There are better reasons to dislike George Soros than his opposition to President Bush, as Srdja Trifkovic outlines in this month’s Chronicles. (http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/February2004/0204Trifkovic.html)

From my own experience, which was only reinforced by Trifkovic, I think - pace Heather Wilhelm - that there are plenty of reasons to bash Soros’ destructive philanthropy. Soros is an enemy of Western civilization and Christianity. After a review of his activities in Eastern and Central Europe, I was left wondering, with Trifkovic, if he doesn’t want Christian Europeans to contracept, abort and bugger themselves into extinction. Revenge for the Holocaust, which Soros survived?

Soros is a very dangerous man, with far more money and far less moral sense about how to use it than is good for any of us. HRS

Once again Mr. Sutherland misconstrues my meaning. The point of the linked article and my blog entry is not Soros’s political opposition to Bush, but Soros’s notion that the “belief in ultimate truth”—as embodied, Soros believes, in Nazism, Communism, Fascism, and, oh yes, the Bush administration—is the greatest threat to our society. Soros is an extreme liberal, who equates the belief in ultimate truth, on which our entire civilization is based, with Nazism and Fascism. That’s the point.

At the very least, Soros’ contention that the Open Society is the only antidote to totaliatrianism is profoundly wrong, and thus his championing of this pernicious idea is indeed dangerous. Miss Wilhelm makes a rather feeble attempt to explicate this problem, but the heart of the matter is that the Open Society, if pushed to its logical conclusions, is simply a PRECURSOR to totalitarianism.

There was an Open Society in Weimar Germany, and in Spain before the Civil War. Where did they lead? The Open Society allowed men to talk endlessly, about anything, with no moral limits — and they talked themselves right into war.

The simple fact is that by asking us to commit to no absolute truths, Soros is working to enshrine a very real conception of absolute truth. His orthodoxy is anti-orthodoxy. The negation becomes its own rumbling behemoth, drawing all the coercive apparatus of the State to itself. And because the Open Society men will admit no truth outside of the Open Society ideal itself, there can be no limits on the methods or means of enforcing the negative orthodoxy.

A man who cleaves to absolute truths, to a law of nature, will recignize that whatever he desires for society must be limited by the dignity and humanity natural to his fellow man. In short, his very recognition of higher law puts limits how he can use the instruments of coercion. So, in a seeming paradox, it is the Open Society partisans who make the most ruthless tyrants.

Mr. Auster,

I didn’t misconstrue your meaning. What I posted reinforces your point, with which I agree completely, with examples of the destructive activity that Soros’ weltanschauung leads him to. I was not suggesting that you think Soros’ opposition to Bush is his worst feature.

Reading Wilhelm’s NRO article, however, I had the impression that she does believe that Soros’ anti-Republicanism is the worst consequence of his relativism. Perhaps I am reading that into what she wrote, and maybe I am biased by my dislike of the facile quippery that pervades the new NR, but Wilhelm’s article struck me as typical of today’s NR: rather superficial and over-concerned with the electoral fortunes of the Republican Party as opposed to conservative principles.

Trifkovic’s article is a far more illuminating look at Soros and his activities. A man as committed as Soros is to creating an “open society” of the sort he envisions can only be the mortal enemy of all older orders of society, and an implacable foe of traditionalists. In Soros’ case, we must name the enemy and realize why he is the enemy. Enforcing Soros’ open society can only lead to a new totalitarianism. Again pace Miss Wilhelm, Soros’ opposition to Bush is the least of it. Indeed, opposition to Bush is probably the only substantive thing Soros and I would agree about, although for very different reasons. HRS

Well put by Mr. Cella. If you believe in ultimate truth, then the truth is higher than you, which means the truth puts limits on you and what you can do and thus prevents you from becoming totalitarian. But if you dogmatically deny ultimate truth, then your dogmatic denial is itself the highest thing there is, and you will accept no limits on your attempt to drive out any vestige of ultimate truth, and so you become totalitarian.

An essay is needed on how liberalism devolved from Jefferson’s self-evident objective truths, which resist all tyranny, to Soros’s belief in Openness and the non-existence of truth as the opposite of tyranny.

Soros is an extreme example of the liberal mentality discussed in Jim Kalb’s essay The Tyranny of Liberalism.

Mr. Auster writes, “An essay needs to be written about how liberalism has devolved from Jefferson’s self-evident objective truths, which resist all tyranny, to Soros’s belief in Openness and the non-existence of truth as the opposite of tyranny.”

That essay was written, by Willmoore Kendall in his book _The Conservative Affirmation_ under the chapter heading “American Conservatism and the Open Society.”

Kendall documents, there and elsewhere, how deeply hostile the new Open-Society-liberalism is to the political philosophy of our forefathers, whose philosophy begins by closing certain questions: “We hold these truths.” In short, authentic American political philosophy begins exactly at the point where the Open Society ends. In this sense, Soros (and all the others like him, many of whom style themselves as “conservatives”) are anti-American.

To Mr. Sutherland,

It’s true the article starts and ends on Soros’s anti-Bush campaign, but the real meat of the article, as I see it, is Soros’s attack on truth, not his attack on Bush.

However, the author, Heather Wilhelm, brings the two themes together near the end of the article where she writes:

“[Soros is] incensed about a president who believes that there is a truth, saw a problem, and decided to take action.”

Now I think Wilhelm’s observation about Soros’s motivations shows how Soros’s attack on Bush is really an attack on the belief in truth, and thus on the very possibility of a political leader taking decisive action to defend his nation against evil. Therefore Soros’s campaign against Bush should be alarming to all of us, regardless of our own political views of Bush.

The belief in “ultimate truth” is no safeguard against totalitarianism. The Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers - and even, whether they realized it or not, the Nazis and Bolsheviks - had that belief. What matters is *what* people believe is true.

Nor does the ideal of a society in which people are free “to talk endlessly, about anything” presuppose relativism. On the contrary, one might well argue that such a society is desirable *because* there is an ultimate truth to be discovered: we’re more likely to discover it if we can talk freely about anything that we would be otherwise. Without appeal to the idea of ultimate truth, that justification drops out.

The best argument against Mr. Soros’ views is that the notion of “ultimate” truth is really just the notion of truth. Therefore relativists can’t appeal to *any* notion of truth, as opposed to mere belief. Since one cannot think rationally without the notion of truth *as opposed to belief* there is no way to defend any claim whatsoever without a tacit commitment to the notion of truth. If liberalism is what Mr. Soros thinks it is, this shows it to be incompatible with rational thought.

No one has said, and I certainly did not mean, that the belief in ultimate truth per se is a safeguard against totalitarianism. Obviously fundamentalist Moslems believe in ultimate truth. My own comments about ultimate truth were made in the context of Western Christian culture with its belief in the secular and transcendent realms.

Mohammedanism’s concept of ‘truth’ seems to have a flacidness about it that dare not be mentioned. It were as though anything that appears to vindicate the religion in any given circumstance is, ipso facto, truth. Further, Mohammedan authorities seem to exercise a wide latitude in their proclamations. Thus suicide is ‘wrong,’ but if it’s performed in the context of jihad, it’s ‘right.’

In the end, I see little practical difference between ‘truth’ in a Mohammedan context and ‘truth’ in a Stalinist context. In the end, it is a man-made conception that is invoked as the higher truth, explicitly in the latter case and presented as revelatory in the former.

Joel, Australia’s leading Muslim cleric, Sheik Taj eldene Al-Hilal, has recently proclaimed that Muslims “found Australia first”, that not only did Afghani Muslims arrive here before Europeans, but that Australian Aborigines practised Islamic customs and Alice Springs closely resembled Mecca.
Your comments about Muslim authorities adopting a kind of self-serving truth might apply here.

Mr. Auster,
I guess I’m not sure what you mean by “ultimate truth”. Does it mean Christianity, in this context?

My reading was based on the fact that Soros thinks that not only the Bush administration but also the Communists and the Nazis had this belief in “ultimate truth”. So I assumed he had in mind something much broader than Christianity: the mere idea that something is true regardless of what anyone thinks or wants, etc. Which is just the notion of truth, as far as I can tell. I thought that was the issue (?)

My reading was based on the idea that Soros’s immediate target is Bush, and that this is connected in Soros’s mind with the fact that Bush is an openly professing Christian who makes dogmatic statements about evil and unapoletically uses military force to defend the United States. Bush thus represents something about America, the West, and conservatism that Soros opposes and fears. I think that Soros then used “Communism, Fascism and Nazism” as devices with which to attack Bush. Those totalitarian ideologies profess some ultimate truth, he says, and so does Bush, therefore Bush is potentially a Nazi. This is a standard liberal diatribe. Modern liberals hate the idea of “absolutes,” regarding it as fascistic.

So I don’t think Soros was speaking of something much broader than Christianity that includes all the totalitarianisms; rather, he was just using the totalitarianisms to get at his real targets, which are the Western Christian and Western philosophical belief in an objective moral truth, and the American nation which is founded on that belief.

Yes, you’re probably right. But if his target was “belief in an objective moral truth” - and not some particular belief as to what is true, for example Christianity - then I think what I said still holds. The mere belief that there is an objective moral truth is consistent with totalitarianism, or with the ideal of an “open society” of the kind Mr. Cella describes.

Actually, what Soros really objects to is not the idea of truth per se, but the right of people he disagrees with, such as George Bush, to identify their own beliefs with the truth. That is, their right to think that what they believe is true - which is of course the very nature of belief. So what he really objects to is simply that Bush has beliefs he doesn’t like and the power to act on them. It’s pure will to power thinly disguised as some philosophical theory of truth. I guess this was Mr. Cella’s point in saying that Soros is actually demanding that we accept an ultimate truth of his own.

Moral relativism is the epistemological dogma on which the contemporary notion of tolerance rests. But if the tolerance of relativists is the predominant good, then it is a moral absolute which undermines moral relativism…and round and round we go. Il Duce wrote that “the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable.” In other words, in a relativistic society power trumps all competing claims to truth and truth is itself nothing more than a mask for power. It is the quintessential philosophy of the tyrant because it recognizes no authority higher than raw power.

I congratulate Mr. Cella for his wise comments. I would only add that the role of revelation and grace should not be ignored with respect ro the ability to apprehend transcendent truth. I don’t want to get dragged into a discussion of post-Kantian theories of knowledge, but I think Thomism affords a valuable rejoinder to both Popper and Sorros’ sophistry.

I don’t agree that the belief in an objective moral truth is consistent with totalitarianism, or with the open society. Totalitarianism is an exaltation of the human will. The totalitarian, Marx for example, explicitly denies objective moral truth as an obstacle to the realization of man’s will.
.

Why is it not consistent for someone to say that the objective moral truth is that there is nothing more to morality than the fulfillment of the human will? Or that Marxism is the objective moral truth about how a society should be?

If Marx says that the idea of objective truth is an obstacle to the realization of man’s will he can only mean that a certain conception of what the truth *is* - for example Christianity - is an obstacle to his preferred political order. He can’t mean to say that it is *not objectively true* that Marxism is true. That would just be to say that Marxism is not true. Regardless of what he may have *thought* he was saying, of course.

My point is this: to have a belief just *is* to think that what you believe is objectively true. The idea of a “subjective” or “relative” truth is either empty or incoherent. Therefore, if anyone believes in totalitarianism, the open society, or anything else, they necessarily commit themselves to the belief that something is objectively true.

Good point by Mr. Richardson on Australia. This is also true of the Temple Mount, where the Mohammedans controlling it now claim that the Jewish Temples were never at the site, (or even in Palestine at all, according to Arafat.) They now say that the whole area has been a mosque since Adam and Eve.

I think Julien’s point narrows things down a bit, and I would say that, yes, when we refer to ultimate truth it comes down to the truth revealed in Judeo-Christianity. On one level we can talk generally about the presupposition of the existence of higher truth vs. the belief that objective truth is non-existent. On a deeper level, once the existence of higher truth is acknowledged, we can consider what that truth is. Then I would note what Christ said in His Prayer of Intercession: “Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word is truth.” And: “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

The tree is known by its fruit. The freest societies are those established on the Judeo-Christian basis. “…where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”

Julien writes: “Why is it not consistent for someone to say that the objective moral truth is that there is nothing more to morality than the fulfillment of the human will? Or that Marxism is the objective moral truth about how a society should be?”

The falsity of the above truth claims is not based on logical inconsistency. They are objectively refutable and, therefore, untrue. Morality is not reducible to wilfullness and Marxism is predicated on a false materialistic anthropology the results of which have been tragically demonstrated.

Well, I didn’t suggest that Marxism is true (or that it isn’t). I only said that it would be consistent to *believe* that Marxism is objectively true. Actually, my point is that it is impossible to believe X and *not* believe that X is objectively true. And so the mere belief in an objective truth, since it is really just the belief that there is such a thing as truth, is consistent with any (consistent) set of beliefs whatsoever. (Of course I also agree that Marxism, insofar I understand it, is evil and false.)

Thank you for your clarification, Julien. I did not mean to suggest that you were claiming that Marxism was true. You are correct that a commitment to the objectivity of truth is consistent with Marxist theory.

My point was that although Marxists believe in objective truth (as most Marxists do, e.g. Christopher Norris and Terry Eagleton), Marxism is objectively refutable as an economic theory, a theory of history, and a theory about the nature of man. We are not stuck in our belief systems, we have access to reality as such. The human mind is capacitated to apprehend reality. Hence, “right reason” and a virtuous moral character yield true beliefs, not just about physical reality, but about the God created moral order, as well.

I appreciate and admire the clarifying comments made by Julien, Mr. Auster, and Mr. Alvarez. And I certainly agree with the latter that Thomism is a powerful rejoinder to Open Society liberalism. The fact that modern liberals avoid St. Thomas with great intransigence is solid evidence of the truth of Santyana’s remark that we do not refute our adversaries; we quietly bid them goodbye.

The heart of the matter is a recognition of a moral law _outside_ of the mind of Man; a law which we discover but do not create; and a law to which we owe obedience.

It is true, of course, that even men who assent to natural law can be driven by sin and passion to abuse — even to the point of tyranny. It is also true that cunning men may cloak their rapacity in the comforting forms of natural law even as they plot to build the darkest of despotisms.

But my point is that a society, and its legal form the state, which recognizes a moral law of nature, is far, far less likely to descend or decay into tyranny. Its logic forbids it. On the other hand, the society which commits itself only to the “orthodoxy of negation” of the Open Society, while it may not _necessarily_ become totalitarian, will tend toward that result. Its logic ordains it.

I wonder whether Soros believes his own rhetoric, sometimes. Is it absolutely true, for example, that there is no such thing as absolute truth?

Does he even have an answer to this? Of course not.

Mr. Cella’s comment is a lucid and concise statment of the natural law thesis. Thank you for expressing it so well!

I have compiled my comments here into a longer entry on my blog. Many thanks to the other participants in this discussion.

http://cellasreview.blogspot.com/2004_02_01_cellasreview_archive.html#107733306937661338

Just wanted to say how lucky we are to have a contributor like Mr. Cella. I hope he can continue his double duty at his own Website and this one.

Thank you, Mr. Murgos.