Posted on 12/20/2003 8:58:34 AM PST by bdeaner
George Soros, the 38th richest person in the world according to Forbes, says that defeating President George W. Bush in 2004 is "the central focus of my life." In an eye-popping interview recently with the Washington Post, he argued that "America under Bush is a danger to the world."
"When I hear Bush say, 'You're either with us or against us,' it reminds me of the Germans." It evokes memories, he says, of the Nazi rhetoric of his childhood in Hungary.
This wild antipathy toward the President is making Soros--who earned his $7 billion as a hedge-fund buccaneer--the single biggest funder of efforts to get Bush out of the White House. The Post figures he has spent over $15 million so far, and he is ready to give more. The 2004 Presidential race, he told the Post, is "a matter of life and death."
In early November, Soros and a partner donated $5 million to the liberal, anti-Bush MoveOn.org. He also gave $10 million to a similar organization, America Coming Together, which aims to mobilize voters in 17 battleground states. And he has promised $3 million to the
Center for American Progress, a new Democratic think tank started by former Clinton aide John Podesta.
Soros has always fancied himself an intellectual as well as a moneymaker, and he wants desperately to be taken seriously.
His first attempt came in 1997 with a weird, discursive article in the Atlantic Monthly called "The Capitalist Threat." He argued that "the spread of market values into all areas of life" is now the main threat to "open and democratic society."
The man-bites-dog nature of the anticapitalist article from the capitalist mogul brought it attention, but it was so appallingly stupid that it provoked the ire of even the typically mild-mannered, centrist journalist Robert Samuelson of Newsweek. He called Soros "a crackpot" and his essay "gibberish" akin to the "Unabomber's manifesto in its sweeping, unsupported, and disconnected generalizations."
Now Soros is back in the Atlantic with a piece called "The Bubble of
American Supremacy." Here the problem is not so much incoherence as hysteria: "The Bush administration proceeded to exploit the terrorist attack for its own purposes," he writes of the 9/11 terrorist murder of innocents. "It fostered the fear that has gripped the country
and it used the war on terrorism to execute an agenda of American supremacy."
What does Soros propose? Not military action, but "preventive action of a constructive and affirmative nature. Increased foreign aid or better or fairer trade rules," and, of course, "international cooperation."
All of this would be harmless if Soros didn't have billions to spend and the intention to manipulate our politics with them. In the past, it was enough for him to lavish money on leftish causes like drug legalization through the Soros Foundations Network. But a more strident, ideological tone has now become evident.
Soros dubbed his main charity the "Open Society Institute," a reference to the 1945 book, The Open Society and Its Enemies, by Karl Popper (1902-94), who was driven out of his native Austria by the
Nazis. Popper's ideas are complicated, but he stood for what Jonathan Rauch, in a perceptive essay following 9/11, called a free society's "irrepressible effervescence and astonishing durability." These truly are American traits, and ones that the Bush administration has tried to preserve and promote through the kinds of activities that Soros appears to detest: tax cuts, regulatory restraint, and yes, overthrowing tyrants in other parts of the world.
There is irony in Soros's simultaneous embrace of Popper and of the American Left. And hypocrisy in his attitude toward campaign finance regulation: In his foundation's annual report, Soros lauds the McCain-Feingold law limiting donations as an antidote to "a fundamental crisis in democratic self-government." Yet he pours millions into a loophole that lets nonparty groups accept funds without limit.
Let me be clear: Soros earned his money, and he can spend it on whatever he wants. What concerns me is the monstrous hatred Soros has developed toward the President of the United States--hatred shared by others in his social circle.
My guess is that the $15 million Soros has spent is just the beginning. Most voters are blessedly immune to dumb arguments even when they are well-funded. Nevertheless, it would be foolish to take Soros lightly. He is emerging as a great threat not just to the re-election of George Bush, but to our truly open society as well.
Regardless of your opinion, his support of drug legalization is meant for the same purpose. If prohibition caused more trouble than legalization, he would support prohibition.
I must leave for the evening, but I suggest you think about that.
Gosh, does that mean they're more honest in their values then you?
You should be proud that you share the same values as drug runners...you support them so valiantly here on FR.
As you say, Soros has been influencing the DNC for years. He's even donated money to senator John McCain. According to CBS news:
This is not the first year Soros has been generous with campaign funds. According to a database run by the Federal Election Commission, between 2000 and 2002 Soros gave $153,000 in soft money to the Democratic National Committee in three massive installments.It does appear that he's moving from narrow issues toward general opposition to American international power, however.
Since 1998, he donated $125,000 directly to candidates and committees. Except for one $1,000 check to Republican Arizona Sen. John McCain, it all went to Democratic candidates or PACs that favor Democrats.
It seems that Soros has been a force for good at times, as he has been involved with freedom movements in the former Soviet bloc countries and so forth. I have to wonder if he is simply an aging, paranoid man. How could one who survived the Nazis, escaping eastern Europe and the Iron curtain come to the conclusion that American power had turned evil simply because we brought down Saddam's vile regime? According to David N. Bossie in the Washington Times:
In Mr. Soros' mind, the sovereignty of the United States must be subordinated to international law and international institutions, such as the United Nations and its International Criminal Court.But we've seen for nearly three generations how the U.N. has failed to defend freedom in conflict after conflict. As long as ideologies such as Marxism and Islam grip the third world, internationalism is a sure path toward the downfall of freedom. Time and again, internationalism has stacked the weaknesses of liberal, consumer democracies with appeasement. In other words, complacent citizens in western countries fail to recognize the threat of a Syria or a China on the security council, all the while imagining that it must be "fair" to give them a vote.
Soros' ambitions don't add up. I think he may just be a very confused individual who happens to have a lot of money to burn on pet causes. Unfortunately, he's backing the wrong horse. The future of freedom on this planet still depends on America.
[Sigh] And Soros reminds me of Goebbels. I'm almost hoarse from explaining this to leftists and their dupes. Bush NEVER SAID, "with us or against us". Will the lies from the left -- the lying liars lying about Bush lying -- never end? (Yeah, I know. Rhetorical question.)
The "you're with us or against us" lie has at least three apparent goals:
1) To imply that Bush is stupid, for it would indeed be dumb for an American President to believe that other nations, even our allies, will be "with us" in every policy.
2) To imply that Bush's foreign policy is a failure, as an all-nations-must-be-"with us"-in-everything policy certainly would be.
3) To obscure the real policy enunciated in Bush's actual statement, hoping that the BUSH DOCTRINE will thereby eventually be forgotten, marginalized or abandoned. This is the overriding goal, to undermine the War On Terror (even if that means defeat).
What Bush DID say (nearly exactly, as this is from memory) was that, "All nations now have a choice to make. You are either with us, or you are with the terrorists."
IOW Bush's statement was an assertion that there is no neutrality in the War on Terror, with of course the added point that countries who harbor or assist terrorists will be considered hostile. Furthermore the "us" does not (necessarily) mean just the United States, but all liberal, civil states and societies that cherish liberty and oppose terror.
Extending the Bush Doctrine from states to organizations and individuals, all who purposely obscure this clear and focused policy with lies and pseudo quotes, now including Soros, are not just "against us," they are with the terrorists.
Darn, I guess I better not plan on making the keynote speech. Had it all written, too. Dammit.
Agreed. Despite being an opinionated partisan who has no hesitation in using words like "sedition" and "treason," I firmly believe in apportioning praise and blame as objectively and with as little regard for ideology as possible. Soros has been a primary funder (and founder?) of The Democracy Project (IIRC the name correctly). This organization publishes and distributes materials in many languages with useful and proven advice for pro-democracy movements operating against totalitarian or authoritarian regimes. I believe they also provide cash, computers, communications equipment and the like in many instances.
Soros deserves praise for these efforts, and I for one won't stint in giving it. But neither will I hold back in the blame he has earned with his lies and hatred which effect sedition wrt the ongoing war on terrorism.
Where does the author get this idea?
If it's repeated long enough and loud enough a majority of the people will believe the most outlandish idea.
I call the moral relativity of these people.."The GRAYING of America"....they want no black and white issues, just ALL gray ones.
Now, tpaine, at what point does legalization of drugs become part of restoration of our republic? Is there documented evidence of the use of heroin, marijuana, and menthaphetamines in the papers of the founding fathers?
Nope.
If I have to choose on who cares about this country, I am coming down on the side of President George W. Bush, not George Soros.
Soros thinks he is a nation unto himself. I am suspicious of anything he promotes.
Nice take.......destructive relativists have calculatedly erased the clear demarcation
between right and wrong and we are all of us, and future generations, diminished by it.
Dr. Soros says:
Drink the Kool-Aid
Eschew Religion & Morality
Follow Me, New Soviet Men,
To the barricades and beyond!
Ol' George has got a Jim Jones power-mad complex, eh? LOL.
Dr Soros is just as paranoid and dangerous as Guyana's Rev Jones.
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