Lee Kuan Yew was a remarkable man, a giant of our times who showed the world that through action rather than rhetoric, that respect for the rule of law, good manners, hard work, determination, self-reliance and practical mindedness will pave the way to success. His most important legacy is governance free of left wing ideologies.
The only ideology that he adhered to was what worked. The West today can really take a page out of this style of governance. We are increasingly hampered by impractical leftist ideologies championed by our media that are slowly but surely driving us into the abyss.
However there is another point to be made about Lee Kuan Yew. When he died Monday at age 91, the founding father of Singapore did not leave just his legacy as the prime minister whose anti-left policies shaped a backwater British colony into the world’s fourth-wealthiest nation. The International Business Times reports–
He also left Singaporeans with one of the most formidable armies in the world. The tiny island state of 5.4 million, with a land area far smaller than New York City’s, has more fighter jets than Spain, Poland or Sweden. Its army has as many tanks as Italy, which is more than 400 times the size. Its navy boasts the only stealthy ships in the region.
The respected defense publication IHS Jane’s called the Singapore Armed Forces “the best-equipped military in Southeast Asia.”
Singapore spends more on weapons than anybody else near it. Its 2013 defense budget was $12 billion, according to an analysis published in East Asia Forum by Michael Raska, a research fellow at Singapore’s Nanyang University. That money has bought Singapore advanced American warplanes whose capabilities eclipse anything fielded by other states in the region. For example, it flies the latest version of the F-15, a fighter jet so lethal the U.S. has sold it only to four other nations: Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.
Singapore’s defense budget dwarfs that of neighboring Indonesia, which spent $7.9 billion that year, but has 250 million people. Malaysia, which lies on Singapore’s other border, spends even less. NZ doesn’t even spend $3 billion.
What liberals never got about Lee Kuan Yew was that he fully understood the threat of communist insurgency. He knew how it wormed its way into a nation and corroded it from the inside. His domestic policies were often underpinned by doing what was necessary to prevent the establishment of communist beachheads in Singaporean society.
His defence policies show he also knew it was a threat externally. Both ways, he had those commie bastards beat and that is what made him so much more the real leader who towered over his weak drooling and submissive counterparts in Western countries.
TrueblueNZ 
3 responses to “What Progressives never got about Lee Kuan Yew”
A good example of speak softly and carry a big stick.
I doubt if they bothered to send a token training force to Iraq to give legitimacy to the corrupt Government there.
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But what now for Singapore now that Lee Kuan Yew is gone. Will his influence slowly recede and socialist influences start creeping in like the cancer they have become in the West?
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Highly likely. I have read recent news items from Singapore that suggest this is happening already. So few people fully understand the Communists and how far their tentacles reach. Lee Kuan Yew was one who did. I’m not sure his successors have that same understanding.
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