By the rancour in Brian D'Cruz's pitch , he would soon be prescribing, like Syed Alwi Ahmad, that those who disagree with the status quo in Malaysian politics should leave the country - permanently. Or like other sycophants earlier, he would criticise by rejecting that foreigners have no business discussing much less criticising Malaysia or its government.

This sort of ready-made neo-nationalist only is bred by ignorance and a head-in-sand attitude, and its promotion by the likes of Dr Mahathir Mohamad, serves only the regime, and his so-called stature, more than it does for honest and open discussion of all - all - issues within the nation. It's one reason why Malaysia will never achieve nation-building or mature political development.

I won't speak for Kim Quek , whom I know can do this perfectly well himself, but D'Cruz suggests in his letter several things which I thought warranted a response. He says, for example, that I have made in my life's mission to criticise the Malaysian government and especially Mahathir at every opportunity possible. Amazing. He knows more about my life and its mission than I do.

Truth is, there haven't been as many chances for me to criticise the regime as I would like. But whenever when I do, it's aimed at the nonsense Mahathir spouts unthinkingly, including the web of deception that he spins, and which the Malaysian media gulps down and reproduces, also unthinkingly.

Every word Mahathir and his regime utter is digested, analysed, then criticised where it deserves criticism. Perhaps D'Cruz has been asleep but I've also been known to support Mahathir on a few issues, although not as dogmatically as I'm sure D'Cruz may think I should. Moreover, if Malaysia boasts that it is a 'democracy', then I'm merely exercising my democratic right. Unless, of course, D'Cruz thinks, like Mahathir and his apologists for autocratic, that I should shut up and toe the official line.

D'Cruz also says my views are generally formed by an incoherent logic. It's so easy for people like D'Cruz, as with others before him, to throw about a few of the adjectives that they know, but never once showing, clearly and definitively, just where the incoherence of my logic lies. Perhaps D'Cruz, like Syed Alwi Ahmad , aren't capable of picking up the nuances of one's criticisms, as they've proved, but I would have accorded D'Cruz respect if he could have shown and explained to me my errors.

The misconceptions by Syed Alwi Ahmad are the same as D'Cruz's, and I've responded twice to Syed Alwi Ahmad already, and have no compulsion to repeat them here for D'Cruz's sole benefit.

However, D'Cruz asks why Kim Quek and I have not criticised Singapore in the same way. But why change the subject in the first place? Was the focus not on Malaysia? Why didn't Syed Alwi Ahmad draw comparisons with Singapore, and why did D'Cruz not ask Syed Alwi Ahmad the same question he asks of Kim Quek and me? It's a ruse by D'Cruz.

Singapore's Chinese majority is not dissimilar to Malaysia's Malay majority, and both issues - per se - are not in question or being questioned. But there are matters that spin directly out of that majority population equalising majority race rule, such as Syed Alwi Ahmad's racist and chauvinist 'Malay supremacy' argument, that are being questioned and criticised. D'Cruz would have done well to have followed the issues raised by so many of us in this forum much more carefully than the canard he presents in his letter.

And there are other falsehoods by D'Cruz that merely demonstrate his ignorance. Take his claim that the investments and technology that have poured into Singapore were on the basis of Singapore's Chinese-ness - and fear of the Muslim states that surround the city-state. I'm not sure where D'Cruz got that from but just about everything that has been written on the Singapore political economy, based on careful and considered, and to a large extent tested hypotheses, have been dismissed by cultural reductionists like D'Cruz who base their claims on grandma's tales.

Because if D'Cruz stands by his ridiculous argument, then the investments and technology that came to Malaysia were also based on the Malay-ness of the country; in India, because of its Indian-ness; in South Korea, because of its Korean-ness, and so on. This is crazy mumbo-jumbo stuff.

So much, then, for D'Cruz championing himself as one with coherence of logic.