by robertdreed » Mon Oct 16, 2006 8:02 pm
I find George Soros to be an interesting character from a lot of angles. I still haven't decided whether he's a good guy or a bad guy.<br><br>One the one hand, he's undeniably intelligent. He's written articles that pretty much give away the game about the present lack of rules and responsibilities in international commerce, trade, and speculation, while simulataneously freely acknowledging that he's managed to play on that field and do quite well for himself. And he's said that there's an inherent unfairness to things in that regard, that the international market ceases to lead to benefit or progress when it simply comes down to being a game between profiteering buccaneers with sufficient liquid capital to play economic games of Go, of high-stakes bluff poker, or what have you. And his stated position is that he would welcome a common set of rules and regulations that would, he avers, ameliorate the inequalities and opportunities for exploitation that presently exist. <br><br>I haven't heard very many other successful international currency speculators complaining that the game is presently rigged in their favor, and calling for reform. <br><br>Also, Soros has not only given a lot of lip service to the ideals of open societies with political and cultural liberty, he has put out a lot of philanthropic money on behalf of efforts ostensibly intended to advance those ideals. <br><br>On the other hand, if he's a bad guy, he's a very bad one indeed. He's been accused of funding progressive movements in order to control them for his own ambitions- or, more likely, on behalf of a larger agenda suppported by other like-minded members of the plutocratic power elite. That's a serious allegation, because that's a really perfidious thing to do. <br><br>Interesting how so many conservative commentators for outlets like Fox News- and members of the Republican Party, including Congresspeople- call him out by name as though he were the principal mastermind behind the "extreme far-left Democrats." Soros is of course the principal sponsor of moveon.org., as the opponents of the issues supported by moveon seemingly never fail to mention.<br><br>The ironies in that abound. The American Republican and right wing demonization of George Soros always seems to me to have echoes of "Jewish international banker conspiracy" in it. He's continually posited to be <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>the</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> mastermind behind every proposal of the "extreme far liberal Left" fringe of the Democrats. <br><br>Perhaps the most controversial issue identified with Soros is of course "drug legalization." Official spokespersons for the US governments antidrug crusade, from Barry McCaffrey to Karen Tandy, have repeatedly brought up Soros by name, as if the entire drug law reform movement is a product of his personal inspiration. Additionally, there's often a tacit subtext that Soros is actually a drug profiteer who stands to gain from drug legalization- an absurd notion, considering the fact that it's Drug Prohibition that creates the conditions for clandestine monopoly and illicit money maneuvering, and that legalization would pull the plug on that entire game. <br><br>On the other hand, you have the complaints of various people in the drug law reform movement that Soros's Drug Policy Fpoundation is pretty much "clueless" and "ineffectual" about how they disburse the money at their disposal, and that they mire the movement in too much fund-raising bureaucracy associated with having to sign on to the ideas of the DPF on the best way to advance the ideas and initiatives of the drug law reform movement. And in a wider sense, there are similar complaints about moveon.org being subject to top-down ideas about what constitutes "acceptable" progressivism...<br><br>which in turn leads to considering the ideas of Dream's End, who- I gather- thinks that every social movement advanced by George Soros amounts to a Trojan Horse. <br><br>Dream's End, and some other people on the Left out there, seem to have a suspicion of Soros-as-mastermind that mirrors that of the Republican Right. <br><br>But I still haven't figured out whether Dream's End's antipathy toward Soros is primarily founded on a <!--EZCODE ITALIC START--><em>per se</em><!--EZCODE ITALIC END--> rejection and disdain directed at anything associated with capitalist philanthropy- especially when some of it has a record of being unapologetically targeted at states of the former Soviet bloc holding historic attachments to Marxist socialist economies and governments- or whether DE may be on to something more substantive. <br><br><br><br><br> <p></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://p216.ezboard.com/brigorousintuition.showUserPublicProfile?gid=robertdreed>robertdreed</A> at: 10/16/06 7:17 pm<br></i>