Pondering

You’re likely familiar with the name George Soros—a righteous crusader to the political Left and devil incarnate to the political Right. What you might not know is how pervasively his ideology influences our culture.

A review of his brief biography is worth a few minutes of your time, as it explains the impetus of his worldview as a Hungarian Jew formerly under the Nazis in the 1930s and 40s. Soros eventually left Hungary in 1947 to study at the prestigious London School of Economics, and finally emigrated to the U.S. where, as a hedge fund manager, he became one of the wealthiest people on earth. For philanthropic purposes, in 1979 he began the Soros Foundation, which through a series of mergers eventually became the Open Society Foundations—a global philanthropic network of social justice entities. In 2023 George Soros handed control of his work over to his son Alexander.

On the surface it seems George Soros has created a favorable means of helping those like himself who experience marginalization through ideological persecution. Why then do so many people dislike him and his Open Society Foundations?

It’s how George Soros defines an “open society.”

We know from Soros’ biography that while at the London School of Economics he was heavily influenced by the renowned Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper. Although a Marxist and Socialist for a time, Popper found the former to be too authoritarian and the latter too idealistic. Popper instead promoted utopian social engineering, which “aimed at remodeling the ‘whole of society’ in accordance with a definite plan or blueprint, as opposed to social planning that aims at gradual and limited adjustments.”

Not sure how that’s much different from either Marxism or Socialism, and that’s the problem.

In the eyes of Soros, influenced by Popper, the concept of an egalitarian “open society” free from injustice requires a remodeling of the “whole of society” in a rather clandestine way:

“Popper grew somewhat more leery of direct state intervention to tackle social problems, preferring tinkering with the state’s legal framework, if possible, to address them.”

There you have it, and the reason why we so often hear the phrase “Soros-backed District Attorneys” connected with the release of criminals without bail. Soros is “tinkering” with the legal system to bring about an “open society” in which marginalized criminals are no longer subject to the State. Think of this in the context of Soros’ own experience. It would be like justifying Jewish criminality because they were subject to marginalization by the Nazis.

While I won’t pretend to understand that type of ostracism, I don’t believe criminality, defined by reasonable, democratically established laws, is acceptable. Is there room for refinement in our legal system with respect to some minority groups? Of course. Yet look at the cities in which Soros-funded District Attorneys exist and you’ll find an unsustainable level of crime and misery. Nearly a dozen have been removed, lost their reelection bids, or resigned.

Why is this important, and what’s a biblical Christian to do?

We must refute the current EITHER/OR ideology associated with identity politics in favor of a BOTH/AND proposition. It should not be “If you don’t minimize or remove punishment for crimes committed by people who have historically been mistreated, you’re a racist!” but rather, “We can work to build the lives of people who have historically been mistreated and enforce deterrents to criminality.”

We must also defend the biblical premise that we are responsible for our actions, that there should be reasonable consequences for those actions if improper, and that social justice can be moved forward without destroying the lives of others—including the very people who might be in favor of such reform (consider how many businesses owned by African Americans have been destroyed in the name of Black Lives Matter)! We must also look to our own heart, asking the Lord to reveal any bias, prejudice,

or myopia that would keep us from following Micah 6:8:

“And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”

On the surface the “open society” of George Soros and his followers looks beneficial, until one realizes it means opening the doors to hyper-tribalistic, anti-democratic, criminal permissibility. That’s not good for any society.