Liberal Opinion

George Soros is an extreme liberal.

George Soros has a lot of money.

George Soros is a Jew.

Which one of the above, or any other character, qualifies him to make this statement -

The Bush camp reminds me of the Nazi regime ???

Read on:

Now, Soros has raised eyebrows with his most recent sally into American political culture by drawing comparisons in his new book between the Bush administration and communist and Nazi governments.

In "The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror," Soros recalls that when he "heard President Bush say, 'Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists,' " in the wake of 9/11, "I was reminded of Nazi propaganda.

"Indeed, the Bush Administration has been able to improve on the techniques used by the Nazi and the Communist propaganda machines by drawing on the innovations of the advertising and marketing industries."

On a recent day, Soros was not quite backing down.

"You don't have a Karl Marx, you only have a Karl Rove who has been successful in creating a coalition of fundamentalists," he began, sitting in a conference room high above Manhattan, framed by a view of New York's Central Park, in a striped blue cotton shirt and khakis, his manner affable and relaxed.

However, he added, "we are an established democracy.... The policies and tactics employed by the Bush administration do not pose a threat to open society." Heavy-handed government in America today, he said, manifests itself in the undue extension of executive powers and the dismissal of critics as unpatriotic. That, in his view, "is the most significant similarity with the Nazi and communist regimes."

But he acknowledged that — even at a time when the government has engaged in secret wiretapping, hustled prisoners off to secret jails around the world and is holding terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without trial — more than a few people might consider such comparisons a stretch.

"It's very dicey, because people consider it somewhat shocking," Soros said. "It's really questionable whether I'm doing the right thing in being outspoken.... It may be that I pushed it too far."