Mr See Soo Eng referred to Mr Amos Yee as a "badly brought up Singaporean", and appeared to be grateful to the US for granting Mr Yee asylum (Good riddance to Amos Yee, Forum Online; March 27).

To the contrary, I think that Mr Yee's successful asylum application is detrimental to Singapore's social progress in the long run.

While hate speech is incontrovertibly undesirable, I think that it would serve Singapore best if we can learn the art of not getting offended in the first place.

Singapore prides itself on its social, cultural, and religious harmony. The hallmark of that is not to prosecute any individual whose expression threatens the peace. Rather, society should strive to be able to resist any fracturing due to offensive speech. Instead of a public witch hunt, Singapore should respond by simply ignoring the offensive content, and moving on as a society.

We cannot purge the Internet of all offensive content. What we can do is to learn not to be offended.

Francis Tay