Barry Farber
Friday, Nov. 5, 2004

It was the summer of 1989 and communism was crumbling there in Hungary, fizzing harmlessly away like the proverbial Alka-Seltzer tablet under Niagara Falls. And he had done so much to help communism crumble I wanted to interview him, or at least shake his hand.

I made my way to the island, found the hotel, borrowed some hotel stationery and wrote him a note praising him for everything he was doing and begging him for a few minutes of his time so I could bring his story before my American radio audience.

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  I left my hotel’s telephone number and my room number and waited hopefully. He never called; but because of all the great things he was doing for freedom, I wasn’t even miffed. Not in the slightest. Here he was, reaching into his own pocket making sure the freedom-loving students of Hungary had word processors and copying machines and all the other nonviolent implements that can bring dictatorships down these days – at least the weaker ones that know they’re finished.

If I’d still been allowed to put pictures of my heroes on my bedroom wall the way I was when I was 10, a huge picture of him would surely have been there.

You’d never have seen Che Guevara on my wall. I knew too much. You’d have seen HIM.

George Soros!

An exclamation point is the strongest punctuation I’m able to place after that name. I wish I could replace it with a firecracker. George Soros was, indeed, my hero. Born in Hungary, he fled after the Hungarian Freedom Fight was brutally put down by 2,000 Soviet tanks backed up with 200,000 troops in the futile uprising that marked the beginning of communism’s demise in October 1956.

George Soros made his way to America. He didn’t go to work in a machine shop in Cleveland or a Middle European bakery in McKeesport, Pa. He became a billionaire through means no prosecutor could question, no genius could duplicate, and no one like me could ever understand. And he went generously into that fortune to defeat dictatorship and spread democracy. Yeah, George Soros was clearly my kind of guy.

A lot of people do a lot of “180s” for a lot of reasons. Many young men do a 180 on women who disappoint. Brooklyn baseball fans used to do 180s on hero pitchers after they allowed their second hit. I’m not usually a 180 type. Loyalty was our Southern “code of the hills.” I can’t think of another person I’ve even done as emphatic a 180 on as that same George Soros.

Soros confuses me more than he angers me. Until it became clear on Election Night 2004 that George Bush was the winner, George Soros frightened me more than a battalion of James Carvilles and Paul Begalas. Here comes this billionaire vowing to spend himself down to his skivvies to throw George Bush out of office. A lot of people try to get the attention of political handlers and managers with good ideas, and there’s no political idea better than money.

George Soros would have frightened me if he’d been only a rich man willing to let a pro-Kerry delegation visit him and plead for a nice donation. In that scenario, the energy comes from the Kerry campaign, which might engineer some money from the billionaire. When it’s the billionaire himself who provides the energy and who volubly and viciously vows to oust a president he doesn’t like, there’s too much likelihood it’ll work – especially if the media, the faculty, Hollywood and the usual allies attendant thereto are all present and ready to roll.

I wish somebody would sponsor an essay contest with a prize to whoever best explains George Soros. Here’s an intelligent man who experienced Nazism and communism first-hand. Shouldn’t that by itself be vaccination against behaving like George Soros has recently behaved?

Shouldn’t a survivor of Nazism and communism applaud the liberation of 50 million Afghans and Iraqis from tyrannies just as bad? Has George Soros ever asked himself questions like “Who would have been more helpful against Hitler – President Bush or President Kerry?”

The French failed even to raise an eyebrow when Hitler violated the Versailles Treaty and sent German troops into the Rhineland in the mid-1930s. They figured the League of Nations would do the nasty stuff if it ever became necessary. This may be unfair to Sen. John Kerry, but I can “hear” him talking about the glories of diplomacy and gratitude for the League of Nations. I can also “hear” President George Bush warning Hitler to get nice and the League of Nations to get real.

Who would have been more helpful in speeding the fall of communism in the late 1980s? Can you imagine John Kerry saying, “Tear down this wall!”? Can you imagine George Bush pursuing a policy of not getting dictators angry?

How about the terrorists? Can you imagine John Kerry closing the door and scolding President Bill Clinton for answering acts of terror by doing either nothing or sending cruise missiles to destroy an aspirin factory in Sudan and rearrange the rocks on a mountaintop in Afghanistan?

And can you imagine George Bush … well, we don’t have to imagine, do we? Under Bush’s leadership we took Afghanistan and handed it back to the Afghan people, who held their first free election, leaving the Kerry crowd to frown and mumble complaints about Taliban remnants, opium production and warlords.

George Soros, you are wrong. You are on the wrong side of history, both the world’s and your own. Your fans say you’re “sincere,” but sincerity is no excuse for stupidity. I don’t know how much money you spent trying to throw George Bush out of power. Whatever amount it is, I look upon it as a traffic fine for speeding the wrong way down an important highway. Let it be a lesson to you.

And George, my note to you in 1989 is now null and void. I no longer have the appetite to question you about anything.

And if you should ever somehow gain admission to my home, George, there’s no need to sneak into my bedroom and look at the walls.

You’re not there.

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