National Service to Blame for Singaporeans becoming Less Patriotic, Say Singaporeans

It started out as a simple question: Has your patriotism decreased over the years? What incidents/events etc have contributed to it (ok lah, that’s 2 questions).

And then things spiralled out of control as many blamed National Service for causing them to lost the Singapore spirit.

This discussion took place on a Reddit Singapore thread.

Well, not so much a discussion but a very brutal bombardment of punches to the groin for MINDEF, you know, since national service is supposed to INCREASE your sense of loyalty to Singapore.

And some more, at a time when Singapore is supposed to be celebrating NS50.

The main reasons cited, in sum, are:

(1) Full-time national servicemen are forced to serve when they could be doing more productive things, and have to take orders from useless regulars

(2) ICT is a waste of time since it’s really jo bo lan, and hinder job prospects

(3) With the influx of foreigners, the whole concept of “defending your nation and loved ones” is lost or diluted

(4) Why new citizens don’t need to serve NS since all Singaporean men have to serve NS ah?

We’ll let you take a look at the responses: