Harsh words from billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros. In an Atlantic Monthly article, “The Bubble of American Supremacy,” Soros rails against the Bush Doctrine.
The obligatory excerpt:
“The supremacist ideology of the Bush Administration stands in opposition to the principles of an open society, which recognize that people have different views and that nobody is in possession of the ultimate truth. The supremacist ideology postulates that just because we are stronger than others, we know better and have right on our side. The very first sentence of the September 2002 National Security Strategy (the President’s annual laying out to Congress of the country’s security objectives) reads, “The great struggles of the twentieth century between liberty and totalitarianism ended with a decisive victory for the forces of freedom—and a single sustainable model for national success: freedom, democracy, and free enterprise.”
Matthew Stinson and I traded all last week on that essay, which I didn’t think was any great shakes, but I also thought that Stinson was mischaracterizing what Soros was saying.
The bubble motif was a clumsy way of getting at the simple idea that American hubris is bound to bite us on our ass sooner or later.
Catch the drama here and here and here.