Posted on 05/18/2004 10:38:16 PM PDT by kattracks
George Soros, the emigre-billionaire who's bankrolling the Democratic Party's bid to drive President Bush from office, is motivated not so much by ideology as he is by his hatred of religion.
So says NewsMax contributing editor Richard Poe, who explained what makes Soros tick for Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday.
"He learned from the atheist philosopher Karl Popper, who was his teacher in England, an atheist philosophy of a so-called open or free society," Poe told the "O'Reilly Factor."
He described Soros as "not only an admitted atheist - actually he is a crusading atheist, a militant atheist."
Poe told O'Reilly that Soros' atheism drives his "hatred" for President Bush, saying he has "absolute contempt for Bush's religious beliefs."
In fact, in his book, "The Bubble of American Supremacy," Soros "lambastes, ridicules and mocks" Bush's religious convictions, Poe said, adding that in Soros's view, "devout believers of any sort are idiots who shouldn't hold public office."
Ironically, Al Jazeera, the favorite news network of Islamofacists everywhere, touted comments by Soros made on Monday to New York's Columbia University, where the Democrat daddy warbucks bashed America as an "oppressor."
"We claim to be liberators [in Iraq], but we turned into oppressors," Soros insisted, before noting that the U.S. has killed more people in the Iraq war than al Qaeda did on 9/11.
"Crucify Him! Crucify Him!"
Cause he is a big idiot!
Yep, yep.
"If there were no God, there would be no atheists."--Anon.
These people long for a fantasy world in which there is no absolute truth, no consequences. They know instinctively they are wrong and the guilt induced by seeing humble and righteous men in action explains their hatred for religion.
I quoted the words of the Jews with respect to the Lord because the hatred - I am absolutely convinced - is of the exact same kind. Pilate responded to their cry, asking why He should be crucified: they cried all the louder, not offering any reasons besides the bogus claims they'd already set forth.
(BTW, no offense meant toward our Jewish friends here; Christians believe we are all complicit in the death of Christ, not just Jews)
So, the Devil is making him do it?
Follow the money
I feel very strongly that all of the militant islamics need to learn that killing our citizens means that we will kill 10x to 100x or more of their followers. This will rapidly bring peace.
"In 1956, Soros moved to the United States, where he began to accumulate a large fortune through an international investment fund he founded and managed. Today he is chairman of Soros Fund Management LLC."
International investment fund..I don`t get it, oh yes, drugs, who knows.
"..is the author of eight books, including The Bubble of America Supremacy: Correcting the Misuse of American Power ..George Soros on Globalization (2002); The Alchemy of Finance (1987); Opening the Soviet System (1990); Underwriting Democracy (1991); Soros on Soros: Staying Ahead of the Curve (1995); The Crisis of Global Capitalism: Open Society Endangered (1998); and Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (2000). His articles and essays on politics, society, and economics regularly appear in major newspapers and magazines around the world."
Just another hypocritical capitalism and democracy basher, who just happens to be a billionaire from capitalism and democracy.
Well, sincere, heart-felt prayer to the God that Soros doesn't believe in, can counter-act his money that he is spending to defeat The Prez.
Yoi istanem!
No matter how many failed experiments in social engineering these people conduct, they refuse to discard their erroneous beliefs.
These are the type of individuals who need "Atlas Shrugged."
Not to read, mind you, but to have a hardcover edition of it broken over their thick heads; skulls through which no human reason ever seems to penetrate.
Ah, Soros...the sugar daddy for the pro-dope crowd. What a resume he is building.
George Soros, who first encountered The Open Society as Popper’s student at the London School of Economics, founded the Open Society Institute to propagate Popper’s ideas, particularly in Eastern Europe.
George Soros' Atheism Fuels Conservative Rage
Robert B. Bluey
Staff Writer
(CNSNews.com) - Conservatives are fuming over the $15.5 million that billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros has pledged to defeat President Bush. But they're also anxious to fight back and expose what they consider to be Soros' "immoral" beliefs and atheist leanings.
Several prominent conservatives told CNSNews.com that Soros' "moral bankruptcy" would prove disastrous for the Democratic Party. The liberal groups that have benefited from Soros' gifts - America Coming Together, MoveOn.org and the Center for American Progress - are run by Democrats and have a close allegiance to the party's candidates.
Soros, who emigrated from Hungary in 1956 and later became a naturalized U.S. citizen, has expressed outrage at the Bush administration's foreign policy, especially its decision to invade Iraq. Soros and his foundation, the Open Society Institute (OSI), follow a strict philosophy that runs counter to Bush's objectives.
The ideas behind Soros' "open society" have fueled the anger among conservatives. The OSI's website states innocently enough that its objectives include "the strengthening of civil society; economic reform; education at all levels; human rights; legal reform and public administration; media and communications; public health; and arts and culture."
Soros has given away nearly $5 billion in his lifetime, but while a significant portion of that money has been spent on pro-democracy movements overseas, some of it has gone to liberal causes in the United States.
From abortion rights groups to drug reform initiatives, Soros' domestic funding generally ends up in the hands of liberals. The self-proclaimed atheist also created the Project on Death in America to generate debate about the dying process and "alleviate unnecessary suffering."
Among the beneficiaries of Soros' largesse is the Center for Reproductive Rights, the pro-abortion group that recently saw its internal strategy plotting memos publicized by a pro-family group, and at the request of U.S. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), included in the Congressional Record.
Conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, an authority on Christian values, said Soros wants to destroy the values on which the United States was founded. Williams called Soros "morally bankrupt" and he wants the U.S. Justice Department to investigate his contributions.
"He hates God and his biblical principles. He hates everything that's godly," Williams said. "He's jumping up and down at the thought that same-sex marriages could happen in this country. It's a direct assault on the church, the institutions that restrain and restrict our behavior and remind us of the standard of morality and moral absolutes."
Other conservatives were just as harsh. The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, founder and chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition, said Soros had to be taken seriously because, "He's the Daddy Warbucks of everything we do not believe in."
"No one knows what demons drive Mr. Soros to consistently fund anti-family agendas," said Robert H. Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute at Concerned Women for America. "But he seems determined to turn the world upside down and replace morality with immorality."
Surviving Nazi-occupied Hungary
For much of his life, Soros shied away from public attention. It wasn't until after his Quantum Fund became a huge success on Wall Street that he began to dabble in philanthropy around the age of 50.
As a child and teenager, Soros was profoundly shaped as a Jew living in Nazi-occupied Hungary. His father, Tivadar, protected George, his mother Erzebet and brother Paul by obtaining false identities for them. At 14, George assumed the identity of a Christian and was separated from his parents.
"I would say that that's when my character was made," Soros said in a 60 Minutes interview in 1998.
A biography of Soros by former New York Times reporter Michael T. Kaufman detailed the experience. When George was 6 year old, his father changed the family name from Schwartz to Soros to protect the family from the threat of Nazi policies targeting Jews.
After surviving the threat of Nazism, Soros' parents later had to endure a Soviet-led communist takeover of Hungary. They eventually fled the country and united with George and his brother in America.
While these experiences shaped Soros as an individual, he grew fond of the open society philosophy while studying at the London School of Economics. There, a scholar named Karl Popper would become Soros' mentor and influence his thinking of open societies.
According to Kaufman's biography, Soros was born a Jew but only began to take an interest in religion when he was about 12 years old. He had a bar mitzvah a year later. Several of Soros' relatives became Christians, but as time wore on Soros' own faith in a higher being faded. In the 60 Minutes interview, Soros admitted he was not religious and didn't believe in God.
Eliciting controversy and conservative ire
His feelings about Israel generally run counter to traditional Jewish thought. In his new book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, Soros takes a swipe at Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who he blames as much as Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat for the violence in the Middle East.
"Perpetrators are now in charge on both sides," Soros wrote.
At a Jewish Funders' Network appearance in November, Soros' remarks on Israel and anti-Semitism drew an angry response from the Anti-Defamation League. But that controversy died down after critics looked at the full context of his comments, said Michael Vachon, Soros' aide.
Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition, remained critical of his views on Israel. He said Bush's strong alliance with Israel could partly explain Soros' desire to see the president defeated next year.
Vachon disagreed and noted that Soros is proud of his Jewish heritage. He said the attacks from conservatives are unwarranted, adding that Soros has done more good for people in the world than most critics realize.
"The notion that somehow George Soros is an immoral character is so preposterous," Vachon said. "One doesn't even know how to begin to answer such a ludicrous charge. It's an outrageous claim when you look at the record of the man's life and what he's done."
A former consultant to Soros' foundation, David Rieff, said conservatives appear to be holding Soros to a double standard. Rieff compared Soros to Richard Mellon Scaife, a wealthy conservative who has funded projects frequently criticized by liberals.
"He's putting his money where his mouth is. And as far as the conservative disquiet," Rieff said, "apparently they can dish it out but they can't take it. Like good capitalists, they thought it was the right of rich people to fund the activities that they believed in."
Americans need to be fully informed about Soros, said Robert McGinnis, a former vice president of the Family Research Council who researched Soros' philanthropy while working there.
"Soros has put his money where his beliefs are, and that's the American way," McGinnis said. "They're radical in my estimation, but he certainly has made a valiant effort across the globe. U.S. citizens need to be wary of the fact that he is embracing a pro-drug, anti-life agenda."
The Capital Research Center, which tracks philanthropists like Soros, found that the Open Society Institute has a pattern of giving to liberal groups that support drug legalization, euthanasia, immigrant entitlements and feminism.
"There is a consistent thread through everything he does," said John Carlisle, editor of the center's Organization Trends and Foundation Watch. "He's a devout secular ideologue."
Vachon acknowledged that Soros is a secularist. He also said the billionaire could handle the attacks from conservatives. But Vachon said Soros' concerns extend beyond Bush; he believes the concept of an open society in the United States is threatened.
"He's giving money to a group that wants to see the incumbent Republican president defeated in the next election," Vachon said. "A lot of people are going to attack him. He's hardly surprised by it."
He supports the Dalai Lama, whose institute is housed in the Presidio in San Francisco, also home to the foundation run by Soros' friend, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. 5 Soros is a leading figure on the Council of Foreign Relations, the World Economic Forum, and Human Rights Watch (HRW). In 1994, after a meeting with his philosophical guru, Sir Karl Popper, Soros ordered his companies to start investing in Central and Eastern European communications.
George Soros was born in Hungary in 1930 to Jewish parents so removed from their roots that they once vacationed in Nazi Germany. 6 Soros lived under the Nazis, but with the triumph of the Communists moved to England in 1947. There, Soros came under the sway of the philosopher Karl Popper, at the London School of Economics. Popper was a lionized anti-communist ideologue and his teachings formed the basis for Soros' political tendencies. There is hardly a speech, book or article that Soros writes that does not pay obeisance to Popper's influence.
Knighted in 1965, Popper coined the slogan "Open Society," which eventually manifested in Soros' Open Society Fund and Institute. Followers of Popper repeat his words like true believers. Popperian philosophy epitomizes Western individual ism. Soros left England in 1956, and found work on Wall Street where, in the 1960s, he invented the "hedge fund."
"...hedge funds catered to very wealthy individuals... The largely secretive funds, usually trading in offshore locations. . produced astronomically superior results. The size of the "bets" often became self fulfilling prophecies: 'rumors of a position taken by the big hedge funds prompted other investors to follow suit,' which would in turn force up the price the hedgers were betting on to begin with." 7
Soros organized the Quantum Fund in 1969 and began to dabble in currency manipulation. In the 1970s, his financial activities turned to:
"Alternating long and short positions... Soros won big both on the rise of real estate investment trusts and on their subsequent collapse. Under his 20-year stewardship, Quantum returned an amazing 34.5% a year. Soros is best known (and feared) for currency speculation.. . In 1997 he earned the rare distinction of being singled out as a villain by a head of state, Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad, for taking part in a highly profitable attack on that nation's currency." 8
Through such clandestine financial scheming, Soros became a multibillionaire. His companies control real estate in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico; banking in Venezuela; and are some of the most profitable currency traders in the world, giving rise to the general belief that his highly placed friends assisted him in his financial endeavors, for political as well as financial gain. 9
George Soros has been blamed for the destruction of the Thai economy in 1997.10 One Thai activist said, "We regard George Soros as a kind of Dracula. He sucks the blood from the people." 11 The Chinese call him "the crocodile," because his economic and ideological efforts in China were so insatiate, and because his financial speculation created millions of dollars in profits as it ravished the Thai and Malaysian economies. 12
Soros once made a billion dollars in one day by speculating (a word he abhors) on the British pound. Accused of taking "money from every British taxpayer when he speculated against sterling," he said, "When you speculate in the financial markets you are free of most of the moral concerns that confront an ordinary businessman.. .I did not have to concern myself with moral issues in the financial markets." 13
Soros has a schizophrenic craving for unlimited personal wealth and a desire to be thought well of by others.
I wish Michael Moore would sit on him.
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