The spotlight on George Soros could not have happened at a better time. There is an urgent need to demonstrate that the real contest or conflict, in our times, is between a commitment to “open society” and any specific ideology which enforces its vision of society on the basis of might-is-right. In order to see just what this means we must, for a moment, move away from the immediate context in which Soros has become headline news in India. “Open society” is a term that is usually unfamiliar to people outside academic and formal intellectual circles. Fortunately, knowing the term...