Insightful and provocative interview with George Soros on TPM

[Jacobin]

(snip)
TPM: In your book you talk about the hawks' vision of international statecraft and also American conservatives' ideas of how our domestic polity should be organized as a crude sort of neo-Social Darwinism, informing both. Can you elaborate on that? Particularly on the international stage.

SOROS: I think that the reliance on military power is sort of an excess of this Social Darwinist point of view. I had been opposed to market fundamentalism as a philosophy or as an ideology. Namely, that life is a struggle for survival, and the struggle manifests itself mainly in competition. And the competition is, who is stronger? And the survival of the fittest is basically the survival of the strongest in competition. But, in actual fact, survival also requires cooperation. And there is a need for having rules to which everybody agrees for us to survive. And there are also problems like the environment, that can only be … and maintaining peace in the world, that can only be achieved through cooperation. 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.

TPM: Well, it sounds almost like there's sort of a neo-Hobbesian view --- where the U.S. government is the Leviathan over the whole --- to create order through the world.

SOROS: Basically, as I say in the book, the ideology is that international relations are relations of power, not law. That law merely serves to ratify what power has achieved and accomplished. And this is not totally wrong, in the sense that, in fact, international law is very weak. It's certainly much weaker than the rule of law that prevails in the United States. However, this ideology is a self-fulfilling prophecy, because if the strongest power in the world decides that it's power that rules and not law, then in fact that's what happens. And that is, in my view, a retrograde step. It is contrary to what has made us prosper.


http://talkingpointsmemo.com/

The snips don't do the interview justice. This interview is really very insightful, and also frightening, coming as it does from someone who has lived through totalitarian regimes and sees the parallels to Bush's Amerika.

I'm convinced that Soros is like the canary in the mine, and this little bird is completely fucking freaking out.

[patricia92243]

1. Does Soros ever say who he thinks the Democrats should nominate? I would

pay a lot of attention to what he has to say on that subject. The only way I will not for Dean is if Soros put forth a good argument for someone else.

Anybody out there know what hs thoughts are a Democratic nominee? (Back up with links, please)