The Soros Threat To Democracy
Ed. (Banescu) Soros’ propaganda machine is continuing its assault on our culture.
Investor’s Business Daily | September 24, 2007
How many people, for instance, know that James Hansen, a man billed as a lonely “NASA whistleblower” standing up to the mighty U.S. government, was really funded by Soros’ Open Society Institute , which gave him “legal and media advice”?
That’s right, Hansen was packaged for the media by Soros’ flagship “philanthropy,” by as much as $720,000, most likely under the OSI’s “politicization of science” program.
That may have meant that Hansen had media flacks help him get on the evening news to push his agenda and lawyers pressuring officials to let him spout his supposedly “censored” spiel for weeks in the name of advancing the global warming agenda.
Hansen even succeeded, with public pressure from his nightly news performances, in forcing NASA to change its media policies to his advantage. Had Hansen’s OSI-funding been known, the public might have viewed the whole production differently. The outcome could have been different.
That’s not the only case. Didn’t the mainstream media report that 2006′s vast immigration rallies across the country began as a spontaneous uprising of 2 million angry Mexican-flag waving illegal immigrants demanding U.S. citizenship in Los Angeles, egged on only by a local Spanish-language radio announcer?
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10 comments | 
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Editor | Culture war, Junk science |
Interesting article, and I even share some of their concern. However, the author lost me when he wrote:
He seems to imply that there is no conservative entity analogous to Soros’ liberal enterprise.
Anyone ever hear of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation? It’s a US organization with about a half billion dollars in assets. It has given over $10 million each to the Alliance Defense Fund, the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. It has given over $1 million to Freedom House, National Affairs, the Federalist Society and the Institute for American Values. It has also funded some various activities of Jack Kemp and William Bennett along with the Middle East Media Research Institute and many, many others. Needless to say, these are predominantly conservative enterprises and individuals.
Thus, I think it’s a little dishonest to imply (as the author seems to be doing by declaring the practice a “threat”) that using money and power to influence the culture in ways not generally perceived by the voting public is primarily a liberal endeavor.
Note 2. Actually, the attack on conservative funding of think tanks comes from the same angst that liberals have about talk radio: they just can’t get any traction there. Consequently, most liberal funding is for activist causes — which is the real nub of the criticism of the article posted above.
Reducing the article to just a question of funding (an important question, granted), misses the point entirely. It’s really about Soros sponsored activism (Moveon.org, etc.). Equating his organizations with, say, the Heritage Foundation and the like is polemical bluster, or, as it seems in Jame’s K’s case, the penchant for reducing everything to its lowest common denominator.
Two more points. Dean is waiting for “a fair and balanced report from an actual objective media source so we can get both sides of the story and find out what really happened.” Who might that be?
Dean writes:
I don’t publish “misleading, malicious garbage.” If that’s your reaction to it, take it as an indicator you don’t understand the point and read it again.
I don’t publish “misleading, malicious garbage.”
I don’t know, this blog is full of it…;)
The information about Dr. Hansen is pertinent and newsworthy. Turnaround is fair play and if environmentalists complain about global warming sceptics of exchanging their integrity for money from ideologically extreme think tanks then they open themselves up to similar criticism if Hansen has in fact taken money from Soros.
The headline “Soros a threat to democracy”, on the other hand, is undeniably false and untruthful. You have not explained how democracy is threatened by Soros, you just want to bully readers into accepting it a s a given. You have not explained how the actions of Soros are in any way different from those of wealthy right-wing ideologues such as Richard Mellon Scaife. If a billionaires attempts to promote a certain political viewpoint is a threat to democracy then you headline should say, “Billionaires ideologues are a threat to democracy.”
At least Soros sticks to the issues, unlike Scaife whose relentless campaign to smear President Clinton with whatever mud he could find, true or false, contributed to an atmosphere of bitter and paralyzing partisanship and distracted the nation from more serious matters.
Dean, there is a difference between funding think tanks and hiding the funding of activists posing as concerned citizens trying to drive policy. Don’t conflate the two.
Distinctions matter.
I would like to point out the difference in scales involved here.
1) Dr. Lindzen,who for decades was the world’s leading authority on large-scale climate modelling, did a couple of days consulting for a gas company, made a few thousand dollars, and ends up getting tarred as a “stooge”. Hansen, on the other hand, apparently is dealing with orders of magnitude more dough and is thought of as some sort of hero.
2) The “liberal” foundations give away 10 to 50 times as much money as Scaife ever did. Plus, there is the added insult that these foundations were wrested away somehow from the intent of the original donors and ended up giving to causes that the originator would abhor. I wonder if those recipients of Ford foundation grants ever feel weird about using the interest money earned by a fortune made possible by free-market economics for their anti-capitalist rants. On the other hand, maybe they are completely cynical.
I also think the attacks on MoveOn.org are unwarranted.
“General Petraeus, Don’t Betray us” is a fair statement in light of the fact that General Petraeus’s testimony before Congress relied on the selective use of cherry-picked data and was at odds with the findings of three other recently released reports, one from the General Accounting Office, the CIA’s National Intelligence Estimate, and a report by a commission led by retired Marine General James Jones.
Yesterday, the Army’s top officer, General George Casey,
Army is worn too thin, says general, Calls force not ready to meet new threats, Boston Globe, September 27, 2007
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/09/27/army_is_worn_too_thin_says_general/
That we are on the verge of breaking our military and may not be able to respond to military threats outside of Iraq should be the real source of concern, not the MoveOn.org ad that asks us to consider the validity of the Bush administration’s optimistic comments. If George Soros’s funding of MoveOn.org helps shed light on these questione I consider it a public service and not a threat to democracy.
There are very many topics where religion, morality, politics and social trends issues intersect and I am very grateful for the opportunity to learn more about them on this web site. However, that intersection is missing here, and unfortunately, I feel that the over-the-top language used to attack on George Soros represents an inappropriate exploitation of religion for political purposes.
There is no Orthodox Christian interest in attacking George Soros, only an ideological and political interest. Since both Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholemew and Pope Benedict XVI have declared stewardship for our planet to be a Christian duty, advocacy by George Soros on behalf of greater care for our environment cannot in any way be construed as an attack on Christian values.
I went to the web site of Open Society Institute looking for the “assault on culture” that Mr. Banescu announces in his editor’s note, but found nothing that offends Orthodox Christian sensibilities. The purpose of the organization, the web site announces, is to:
In fact, there is nothing there that :assaults our culture” in any way. One can reasonably disagree Mr. Soros’s proposed solutions and vigorously debate the underlying economic or political philosophy. However to portray him as some monster attacking our culture and faith is wildly inaccurate and an explotiation of religion.