This almost slipped by me: back in early December Time Magazine (Asia edition) ran an interview and profile of our favorite Legalist, Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore.  It struck me as an effort to keep him before the public eye: yet another re-hash of his long political career.  Why, I wondered, is this necessary now?  I figure it’s due to his inevitable irrelevance.  He is certainly still a force in Singapore, where he stage-manages the repression of political opposition from his perch as "Minister Mentor" (whatever that is), but, for the world at large he is widely forgotten and unknown.

       Singapore certainly has succeeded economically, but that is an old story.  The interesting question now is: when will it take on a political system commensurate with its economic and social development?  The  continuing authoritarianism of the Lees is old-hat, hearkening back to a time when economic justifications of political repression were more common.  Now, only a few dictators around the world fear genuine democracy as much as the Lees.  We can place them in the same category as Zimbabwe and Uzbekistan and the like.  Taiwan and South Korea have zoomed ahead.  Even China’s politics are more dynamic than the pap of Singapore.  So, nobody really pays much attention to old man Lee any more.  He is the master of a domain that he himself has shrunk to a global afterthought.

       There was one passage in the Time piece, however, that should not go unchallenged:

Lee also embodies a uniquely Asian approach to governance that has
often been at odds with the democratic principles espoused by many
Western politicians. For decades, he has spoken in favor of what has
come to be termed "Asian values" (he prefers "Confucian values"), a
political philosophy that might be loosely summed up as respect for
authority and order, while putting the good of society above that of
the individual. His criticisms have focused on the excesses of
unfettered democracy—particularly freedom of speech—and the impact they
have on the search for economic growth.

 Please, spare us the sanctimony.  The ideological underpinnings of the Lee autocracy are not particularly "Asian," and certainly not "Confucian."  These kinds of formulations are simply a veneer, used to cover over the power realities of a one-party authoritarian political system.  We can find the strategies for maintaining the power of the ruler in Han Fei Tzu and Machiavelli.  It is about Legalism and Realism.  Nothing exotic in all of that.

    But, please, do not sully the reputation of Confucius by any association with the petty tyrants of Singapore.  They have never demonstrated the kind of Humanity Confucius demands of a gentleman.   Just ask the people who struggle for democracy and human rights in Singapore.