An ‘open society’?

Re: “Protesters confront riot-control police”, (BP, Nov 17).

There is, I fear, a problem with the wording lauding the Apec love fest. I don’t mean that minor matter of the missing “e” from the large “welcome” banner advertising on the expressway.

Yet, the more serious error is that the people who thought up the slogan “Open. Connect. Balance.” appear to fail to understand at least one of those concepts.

An open society and people who actually respected the ideal of openness would not be arresting and imprisoning those who peacefully express different ideas about inherited notions, social norms, or alleged articles of faith.

To be an open society means to be, well, open: open to new ideas; open to critical review of old ideas; open to new perspectives on traditional reverences; and open to competing ways to understand and live in the world.

Only such an open society, one where inherited errors can be corrected by healthy, critical interrogation, makes possible progress to a better future.

That better future has for many decades been denied the Thai people, who could and should have followed the path to the flourishing of Taiwan and South Korea, were instead condemned to the retarded political, social, moral, and economic malaise that is Thailand today — a far cry from South Korea and Taiwan.

Perhaps Thais should study not only K-pop, but even more the South Korean history that enabled that nation’s great global success.

Hint: the seeds were sown in 1980. Thailand, in contrast, continued to repeat the stultifying errors that Thai law strictly bans correcting. FELIX QUI