Tuesday, May 25
Yina: How far should a state have a right to monitor the actions of people within its borders?
I think that a state should have a right to monitor the actions of people when racial and political issues are not being handled well in a country. These sensitive issues can cause harm to the society as people living in the country may start to segregate due to different views or beliefs. This would cause the country to be unable to be economically productive as they find it hard to cooperate with the people in their own country. For example, due to certain political issues, Bangkok is now having a internal conflict due to a certain political party wanting to take over the government. This has caused Bangkok to lost lives of their citizens due to violence and also a economic loss of tourists visiting Bangkok. Therefore, I feel that the state should have a right to monitor actions of people whenever it comes to political issues as serious consequences affecting the economy and society are severe. However, I feel that the state should not have a right to monitor the actions of people when personal rights are being infringed. When their personal rights are taken away, people would be very unhappy for not being able to enjoy the freedom of what they want. This would result in citizens not being supportive of their own government causing the government to lose power. For example, in Singapore, smoking is banned in many public areas like the bus stops, at coffeeshops and even at void decks. This has caused many smokers to be very unpleased with the law as they feel that their personal rights are being taken away. With these public places being banned from smoking, smokers are left with very few public areas to smoke at when they are outside. Thus, I feel that the government should not monitor or control the actions of people when personal rights are being infringed. Even though they should not monitor people when it affects personal rights, I feel that the state should still have a right to monitor actions of people if political or racial issues are involved,
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The paragraph is well constructed. But your example on smoking is not the best example as the government had banned smoking to benefit society as a whole...which i don't see as being a really bad thing;)
ReplyDeletegood definition of the conditions under which the statement should be true in your topic sentence =)
ReplyDeleteFor example, due to certain political issues, Bangkok is now having a internal conflict due to a certain political party wanting to take over the government. This has caused Bangkok to lost lives of their citizens due to violence and also a economic loss of tourists visiting Bangkok.
Link this back to your argument by emphasizing that the BKK gov should have monitored more closely the activities of the Red Shirt protestors to prevent such an escalation of violence.
WRT carmen's point, perhaps a better example would be access to personal records by authorities mainly to track citizens' movements? For example, the alleged tapping of personal phone lines by the CIA on 'suspected' terrorist militants in America, regardless of hard evidence. Should a country's paranoia justify the violation of privacy?