong' still too brutal" (BP, Editorial, June 11, 2021)

 
Dear editor,

What sets of moral values and social norms are being followed by those who commit acts of hazing brutality and by those who suffer them?

On the one hand, you have the set of moral values that commit acts of violence to bully a nation into submission; on the other, you peacefully protest to have your voice heard. On the one hand, you use unjust law to silence dissentient opinion that you deem disrespectful to your awesomeness; on the other, you willingly suffer unjust imprisonment according to bullying law because your stance is the morally right one.

Which is more plausible: that the bullies brutally forcing a show of grovelling respect from those deemed lower in the social hierarchy are supporters of Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha's law and order authoritarianism propping up traditional social structures intent on furthering their own existence, or that the bullies support the student protestors being punished for daring to seek and speak truths about those Thai social structures?

Which is more likely: that the student protestors endorse the conservative Thai social norms of thuggish hazing by seniors of juniors, or that they condemn such abuse committed in the name of tradition?

 Felix Qui
 

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

 
The text as edited was published in PostBag on June 13, 2021, under the title "A moral conundrum" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2131515/brutal-hazing-is-not-bonding
  

re: "Is There a Way to Dial Down the Political Hatred?"

re: "Is There a Way to Dial Down the Political Hatred?"  (The New York Times, June 11, 2021)

 
As they stand, Christianity and its sister monotheisms have much in common with communism and fascism. They are alike ideologies preaching their own infallibility, demanding absolute blind faith, empowering an elite of holy men whose words and acts may not be contested, anathematizing dissent, rejecting critical thinking, and ordaining orthodoxy over reality.

Humans need stories to bind us, but those stories need not be thuggish ideologies that deny all alternatives. To dictate as the prime command, as both monotheism and modern totalitarianism do, that "Thou shalt have no other god before me" is to reject human and natural reality in favour of blind devotion to sacred deceits pushing a morality unfit for actual human beings or for human society.

If the political and religious ideologies are to deserve respect, they need to respect humans and human values about the mythic fantasies of capricious gods and party leaders.

Let us pray that the religious of both the sacred and political versions will cast aside their claims of infallibility and grow some human values, opening their minds to the reality that they are very often very wrong on very many issues. But it gets worse: the more anciently ascribed their claimed truths are the more likely those claims are to be wrong: wrong about the sun and the planets; wrong about the majesty of evolved life; wrong about justice; and gravely wrong about moral right and wrong.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/11/opinion/god-religion-politics-partisanship.html#commentsContainer&permid=113217686:113217686

re: "We’re Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic, and We’re Braced for the Worst"

re: "We’re Mississippi’s Last Abortion Clinic, and We’re Braced for the Worst"  (The New York Times, June 9, 2021)

 
So sad that in 2021 so many remain enslaved to primitive notions of what constitutes a human person. Hint: it's not a soul.

A human foetus at no point in development has any characteristic that could make it a human person, whether heart beats or brain activity, than do the pigs, chickens and cattle we cheerfully slaughter every day to feast on their flesh.

That the foetus is a living human, arguably even individual, cannot confer any human rights of persons on it because it is not a human person. Law that presumes otherwise is founded on fake claims and is as contrary to justice as it is honesty and reason.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/opinion/abortion-mississippi-supreme-court.html#commentsContainer&permid=113187893:113187893

  

re: "The Left Needs the A.C.L.U. to Keep Defending Awful Speech"

re: "The Left Needs the A.C.L.U. to Keep Defending Awful Speech"  (The New York Times, June 7, 2021)

 
Well said Michelle Goldberg. When liberal democracy is under attack by despots and brutish authoritarians around the world, free speech remains an essential foundation of both democratic principle and practice. It can't be compromised merely because some speech is vile, disgusting and lacking any merit.

Democracy requires that all people have an equal right to a voice in the wider social discussion that determines society's government and the laws that it then applies to all. This prescriptive principle is sufficient reason for strong legal protection for free speech.

A useful litmus test for our commitment to free speech, a test that Goldberg's example of the ACLU defending the right of the plainly disgusting pro-Nazi marchers deliberately offending the people of Skokie passes in exemplary fashion, is that we can list the similarly offensive, disgusting, and generally vile speech lacking any merit whatsoever, including base pornography and hateful racism, that we personally find repugnant in the extreme, yet demand be protected free speech.

Unless we can produce that list of truly hateful filth that must be accorded solid protection under the law, then our commitment to the strong free speech that is a cornerstone of democracy and therefore of a just society, is suspect.
 

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The above comment was submitted by Felix Qui to The New York Times article.

It is published there at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/opinion/aclu-free-speech.html#commentsContainer&permid=113158119:113158119