Morality and Lefty Politics

but I still don't get George Soros

When our liberal friends allow millions of illegal aliens to come over the border, and virtue-signal about “sanctuary cities,” are they making a moral statement about “Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.” Or are they simply importing more Democratic voters?

When George Soros backs his no-bail prosecutors, is he deliberately trying to destroy America’s cities? Or does he think he is fighting the injustice of police brutality?

When our liberal friends promote a dull dog like Claudine Gay to the presidency of Harvard are they merely gunning for the votes of blacks, or do they really think that America must atone for its shameful racist past, period?

More to the point, can we humans successfully combine morality and politics? Henry Kissinger, in his Diplomacy, raises the question with regard to our Presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Wilson. And with regard to British Prime Ministers Disraeli and Gladstone.

Disraeli, according to Kissinger, believed in the “balance of power.”

Gladstone, wrote Kissinger,

insisted that Christian decency and respect for human rights ought to be the guiding lights of British foreign policy.

Roosevelt, wrote Kissinger, thought

[The US] was a power like any other, not a singular incarnation of virtue.

Wilson, wrote Kissinger, believed that

Universal law and not equilibrium, national trustworthiness and not self assertion were … the foundations of international order.

So,

Wilson put forward the unprecedented doctrine that the security of America was inseparable from the security of all the rest of mankind.

To Kissinger, Roosevelt was the “warrior-statesman”; Wilson was the “prophet-priest”.

But when it came to the crunch, Wilson led the US into World War I, and the punitive peace he directed against the guilty Germans at Versailles set Europe up for World War II.

So, did the US go into World War I to protect its interests or to save the world?

Do the Democrats believe in unlimited immigration because of the rights of “huddled masses” or because it benefits them in the political arena? Probably both.

Do Democrats believe in the welfare state because it helps the poor and the marginalized, or because people vote for free stuff? Probably both.

Do Democrats believe in DEI because of systemic racism, or because it gets black voters to the polls to vote for free stuff? Probably both.

Of course, it is impossible to separate government from morality. When we prosecute a thief, it is because we believe it is wrong to take someone else’s property by force. But when we refuse to prosecute shoplifting below a theft of $950, and thieves start clearing out whole stores of the goods on display? What is that all about?

What we have, of course, is dueling moralities: the immorality of theft versus the immorality of centuries of injustice to black slaves and their descendants.

In other words, it’s complicated.

But I still don’t understand George Soros. OK, nationalism is bad, and literally Hitler. But what does that have to do with putting dangerous criminals on the streets pre-trial? OK, I get his son, Alex Soros. He’s just a mind-numbed member of the Woking Class. But George Soros was a student of Karl Popper, advocate of the “open society.” Which has nothing to do with the Woking Class.