Maggie's Farm

We are re-posting this item for three reasons: 1. We can't stand Soros, 2. We added this cute photo from Moonbattery, 3. We have this new youTube video link about Soros calling Bush a Nazi. ...complaining about suppression of speech -  on national TV! What a jerk.

May I apply the old expression "If you're so rich, how come you ain't smart"? Well, I think he is smart, but not wise.

Who is this hero of capitalism?

George Soros, born Gyorgy Schwartz in Hungary in 1930, fled the Nazis in youth with his family, and ended up educated at the London School of Economics.

Since his arrival, almost penniless, in the US in 1956, he has become a legend of the hedge fund business. His specialty has been laying siege to currencies. His conviction for insider trading, and other financial wrong-doings, never garnered much negative attention and, indeed, it was peanuts - just the cost of doing aggressive business. His Quantum Fund is, predictably, registered in Curacao, an off-shore tax haven.

Soros' extracurricular activities over recent years have been rightly attracting much attention, as he has become more outspoken in his political views, which tend to be anti-American, pro-world-government, and quasi-socialistic. His preoccupation with drug-legalization is well-known, but his efforts to spread abortion among traditional catholic nations is not.

Besides being outspoken, Soros puts his vast amounts of money where his mouth is. Changing the world into his vision seems to be his life mission. His grandiosity, and his lack of respect for American traditions and principles, seem to be his flaws. There is no question that the man who broke the Bank of England understands markets, but that doesn't make him wise about other subjects.

While his efforts to bend the Democratic Party leftwards over the past few years, through his Move On organization, have been most visible, Soros' money has been active through many other organizations which would not exist without it. Many say that Soros has bought the Democratic Party, and now he wants to buy America. Many are not aware of his role in Amnesty International, in getting support for McCain-Feingold, or of his formation of the Center for American Progress and America Coming Together. And that's just the beginning. What's his role in funding Air America?

As a celebrity investor with billions to spend, he can always get a podium, and he can always find a way to support political goals while by-passing McCain-Feingold via the advocacy organizations he supports. Does he always get a pass from the press? Of course. He is one of the "good rich guys," as opposed to the "evil greedy Republican rich guys."  They are in awe of him.

Kincaid called him "the biggest political fat cat of all time."

Horowitz and Poe, in a new book, view Soros as the banker of The Shadow Party.

Atlas is always on Soros' case, unlike the MSM who leave him alone.

Here's a good summary of his NGO activities abroad.

But it's time to make "Soros-supported" a dirty phrase. Someone needs to do an in-depth study, and get the word out, more loudly. I do not have the time, but Discover the Networks doesn't do the job on Soros.

We don't mind his being wealthy, nor do we mind his having opinions. We just want people to know what he wants, and what he is doing, and paying for, behind the scenes.

Image of Soros as Dr. Evil stolen from Moonbattery

(Ignore continuation page below)

It is difficult not to dwell on the meaning of 9-11 this week. As a guy who works in NYC (but was in Maine on that date), it hit very close to home. Here are some of my current thoughts, in corporate, bullet-point form:

1. Islam is a dangerous religion to non-Moslems.  Unlike Christianity, which is commanded to spread the good news via example and preaching, Islam is commanded to spread their word via submission or death. Westernized Moslems reject that notion, but many no more wish to be Westernized than I wish to be, or my nation to be, Moslemized. "Tolerance of differences" is not in their lexicon.

2. America is only one of many targets of world-wide jihad. When we try to understand it in terms of America and the West, we miss the point. That view is too self-centered. They have many other targets, all around the Moslem perimeter.

3. Traditional Islamic culture is not compatible with Western, democratic, Judeo-Christian culture. Oil and water. Either one, or the other, must compromise its culture to live in the same place.

4. The world bears the US little good will. Not because of what we do, but because of what we are. There is envy, condescension, schadenfreude, and some fear. But they are wrong about us. We are decent, and we will leave you alone if you leave us alone. We can't help it if we're lucky, ambitious, free-thinking, and hard-working, and we need not apologize for that. 

5. The Moslem migrational invasion of Europe is a catastrophe for Europe, politically, demographically, and culturally. It seems that when they enter a nation in large enough numbers, they demand that their generous host adjust to them, rather than vice versa. There is no visible gratitude - only demands and threats. So why do they leave home? Why?

6. Traditional Islam feels threatened by Western ideas, ideals, behavior, and freedoms.  The less isolated and insulated they are, the more they realize that they are a cultural island, stuck in an ancient past. The world is shrinking, and the more they encounter of the West, the more they freak out, and want to strike out. No doubt they love their traditions and their ways as much as we love ours. Fine, if you don't mind living in the 13th century. But you may not impose them on us.

7. The Bush administration over-estimates the dangerousness of Jihad. However, he, or any President, must do that, politically, because the next 200 or 3000 or 100,000 Americans who are killed by Jihadists will be the responsibility of whoever is in charge. Protection is the first job of the federal government, and bringing the fight to our attackers is not a bad plan.

8. The Left wishes to minimize the danger. Not all of us Dems, but some Dems, and the Lefty fringe. Why? Because they do not love their country and its traditions. Simple.

9. The anti-war folks are not anti-war. They do not mind others waging war, only the US. They are therefore simply part of #8, above: so secure in their comforts and safety that they refuse to take danger seriously - or maybe even welcome some, to mess things up.

10. Of course the Jihadists hate the Western liberation of Iraq from a barbaric tyranny. Political freedom poses a serious threat, and the collapse of Saddam was a humiliating blow. Political freedom in the heart of the middle-east is probably something even the Saudis find discouraging. It is alien, and threatening to the old ways. Another intrusion of "modern" ideas, just like all of the satellite dishes in Iran that Ahmadinejad has been destroying. I suspect that the people of such nations as Iraq and Iran are far ahead of their "leaders."

11. Israel is a scapegoat. Islamist politicians and mullahs get some mileage out of being anti-semitic, but the problem is that tiny Israel with its tiny population is an affront to them - economically, religiously, and politically. However, if you gave Israel to the Palestinians today, in six months it would be a dump like they made of Gaza.

Jeff says it more succinctly and precisely than I can:

The boutique multiculturalism that the West has dabbled in with such self-satisfaction, then, is dangerous insofar as it appears to promote the principles of a multicultural worldview that, when push comes to shove, it cannot—and should not—actually support.  That is to say, by promoting the idea that individual cultures are the province of those who belong to them, rendering outside judgments about the beliefs and practices in those cultures at best presumptuous and at worst colonialistic (after all, in a world where “truth” is contingent upon the consensus of given interpretive communities, there are no immutable laws beyond those made by fallible man), Western culture has set the stage for its own inevitable hypocrisy when it is forced to draw the line at a point where Otherness is truly, rather than superficially, defined.

Honor killings are one such point. Female circumcisions are another.  And both, in my estimation, show up the folly of building a social organization around a principle that must, at some point, be arbitrarily subverted by those who have claimed all along to promote it—else the host culture be forced to surrender to the cultures it has claimed selflessly to accomodate.  At which point boutique multiculturalism is replaced by strong multiculturalism, which is the only multiculturalism that carries any real force to begin with.

And strong multiculturalism is, in certain respects, very much akin to the will to power I’ve talked about in terms of interpretive communities and identity politics:  for instance, once sharia law is “accepted,” that ascendency would snuff out the rights of those who don’t wish to practice it and would then set itself up as the dominant social narrative.  Which is why the Pandora’s Box of strong multiculturalism should never be opened—and why people like myself are wary whenever we see boutique multiculturalists playing around with the latch.

The Anchoress sums up all of our thoughts about the press, with an admirably restrained indignation.

One quote:

The incurious press never did want to know about John Kerry’s military records…they never did actually want to hear what the Swiftboat Vets had to say…hell, they weren’t even curious enough about Plamegate to ask Joe Wilson a question beyond “so, how is the Bush Neocon Cabal out to get you?” They never were curious enough to ask Valerie Plame nuthin’ at all. They weren’t curious about Sandy Berger’s pants, or Air America ’s use of public monies, either. They are not interested in the 45,000 boxes of documents which came out of Iraq and which are unearthing so much interesting stuff. They were not especially interested in Juanita Brodderick (imagine how interested they’d have been in her, however, had she shown up on Bush’s watch!). They’re not interested in why Bill Clinton was asked to leave Oxford University as a young man (but Bush’s TANG dentist - he got asked questions!) They have no curiousity about why Hillary Clinton - whose pet issues include education - was not taking part of the Eductation Consortium which took place in the rotunda of the Capital, on 9/11. Actually the press never seems able to ask Hillary a question that moves beyond, “how’d you get to be so great?”

Truth be told, the press is staggeringly incurious about most things, and what it is interested in - which in the past few years means “screwing Bush,” sorry, but it’s true - it obsesses on.

I cannot add anything to this piece. Read the whole thing.