George Soros in the Wind

“I’ve had enough of smelling death and rot and death…”

“As God is my witness, they’re not going to lick me. I’m going to live through this, and when it’s all over, I’ll never be hungry again…If I have to lie, steal, cheat or kill, as God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

You may wonder what the frivolous Scarlet O’Hara’s words from the movie “Gone with the Wind” have to do with George Soros but I think there is a parallel here. The experience of living through hunger and the death of others, for a young person, can have a profound motivational impact, even if the individual in question had to find a way to survive through the holocaust of World War II rather than a fictional version of post Civil War America.

I am writing this critique of George Soros’ book “The Age of Fallibility” because I want to make the world a better place. Over the last few years, I have heard and read much about George Soros, a Hungarian born immigrant to the United States, considered to be a pariah to Republicans and a savior to Democrats. In his book, The Age of Fallibility - Consequences of the War on Terror, Mr. Soros attempts to inform the American public about his desire to make the world a better place; or so he says.

Certainly making the world a better place is a laudable goal, and the fact that Mr. Soros is willing to expend his huge fortune toward this goal is wonderful. Right? Well, the term "making the world a better place" is relative. One could say that Hitler was trying to make the world a better place from his own demented perspective. Marx, Kant and even Pol Pot probably thought they were making the world a better place. One has to ask: better for whom and what is a better world in George Soros’ opinion?

Yet, I find it interesting that the world keeps getting worse with every day that George Soros is around to invest in it. And he is getting richer and richer. Is there a connection? I don’t hate rich people but I prefer to praise those people who get rich through better ideas and ingenuity rather than by constantly “selling short” at just the right time. For instance, Mr. Soros advocates an increase in government spending at precisely the time when that act would likely make the world less prosperous and more chaotic. He also advocates a reduction of green house gases while, at the same time, he invests heavily in Brazilian oil production, into which (coincidentally?) President Obama has also “invested” taxpayer money. So I wonder if there isn’t some bad philosophy involved in Mr. Soros’ investment principles. Could Mr. Soros be an example of how bad philosophy leads to financial disasters? Let’s find out.

First of all, I’m not going to accuse Mr. Soros of collaborating with the Nazis during his formative years. There is simply not enough information about his youth to be able to make that charge. One can only conclude that the Nazis were bad people and Soros would be right to want them wiped from the face of the earth. Yet, a question must be asked about his view of the Jews while he was young. A glimpse may have surfaced in his famous 60 Minutes interview:

“Vintage footage of Jews walking in line; man dragging little boy in line)

KROFT: (Voiceover) These are pictures from 1944 of what happened to George Soros' friends and neighbors.

(Vintage footage of women and men with bags over their shoulders walking; crowd by a train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) You're a Hungarian Jew...

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

KROFT: (Voiceover) ...who escaped the Holocaust...

(Vintage footage of women walking by train)

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Mm-hmm.

(Vintage footage of people getting on train)

KROFT: (Voiceover) ... by -- by posing as a Christian.

Mr. SOROS: (Voiceover) Right.

(Vintage footage of women helping each other get on train; train door closing with people in boxcar)

KROFT: (Voiceover) And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and -- and anticipate events and when -- when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a -- a very personal experience of evil.”(1)

Consider what this means. From watching his fellow Jews plundered and sent away to death, Mr. Soros concluded as a “life principle” that one should “think ahead. One should understand and – anticipate events and when – when one is threatened.”

Consider the implication of this realization: The Jews did not think ahead. They did not understand and anticipate events when they were threatened. Mr. Soros is saying that he is so afraid of what people can do to Jews like him, that he must think ahead and understand and anticipate events and realize when one is threatened. And does this philosophy represent his efforts today to think ahead about trends in the world? Does it mean that he considers the Jews incapable of anticipating events? Is his philosophy a reflection of his experiences? And exactly how is he "thinking ahead." Is he thinking ahead enough, is he so insecure, that he must create the events of the future?

Let’s advance this story further. What could Mr. Soros have concluded about how he should “think ahead” in order to avoid being killed? He may have wanted to make himself into a great man, someone with so much influence that people would come to him for his advice rather than to hurt him; he may have felt that he must position himself as one of the greatest of the great and one of the richest of the rich; controlling so much of other peoples’ wealth that no one could possibly think of him as a Jew…but as a brilliant man, a thinker and an investor of massive amounts of money.

This young man, animated by such a fear of the potentially deadly opinions of other Jew haters, must have sought out the best ideas, the most advanced investment methods in order to ensure that he was safe. Certainly, this is not a bad motive.

But what is important are the ideas he came to accept within this context and how those ideas are impacting the world today…because they certainly are doing so. George Soros is most definitely "in the wind" of political influence today.

Looking around at the post-war world, he must have seen the rampant collectivism that surrounded him and he must surely have discovered the trends toward more collectivism, as did Austrian economist F. A. Hayak and Russian emigre Ayn Rand. Where Hayak and Rand sought to warn people about this collectivism in their books “The Road to Serfdom” and "Atlas Shrugged," Soros sought to understand collectivism and use it to his advantage. After all, he must think ahead, get ahead of trends and use them to stay alive, just as his father did to escape the Nazi death camps. Where Hayak and Rand sought to expose that collectivism, Soros saw it as an integral part of his philosophy, considering that the fault of the world was not collectivism but “aggressive” ideas. Where Hayak and Rand sought to create a new trend away from collectivism, Soros found a mentor in philsopher Karl Popper (1902-1994) who championed a new form of collectivism known as an “open” society.

What can we learn from Mr. Soros investment philosophy? Is he a clear thinker who uses facts and sound economic principles or is he looking for the quick buck, a short cut to wealth? And since we know that Mr. Soros is heavily involved in philanthropy and politics, what does his philosophy of life teach us about the rightness of his activities? Soros says in his book, “I have developed a coherent and self-consistent view of the world based on the twin principles of reflexivity and fallibility. It is neither perfect nor complete, yet it has taken me a long way in understanding reality and participating in it. It has guided me both in the financial markets and in my philanthropy.”(2)

If you are not familiar with the terms reflexivity and fallibility, you may not be aware that they are concepts developed by Popper to solve the “problem” of induction. Popper taught that induction was an incomplete process. He invokes the idea that people who claim to know ultimate truths tend to devise invalid stratagems (reflexivity) to limit questioning of their accepted knowledge. For Popper, the assertion that one possesses ultimate truth, regardless of how it was derived, is a sign that one is rationalizing about imperfect knowledge.

Popper offers a solution to the problem of induction by asserting that induction and knowledge progress by means of "bold leaps," boldness being considered the standard that identifies and opens the door to the next level of thought and action. By invoking boldness (blind faith) as a standard for evaluating knowledge, Popper offers a stratagem that he thought could lead us forward. He calls it an Open Society.

Soros writes “…Popper’s Book, ‘The Open Society and Its Enemies’ struck me with the force of revelation and prompted me to explore the author’s philosophy. He argued that the Nazi and Communist ideologies have something in common; they both claim to be in possession of the ultimate truth. Since the ultimate truth is beyond human reach, both ideologies had to be based on a biased and distorted interpretation of reality; consequently, they could be imposed on society only by the use of repressive methods. He (Popper) juxtaposed a different principle of social organization that is based on the recognition that claims to the ultimate truth cannot be validated. Popper called this principle “open society,” and he held it out as preferable to a definitive design.” (3)

Popper and Soros have accepted virtually all of philosopher David Hume's (1711-1776)views about the concept called “necessity” and the "inability" of man to understand reality (fallibility). Hume's view was that there are no valid inferences in the jump from observed cases to unobserved cases. With this view, Hume fundamentally invalidated observation as a source of knowledge. Popper held that men are fallible because we cannot understand all of reality. In effect, Popper and Hume were skeptics about human understanding and they laid the foundation for an approach to induction that did nothing to advance induction or the acquisition of knowledge. Where scientists of his time were discovering whole areas of new knowledge through investigation of reality, Popper, during his time, was saying that we could only find partial solutions. While businessmen were building whole industries and magnificent inventions that revolutionized the quality of life, Popper was saying that we could only take baby steps to knowledge and that whatever “knowledge” we discovered was still suspect.

Since induction, for Popper, fails to lead to real truth, and since, for Popper and Soros, real truth is incomplete, an open society is one that accepts this unfortunate fact. Consider what this means in practice: there is no such thing as perfect (true) knowledge, there is no way we can verify it by connecting our minds to reality. We are not able to access such a reality. So there is nothing to inform political decisions except collectivism. And when a man must devise an ethical code to guide his life, again, he cannot refer to knowledge acquired from experience; such "knowledge" would be flawed and reflexive.

The next premise that Mr. Soros found in the European wind was altruism, sacrifice. A proper society, according to this view, requires that men sacrifice their knowledge and incomes to the collective (open society). These ideas were everywhere, especially in Mr. Soros new home England that was entering its "socialist" phase. The Fabian socialists and Labor Party were insinuating themselves into society incrementally while most Brits did not realize that a con was being perpetrated. Likewise, in Soros' America, many people will not realize that an open society, which sounds so inclusive, so democratic, is really open to anything...especially all the regulations we normally associate with fascism.

Consider what is lost in a world with no “ultimate truths”; any society that stands on firm principles such as individual rights and the pursuit of happiness is considered to be based on illusory fallacies. If communism is false so are individual rights. And certain kinds of government force, those that foster sacrifice, cannot be called immoral; they are merely something that has to given a chance in an open system.

Soros is saying that he views any “defined” society as inherently imperfect because it presumes to do the impossible which is to follow ultimate truth. An “open society” on the other hand is based upon the idea that man cannot really know anything with certainty and therefore, because it accepts this “truth” it is the more proper society. All we have to do is convince men (especially capitalists) to sacrifice for the sake of such a society.

Apparently, Mr. Soros did not notice that saying there are no ultimate truths is a statement of ultimate truth. Yet, he was so struck by the idea that he decided to build his life and business around it. The contradiction didn't stop him. Indeed, in order to be “rational” in an open society, men would have to give up the entire field of thought, of philosophy, of learning, of investigation, of fact; for the sake of being “open.” Mr. Soros, as a young man, and now as a seasoned investor, has missed the “fact” that this is the very state of “openness” that the Nazis insisted upon from their citizens. Mindless obedience for the sake of the volk is exactly what the Nazis preached.

One should not be surprised that Mr. Soros became a collectivist and an altruist. Such ideas were “in the wind” so to speak. They were everywhere; including the idea that it was the Jews who were responsible for everything going wrong in the world at the time. The Nazis constantly repeated the “Big Lie” that it was the Jews’ aggressiveness, industriousness, diligence, intelligence, individuality and capitalist conspiracies that were responsible for the defeat of Germany in World War I.

It was this hatred and racism that caused the very deaths that Mr. Soros observed as a youth. Perhaps, he thought, the Jews had missed the collectivist trend taking over Europe and unthinkingly refused to go along with it. They had not sufficiently thought ahead. Perhaps he thought this refusal caused their destruction. Perhaps, in refusing to buck the collectivist trend, by embracing it, he could escape any future holocausts should they come about.

Today, similar arguments against capitalism are made by progressives in our universities. Capitalists are considered aggressive, industrious, diligent, intelligent, individualists involved in a capitalist conspiracy that is responsible for our economic problems. Any capitalist who is so "ignorant" that he/she holds moral principles such as individual rights, property rights and a prohibition against force in human dealings must be laughed at, vilified and taxed out of existence. This was the same prejudice that was aimed at the Jews by the Nazis.

An open society cannot be defined because the advocates for such a system insist that it be open. It is a society where individuals stand for nothing since only bold leaps by the leaders can be undertaken. A bold leap is merely an out-of-context, unprincipled wild guess that is intended to replace such concepts as logic, valid generalizations and principles. For Soros and his followers, we should favor bold leaps such as universal medical coverage (collectivism and altruism) or soaking the rich (anti-reason and anti-individual rights). When standards of knowledge are considered unknowable, they lead to no knowledge (violence and nihilism). Bring in a principle such as individual rights and you have an old idea that is based upon supposedly “perfect” knowledge that has been discredited because we can’t rely on “perfect” knowledge; this gives you a society based upon plunder and murder (the very sort of things that went on during the holocaust). So anything that is considered by past thinking to be “true;” is untrue; and anything that is out-of-context, arbitrary and unprovable is testable in an open society. This is a regression to pre-conceptual man, to whim worship, to making any demand, any assertion, any statement no matter how out of context or stupid. It is a prescription for legalized plunder, non-objective law, murder, corruption, gang warfare and bloody riots. Look at the world around you today. This is the world that George Soros has created.

Notice that for Soros the “different principle” he operates upon is not that ultimate truth is merely false, it also leads to repressive systems. This includes, especially, capitalism, the system that holds man’s mind and individual rights to be sacrosanct. Capitalism is a powerful productive force, but according to Soros, it is repressive and must be punished, regulated and put on the right path toward solving social problems by means of equitable re-distribution of profits. Who decides what is equitable? Why George Soros, of course, through his various funded policy groups and their reports, all of which beat the same "open society" collectivist and altruist drums (That altruism and collectivism, not capitalism, caused the holocaust has been forgotten. That it was a capitalist U.S.A. that won the war and liberated the Jews is also forgotten).

Consider the peculiar position in which such an idea puts a society. First, it assumes that the claims to ultimate truth offered by truly corrupt social systems like fascism, communism, socialism and welfare-statism will not be challenged; Soros may believe that such systems are evil and repressive, but the practices of such systems, for the very same reason, cannot be analyzed and/or over turned. This means that Soros can advocate any re-distributionist idea common to such systems, but as long as he calls it an "open society" it is not evil. In other words, if ultimate truth exists, we can never know it even in an open society. When Soros and his followers offer programs that are nothing more than forced altruism, the hallmark of dictatorship, they are not considered to be dictatorial because Popper has severed the connection between knowledge, reality and thinking. Anything goes and anything that is open is therefore testable. This gives Mr. Soros the arrogance that justifies his willingness to engage in “social engineering” of entire countries including the United States and to demand that "capitalist" societies sacrifice their wealth for the sake of other failed societies in which Mr. Soros has interfered. His collectivism and altruism even give him the power, he thinks, to interfere in our country on behalf of the world, a position he was not elected to perform:

“There are many concerns that transcend national borders. For instance, we are facing a global energy crisis. And within national borders, the leaders often abuse their power. When the abuse reaches the point where the people have no other recourse, the international community has a responsibility to intervene. This is a case for what Karl Popper has called piecemeal social engineering, and I am willing to engage in it personally and through my foundations.” (4)

This is why Soros can be both an investor in the capitalist system and an anti-capitalist. Capitalism is based upon ultimate truth in his view so it is wrong. Yet, he has no problem investing in capitalist organizations while also supporting, even creating, organizations that are virulently anti-capitalist. He uses them to spread propaganda and lies to fool the public about his motives so he can then make lots of money from his “social engineering.” It is all part of his global altruistic strategy and a confirmation of his view that men are fallible.

What is the significance of basing one’s philosophy of life on an inherent fallibility of men? What kind of starting point does that represent for an intelligent individual? Clearly Hume, Popper and Soros sell short on man’s mind. They consider that man is ignorant, imperfect and incapable of understanding reality. This is a view of man that says one should only look for fallibility and vulnerability; that one should only operate upon that premise. It is a gangster’s perspective, one that says, since man is a sinner, the only way to succeed is to sell him his sins and exploit his ignorance. It does not say we should educate man, lift him up, teach him how to think and how to make correct decisions; it says man cannot know, cannot act rationally and cannot make proper decisions – so make the best of it.

This, I submit, expresses the soul of George Soros and indicates why he is a danger to our political processes and to our very survival. The practice of looking for bubbles of perceived (but non-existent value) reveals the truth that Soros is not at all brilliant or perceptive. It reflects his ignorance of man’s true value, man’s true ability to project the future and make good decisions about investments. The truth is that it is not difficult to recognize the signs of over-inflated currency values. It takes no special genius. The currency markets are covered extensively by money experts and, once something untoward is discovered, it is usually not a secret among those who understand the markets. It is not difficult for Soros to “find out” about the shady dealings of governments.

But consider what this perspective opens up for an investor like Soros. Once you understand the principle of how bubbles are created, not only can you understand how governments deceive people and manipulate value, you also have a model for manipulating markets yourself. If the government can do it, so can a well placed investor with the right connections. It is done by means of buying politicians and dictators, providing them with highly leveraged investment opportunities that require internal coordination and well-timed government decisions. By creating subsidiary organizations masquerading as charitable organizations, news organizations and think tanks, you can mobilize a great number of people on the street level, creating a herd mentality and manipulating them as “useful idiots” in massive schemes that support plunder. The basic mechanism involves selling short on investments at the appropriate time, then re-investing when prices have plunged…pretending to be the savior of a situation that the capitalists have created. Such manipulations are possible to an investor who is protected by the politicians he has helped put into power.

What kind of people would be the best customers of a Soros hedge fund? These would be people who have “made” tremendous amounts of money…illegally; people who need a high degree of “confidentiality” and “anonymity”. These would include drug lords, gangsters, oligarchs, dictators and bureaucrats who have found a way to launder large amounts of revenues from “nationalized” industries, U.S. foreign aid, drug profits and other illegal businesses. These “investors” would be able to “participate” in gaining higher returns from their investments.

Community organizers can participate in mobilizing public opinion that would provide a “moral” cover for government actions. Politicians could manipulate regulations and legislation that would enable programs and policies that are set up as money laundering schemes. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac come to mind in this area. The News media, many of whom owe their jobs to Soros philanthropic organizations and who possess a decidedly leftist and anti-capitalist bias would present stories in the guise of objective news analysis that would support the government actions. Labor unions would also participate in shaking down businesses, claiming an altruistic motive for their strikes and shakedowns. This is CRIME, Inc. These are the kinds of schemes in which a man who thinks people are fallible would participate. These are the kinds of schemes that do more than anticipate trends; they make the trends that enable the plunderers of the world to get richer. By being the “banker” or “investment advisor” of these kinds of crooks, Mr. Soros makes the world safer for himself…he is controlling and enriching the very same types of demons who killed the Jews during World War II.

An honest investor would base his investment philosophy on a rational set of values. He or she, properly, should be looking for companies and trends that have the prospect of gaining in the market and improving peoples’ lives. Otherwise, why call it investing? Such an investor participates in the free market and is part of the process of production because his investment makes it possible for productive companies to offer new products and gain profits. This is real investing that lifts society and improves lives and nations.

By contrast, Soros-style investments work by controlling the players with the power to exert force, coerce decisions and influence opinion. This sets up the “honest” investor to be fed bad information, creating a “bubble” from which they can sell short. If you look at some of the schemes in which Soros has been involved, you see this pattern of investment. And, you see that in the end, Soros portrays himself as an innocent bystander who has come to provide Open Society Institute (OSI) funds to help those harmed by the scheme and to “invest” in and “fund” the recovery.

Bad philosophy, a philosophy that invests in human fallibility, will always be turned into an instrument of destruction and plunder. Whenever such philosophies are "in the wind," altruism and collectivism provide the philosophical poisons that destroy whole nations and plunder honest citizens. It happened in Nazi Germany and it is happening today through George Soros funded organizations. The beneficiaries of these re-distribtutionist schemes have always been the dishonest among us. This is evil and George Soros is their God Father. Hopefully, he is not yours.

In my view, George Soros is working within the cracks of society, milking money from honest citizens to protect his childhood need for safety. He has found his milking cow and she is us. He is leading us down a path of his choosing; a path that only benefits him and his investors. And he is not asking for our opinions or consent. Should we try to exert our dissent and ask that our rights be respected. Well, fiddle-de-dee. Mr. Soros has too much at stake to care what you think.

This attitude can be seen in the political campaigns he supports. These campaigns are not intended to offer open discussions of ideas that give the voter a chance to decide for himself among honorable competitors who happen to disagree. Instead, political campaigns, since Soros, are polarizing and full of moral outrage. The Democrats, for some reason, are good and the Republicans are evil, racist, fascist, corrupt and liars. The Democrats support the common man and the Republicans support the greedy rich. Soros-supported Democrats do not argue the issues; they spew venom and hatred toward Republicans and Tea Party protestors. Leftist blogs do not assume that honest people can disagree; they tell us that the Republicans are vile and evil dictators, dishonest and hateful of all that is good. Theirs is a political moral dualism; they are right and everyone else is stupid.

Why does Soros support such tactics? He is a product of his own philosophy; he has no standard of value when it comes to persuasion because, according to Hume and Popper, there are no standards for the development of real knowledge. Rather than present us with better ideas, he can only throw as much money as necessary into Democratic political campaigns to “convince” us, through public relations and constant repetition of lies (since we can’t know anything), to appeal to our emotions, our hatreds, our ignorance. This is the better world that Soros wants to make. He gets rich and we get poorer.

But Soros is doing a lot of damage to our society, enough perhaps to weaken us while terrorists advance. Many lives may be lost because Soros has derailed our institutions with his money. Consider that most people today have yet to figure out the damage done by Hume, Kant and Popper. The "intentions" of these philosophers to destroy the mind of man have yet to be exposed and the results are all around us in skepticism and cynicism, dictatorship and poverty. Soros is one of their troops. If we can't understand what the philosophers were up to, how can we understand what one of the troops is doing? It takes the ability to see very broad abstractions to catch a clever thief and that is why we only catch a philosophical thief centuries after he has committed his crimes. I consider myself ahead on this one.

Reason is the arbiter of ignorance as it moves toward certainty. It is an effort to understand existence in order to harmonize man and his actions with the facts. Reason creates society and freedom. The ignorance that Soros countenances creates dictatorship and war. Reason makes happiness possible. Ignorance creates loss. To base one’s philosophy of life on the premise that men are imperfect and ignorant is to assume that men will never achieve the harmony that comes from certainty. It also means that George Soros hates honest people and is always waiting for a chance to pounce on them for seeking happiness. To assume that all decisions are bad decisions is to become a pariah on mankind, an exploiter and a user. This, I submit, explains George Soros’ philanthropic and political activities.

If we look at how progressives, skeptics and nihilists operate, we find that, like Soros, their method of using knowledge reveals the consistency of their inconsistent views. You will notice that these people always argue from negative viewpoints that analyze specific issues out of context. They accomplish their political intention by ensuring that people do not see the contradictions in their views, through a selective focus and selective arguments. This was also typical of the arch skeptics, Hume and Kant who both characteristically analyzed specific epistemological issues out of context. From these out-of-context discussions they first sowed confusion and then drew sweeping generalizations to the effect that man could not rely on his senses, could not rely on his knowledge and therefore his only choice was to follow the dictates of religious leaders and dictators by practicing the altruism they demanded.

Let’s be clear, the only purpose of skepticism is to reduce man’s mind to a malleable, reflexive and fallible state. George Soros is merely an opportunist taking advantage of Hume, Kant and Popper's life work.

Fortunately, Soros can’t succeed. There is a flaw in his philosophy. When you start out thinking you can get rich by taking advantage of people, you leave yourself open to the eventual enlightenment of those people. Man does have a mind. Mr. Soros’ quest to find bubbles is difficult because finding stupid people is not that easy. This is why he has to create the political circumstances that benefit his investments.

In fact, the biggest bubble that Mr. Soros has created is himself. Sooner or later, people will not believe his protestations of honesty and concern for them. Sooner or later, they will see that their own shrinking bank accounts are causing his burgeoning hedge funds. Soon, hopefully, sooner rather than later, Mr. Soros' manipulations and philosophy will be gone with the wind.

(1) Found at: http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=43876
(2) The Age of Fallibility Page 16
(3) Ibid
(4) The Age of Fallibility Page 16, ebook version