Soros Idol:  Suppress Disagreement by Force

Addressing the graduates of Hampton University in Virginia, the President of the United States denounced the curse of free flowing information:

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The ‘24/7 media environment,’ he told the students, ‘bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of arguments, some of which don’t always rank all that high on the truth meter.’

Circumventing the courts, the FCC’s latest ploy is to reclassify broadband internet service as a utility, allowing the net to be regulated like telephone service. Free of government intrusion, the internet has been an engine of conspicuous economic growth and the last citadel for entrepreneurs. Thus, the Obama administration now finds it abhorrent and needs to crush the life out of it with onerous regulations.

Consider the words of one of the leading advocates of Internet regulation, Robert McChesney, founder of the left-wing group Free Press. McChesney said to SocialistProject.ca: ‘What we want to have in the U.S. and in every society is an Internet that is not private property, but a public utility.’ He went on to explain: ‘At the moment, the battle over network neutrality is not to completely eliminate the telephone and cable companies. We are not at that point yet. But the ultimate goal is to get rid of the media capitalists in the phone and cable companies and to divest them from control.’

We’re already feeling the repercussions of Obama’s latest socialist contrivance: heavy losses in cable and telecommunication stocks the day after FCC chairman, Julius Genachowski announced he would start proceedings to classify broadband companies as “telecommunication services”:

By midday in New York, shares in Time Warner Cable and Cablevision were down more than 6 per cent, while Comcast had fallen almost 5 per cent. Cable operators account for most US internet connections, but telecoms groups also fell, with AT&T off 1.1 per cent and Verizon Communications down 0.3 per cent.

The economic havoc that will be wrought by a government takeover of the internet is but one lagniappe for the administration. The job of the press is supposed to be to follow politicians around and write down what they say and do. Our Founding Fathers thought the right of the press to perform that specific job was important enough to address it in the very first amendment to our Constitution. Under English common law, wrongful statements against government officials could result in jail or fines. Our founders understood the essential service provided by a free press in protecting a fledgling democracy. If the system was working as it should, politicians and reporters would be natural enemies. The American mainstream media was hijacked by the Left some time ago, but not until Barack Obama came along did the press become a true ministry of propaganda. No politician has exploited the media to the degree that Obama has. Only Fox News and the alternative media have failed to obey. The new Democrat talking point is that we Americans need to be defended against “unfiltered information.”

In this administration, freedom of speech, press or information is a distraction and a threat. That’s why they sought to impose the doctrine of ‘net neutrality’ on the Internet. In the name of opening up broadband to all, it’s designed to suppress the voices of those who have competed in the marketplace of ideas and won.

If you scrape all the way down to the barrel’s bottom, you will find that Obama’s puppet master, George Soros is an advocate controlling public opinion—by force, if necessary. In addition to being God and the Pope’s boss, George Soros likes to think of himself as a great philosopher. Indeed, his interest in philosophy far outweighs his fascination with business. Something of an investing savant, Soros considers his wealth to be the tool by which he can reshape the world to his liking. His biggest obstacle is the United States. Lacking in any genuine creativity of his own, Soros eventually glommed onto the work of Karl Popper who concocted the theory of the Open Society. Against the backdrop of Hitler’s invasion of Austria, Popper opined that totalitarianism creates “closed societies.” Popper argued that humans have only two possible destinies: one was to live in a closed society in which everyone was forced to believe the same thing. The other would be an open society free of nationalisms and tribal wars. Open society, freedom—sounds harmless enough, right? Soros’ and his idol have their own spin on what tolerance is all about:

If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive , and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant.
-The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato, by Karl Raimund Popper.

To paraphrase: open government, to Soros’ idol, means people can freely express their views as long as they agree with us. If they don’t agree with us, and we can’t convince them that they should agree with us, it’s perfectly fine to suppress them by force. We can do this, of course, because this is for their own good—people who aren’t smart enough to agree with us shouldn’t be allowed to participate in their government.