Josh Marshall interviews George Soros at length on Talking Points Memo this morning.
Some salient bits:
[The Bush doctrine] really establishes two classes of sovereignty: the sovereignty of the United States, which is sacrosanct and not subject to any international constraint, and the sovereignty of all other states, which is subject to the Bush Doctrine --- preemptive action by the United States.Posted by Chris at January 21, 2004 03:13 PMSo it is reminiscent of George Orwell's Animal Farm. You know, all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others. And this is in contradiction of the values that have made America great. It is basically one of the belief in inequality. And it is unacceptable --- cannot possibly be accepted --- by the rest of the world. ...
That is exactly why I'm so upset with them [the neocon hawks]. Because I think that they are acting dishonestly and using the concern with tyrants, you know, that we can't tolerate tyrants, as an excuse for asserting American supremacy. And basically in promoting open society, they forget the first principle of open society: namely, that we may be wrong. That is my main concern.
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So there's a misinterpretation of the Darwinist theory of survival of the fittest --- that achieving power over others is the goal. And that is not really the basis of our civilization. ... the [Bush] ideology is that international relations are relations of power, not law.
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[T]his administration has no compunction in misleading the people. It has no respect for the truth. This, I think, is a real danger. It is the danger of an Orwellian world.
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[T]he Goebbels propaganda machine had a total monopoly of the media. The Soviets had such control that they could actually erase people from history, airbrush out leaders who fell, who were disgraced. The deception in America is practiced while you do have pluralistic media. You do have, you know, different channels that are available. Nevertheless, something is going on in the way of managing the interpretation of reality that is actually successful and poses a danger to open society.