To most people, other than those on the far left, George Soros is the original Dr. Evil, so it’s kind of funny to hear him accuse Donald “America First” Trump of being a dictator in waiting.
Yet that’s just what he did this week in an op-ed at Project Syndicate:
Open Society Needs DefendingWell before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: “These times are not business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world.” Now I feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.I am an 86-year-old Hungarian Jew who became a US citizen after the end of World War II. I learned at an early age how important it is what kind of political regime prevails. The formative experience of my life was the occupation of Hungary by Hitler’s Germany in 1944. I probably would have perished had my father not understood the gravity of the situation. He arranged false identities for his family and for many other Jews; with his help, most survived.In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers’ interests. Under Popper’s influence, I called the first kind of society open, the second, closed.
After singing the praises of the European Union for a few paragraphs, he comes to this:
Democracy is now in crisis. Even the US, the world’s leading democracy, elected a con artist and would-be dictator as its president. Although Trump has toned down his rhetoric since he was elected, he has changed neither his behavior nor his advisers. His cabinet comprises incompetent extremists and retired generals.What lies ahead?I am confident that democracy will prove resilient in the US. Its Constitution and institutions, including the fourth estate, are strong enough to resist the excesses of the executive branch, thus preventing a would-be dictator from becoming an actual one.
Isn’t it funny how so many people on the left suddenly have faith in the ability of the media to keep the executive branch of government in check? They’ve been on vacation for eight years but now they’re going to get serious.
Democrats might want to think twice before holding George Soros up as some sort of champion of democracy. He hasn’t been too good for their party.
Daniel Greenfield writes at Frontpage Mag:
How George Soros Destroyed The Democratic PartyIt was the end of the big year with three zeroes. The first X-Men movie had broken box office records. You couldn’t set foot in a supermarket without listening to Brittney Spears caterwauling, “Oops, I Did It Again.” And Republicans and Democrats had total control of both chambers of legislatures in the same amount of states. That was the way it was back in the distant days of the year 2000.In 2016, Republicans control both legislative chambers in 32 states. That’s up from 16 in 2000.What happened to the big donkey? Among other things, the Democrats decided to sell their base and their soul to a very bad billionaire and they got a very bad deal for both.It was 2004. The poncho was the hottest fashion trend, there were 5 million new cases of AIDS and a former Nazi collaborator had bought the Democrat Party using the spare change in his sofa cushions.And gone to war against the will of the people. This was what he modestly called his own “Soros Doctrine”
Read the whole thing.
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