naked capitalism

DownSouth says:

Given Soros’ Jewishness and his early brush with the Nazis, it is quite understandable that he would embrace Popper’s skepticism towards science and his philosophy of an open society, which he describes as follows:

Popper proposed a more attractive form of social organization: an open society in which people are free to hold divergent opinions and the rule of law allows people with different views and interests to live together in peace.

Soros is undoubtedly cognizant of the “science” that was used to justify the Nazi Holocaust:

http://www.fasebj.org/cgi/content/full/22/2/332

What I find most surprising is that, as both Haas and the Holocaust Museum are quick to point out, the “science” that informed the Holocaust was “international,” as the Holocaust Museum explains:

German proponents of eugenics were part of an international phenomenon. The English scientist Francis Galton coined the term eugenics, meaning “good birth,” in 1883. German biologist August Weissmann’s theory of “immutable germ plasm,” published in 1892, fostered growing international support for eugenics, as did the rediscovery in 1900 of Austrian botanist Gregor Mendel’s theory that the biological makeup of organisms was determined by certain “factors” that were later identified with genes. (The term gene was first used by a Danish scientist in 1909.)

Reform-minded proponents of eugenics worldwide offered biological solutions to social problems common to societies experiencing urbanization and industrialization. After classifying individuals into labeled groups using the scientific methods of the day—observation, family genealogies, physical measurements, and intelligence tests—they ranked the groupings from “superior” to “inferior.” When perfected, surgical sterilization became the most common proposal for preventing unproductive “inferiors” from reproducing and for saving on costs of special care and education.

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/deadlymedicine/narrative/index.php?content=science

Racial science, eugenics and the practice of forced sterilization of African Americans, Haas observes, were practiced in the United States up until 1981:

Despite the outrage at Nazi racial policy, Allied authorities were unable to classify sterilizations as war crimes, because similar sterilization laws had been enforced in some states since 1907 and had been upheld by the Supreme Court. In Buck v. Bell (1927), the majority decision, written by Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., used modern opinions of science to support the Virginia sterilization law: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from breeding their kind. The principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover cutting Fallopian tubes… Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Although compulsory sterilization ended after the war in Germany, in the US, 11 African-American girls were sterilized in 1972. The Oregon Board of Eugenics, which was renamed the Board of Social Protection, existed until 1983, the last forcible sterilization occurring in 1981.

What I found most intriguing is that it was the objections of the Catholic Church that kept a law from being passed in Great Britain that would have allowed such diabolical practices there. From the Holocaust Museum:

Eugenicists more successfully promoted sterilization laws in individual provinces, cantons, or states in Canada, Switzerland, and the United States… In Great Britain, Catholic opposition blocked a proposed law.

Imagine that! The Catholic Church, which has probably given moral and intellectual sanction to more genocidal behavior than any other institution in the history of mankind, as evidenced by documents such as the Requerimiento:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requerimiento

So one can see why, given the shifting sands of human uncertainty and unpredictability, Soros would be an advocate of Popper’s open society.