Thirty years ago, billionaire financier George Soros articulated a plan for a “New World Order” that he wanted to promote through his philanthropic efforts.

I first came across Soros’s old essays when I was working on the biography of my mother-in-law, Rhoda Kadalie. She knew Soros from his work in South Africa. She broke with him later, but kept a few of his publications in her collection.

There are some interesting, long-lost gems. In one address in South Africa in 1994, for example, Soros amusingly admitted that he once pulled his funding out of that country because local activists seemed more interested in seizing his money than in producing results.

Today, Soros is presumed by his critics to be an evil manipulator intent on destroying society. Certainly some of the radical prosecutors he has backed, and the far-left groups funded by his Open Society Foundations, have earned him an infamous reputation, though it is debatable whether the 92-year-old is running his own operation anymore.

Regardless, thirty years ago at least, Soros seemed genuinely concerned about freedom.