Originally posted on Anti-aggressionleague.com
This is perhaps the first time I've ever defended a billionaire on this blog, and a liberal billionarie at that. But what I am defending is not the person of George Soros, but the principle: his rights as an American citizen and a human being. This is in no regard an endorsement of his character, or the character of the groups he supposedly funds. From what I have read and observed, I find him completely abhorrent as a person, in part from his callus behavior as a currency speculator. Nevertheless, I make a crucial distinction between a person's character and their rights, noting that disdain for the former doesn't logically imply disdain for the latter. It is the reason why we allow people we vehemently disagree with to speak, and by extrapolation, why we should give everyone their day in court, even if they have been judged guilty by the court of public opinion beforehand. The petitioner, along with the 150,000 people who signed it, make a fatal error by failing to make this distinction. You can find the petition here. It reads:
Whereas George Soros has willfully and on an ongoing basis attempted to destabilize and otherwise commit acts of sedition against the United States and its citizens, has created and funded dozens (and probably hundreds) of discrete organizations whose sole purpose is to apply Alinsky model terrorist tactics to facilitate the collapse of the systems and Constitutional government of the United State, and has developed unhealthy and undue influence over the entire Democrat Party and a large portion of the US Federal government, the DOJ should immediately declare George Soros and all of his organizations and staff members to be domestic terrorists, and have all of his personal an organizational wealth and assets seized under Civil Asset Forfeiture law.
The irony of accusing someone else of trying to destroy our constitutional government while calling for the destruction of constitutional rights, in this particular case, is lost on the petitioner. The constitution doesn't establish a government that rules by edict, but that is exactly what this person is unwittingly calling for. There is this little know thing called the 5th amendment to the bill of rights, and another little known thing called the presumption of innocence; they work in tandem. The 5th amendment guarantees No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. Posting a list of accusations on the Whitehouse website is not due process and neither is a proclaimation by an unelected bureaucrat. Since the accusation is a criminal offense, due process entails a criminal investigation, an arrest, criminal charges, and a criminal trial by a jury of his peers, where you know evidence is presented. A list of accusations on a Whitehouse petition is not evidence. They are simply claims, claims which require proof, and the presumption of innocence places the burden of proof on the people making the claims. What the petitioner is calling for is a backwards and logically absurd justice system where the accused are required to prove a negative in order to evade punishment. If we were to apply this rationale universally, any one should be able to get anyone else's property taken from them by simply accusing them of a crime. Acts of government don't occur in a vacuum; when one person's rights are violated it sets the precedent for subjecting everyone's rights to a similar treatment. Now I am all for a federal investigation of George Soros, especially his ties to the antifa terrorists marauding through our streets, but it must be done by the books according to the legal and moral principles enumerated in the constitution.