In “George Soros, Postmodern Villain” (Views, February), Srdja Trifkovic certainly offered an extensive, if somewhat random, account of activities undertaken by organizations affiliated with Soros.  However, with all of the facts laid out, I cannot decide whether they amount to Soros’ attempts “to destroy the remaining bastions of the family, sovereign nationhood, and Christian Faith” or his pursuit of what he believes will liberalize and democratize the societies of Eastern Europe.  As an Eastern European, I would gladly pursue many of the policies mentioned in the article.

Also, I believe that the public debate about whether financial arbitrage is “invariably detrimental” has long ended.  Financial “gamblers” such as Soros look to capitalize on market inefficiencies and exploit bad government policies—hardly “invariably detrimental” activities.

        —Nemanja Mijic
Boston, MA

Dr. Trifkovic Replies:

If Mr. Mijic “would gladly pursue many of the policies mentioned in the article”—including the promotion of abortion in demographically moribund societies, relentless “gay” propaganda, the legalization of hard drugs, the imposition of Sharptonite “affirmative action” for allegedly disadvantaged groups, the liquidation of traditional education in favor of its postmodern substitutes, and all that administered by the corrupt heirs of a deracinated Party nomenklatura of yore—he is reading the wrong magazine.

I did not lay out anywhere near “all of the facts” in the article, which provided a mere sampler from Mr. Soros’ rich smorgasbord, and so I gladly take this opportunity to add just one more fact.  In 1994, Mr. Soros—a militant atheist—launched his Project Death in America (PDIA) and provided $15 million for its initial funding.  PDIA supports physician-assisted suicide.  (Soros’ mother, a member of the pro-suicide Hemlock Society, killed herself, and Soros mentions unsympathetically that his languishing father clung to life for far too long.)  It works to create a network of doctors that will “reach into one-fourth of America’s hospitals” and, in a turn of phrase chillingly worthy of Orwell, lead to “the creation of innovative models of care and the development of new curricula on dying.”

I agree with Mr. Mijic that “financial arbitrage” is not necessarily detrimental, but he is wrong to suggest that Mr. Soros capitalizes on existing market inefficiencies and exploits “bad government policies.”  In the Third World, Soros artificially engineers “inefficiencies” to his profit and everyone else’s grief.  He typically begins by buying stocks in the local market and creating momentum.  When small investors follow and push the paper values up, he cashes in, cuts and runs, and, in his wake, leaves a collapsed local market, ruined lives, and, often, political instability.  Far from promoting free enterprise, he is targeting newly opened, fragile financial markets—Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Mexico—insufficiently seasoned in dealing with foreign investors, especially those with megafunds like his Quantum.  His specialty is speculative investments that take advantage of the economic shifts he artificially induces.

In a New Yorker profile in 1995, Mr. Soros reflected on the parallels between himself and the God of the Old Testament and said that, as a child, he thought of himself as superhuman.  Six decades later, this philanthropist-from-Hell apparently no longer merely thinks so.  His yearning for man’s God-like “freedom” is a psychosis that cannot stop short of the freedom to choose death over life. The sooner he makes that very personal choice, the better for the rest of us.