Authored by George Soros, originally posted
at Project Syndicate,
Well before Donald Trump was elected President of the United States, I
sent a holiday greeting to my friends that read: “These times are not
business as usual. Wishing you the best in a troubled world.” Now I
feel the need to share this message with the rest of the world. But
before I do, I must tell you who I am and what I stand for.
I am an 86-year-old Hungarian Jew who became a US citizen after the end
of World War II. I learned at an early age how important it is what
kind of political regime prevails. The formative experience of my life
was the occupation of Hungary by Hitler’s Germany in 1944. I probably
would have perished had my father not understood the gravity of the
situation. He arranged false identities for his family and for many
other Jews; with his help, most survived.
In 1947, I escaped from Hungary, by then under Communist rule, to
England. As a student at the London School of Economics, I came under
the influence of the philosopher Karl Popper, and I developed my own
philosophy, built on the twin pillars of fallibility and reflexivity. I
distinguished between two kinds of political regimes: those in which
people elected their leaders, who were then supposed to look after the
interests of the electorate, and others where the rulers sought to
manipulate their subjects to serve the rulers’ interests. Under
Popper’s influence, I called the first kind of society open, the
second, closed.
The classification is too simplistic. There are many degrees and
variations throughout history, from well-functioning models to failed
states, and many different levels of government in any particular
situation. Even so, I find the distinction between the two regime types
useful. I became an active promoter of the former and opponent of the
latter.
The
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