Dialogue with LaRouche

Faith-Based Fascism

The Ibero-American Debt: A War We Can Win

Latest From LaRouche

Here are selections from the Question-and-Answer period, following Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks to an international webcast, April 7 (see Indepth Feature this week).

Dialogue with LaRouche

Question (submitted by a Democratic consultant in Washington, who has been heavily involved in the fight to save Social Security): Lyn, my question to you is perhaps an obvious one, and to be honest, I've gotten the answer delivered at various volume levels by those who speak for you at various points.

But, I think it would probably be useful to put the question to you personally, especially before this broad public audience. You've repeatedly asserted the need for the convening of a meeting similar to FDR's 1944 Bretton Woods conference, in order to craft a new financial architecture to replace the current one, which seems to have ceased functioning. But the bottom line is this: I can't think of any collection of scoundrels among those alive today, who would be more hostile to this idea than those who are roughly referred to as the Bush Administration.

But, the problem that we face, is that it seems that this issue just is not going to wait for four years. So, how do you proceed with a Presidency, that is so hostile to the principle that you're expounding? LaRouche: Ah-ha-ha-ha! That's a nice question! I like that.

There is an answer: The answer often lies, when you look at somebody else, and ask them for an answer, you should first look at yourself. Maybe you are the problem, not them.

In the case of the Democratic Party, I would say the Democratic Party has been the problem. Now, the first obstacle to curing the problem represented by Bush, is to pretend yourself that you don't think it exists. If you accept what Bush is doing, a principle he's doing—and you're not willing to admit that you are accepting that, then, you are actually continuing that.

See, Bush is a very vulnerable person. I'm being myself: I say the man is a psychopath. Not to insult him. That's a statement of fact; that's not an insult. No, when I see a slime-mold, I call it a slime-mold. I call it a worm, if it's a worm. The President is a psychopath. The man is not in the real world. We have seen that—those who watch him, watch his behavior, know he is not in the real world. And therefore, he is able to respond to things, because he is not in reality. He's living largely in a fantasy life. Now, that has complications because when you get a wind-up toy, and you turn it loose, the wind-up toy may do something you don't like—which you didn't expect. But you built it in, and turned it loose. And Bush is like that. He's not in the real world. He doesn't know what he's talking about most of the time. He doesn't care. He cares about how he feels about what he's saying, not what the effect is, in practice, of what he's saying.

Cheney's a sociopath. That does not mean that Cheney's a genius, or a superpower. He's not. He's a very defective, weak person. Condoleezza Rice: a bully, but her bullying shows how weak she is. I mean—you know she still thinks she's running a football team in California for George Shultz, or something. She shows weakness, not strength. Bush is weakness, not strength. Shultz is more the problem.

Now the problem we have, is, you say, "We have to respect this; we have to respect that." The thing in the Congress, the habit of "go along to get along": This is what causes the problem. "But people won't accept that." "You can't change Bush." You can change Bush! We can deal with that problem. All you have to do is have a majority in the Congress, starting with the Senate. This problem's going to be brought to heel real quick. Why? Because the problem here is that we have people who are Democrats, who don't believe in the people. These are the ones who talked about, you know, "Stick to suburbia." That's how Gore succeeded in losing the election which was a shoo-in, if Clinton had been running again. They were talking about this option: "Ignore the poor people." The country has been operating, this country of ours has been operating since 1971-72, increasingly on "ignore the poor." We have 80% of the family-income brackets in the United States who've been in collapsing condition of life since 1977. And the Democratic Party has turned its back on these people, and the issues that they represent. It turned its back on the question of deregulation. It was done by the Democratic Party!—under Brzezinski. The living standards of most Americans were hurt more by what was done by Carter—not because Carter understood what he was doing—but because Brzezinski and his crowd, the Trilateral crowd, deemed it necessary.

So, the Democratic Party turned its back on the majority of the people in the United States, in its actions; refused to recognize what it had done, when the pain and suffering caused by these policies set in, and said "This is a new way of life! We have to learn to live with it." And what did you hear from the Democratic Party in the 1996 to 2000 period? What did you hear? You didn't hear Clinton; you heard Gore. And Gore was suburbia—or being an alpha dog or a beta dog. [laughter] That was called losing an election by dogged determination.

So, we turned our back on the people. What I've insisted upon, all along, is: We don't turn your back on the people! But the Democratic Party leadership said, "We are turning our back on the people, and you're against us. You're sabotaging our efforts to betray the people." And then, the Democratic Party complains about losing elections! And then they say, "We'd rather lose elections." Or some of them did. So, the problem is, what you need to do is show leadership. And the problem is, as the consultant (who I think I know) knows very well, when it comes to Democratic Party leaders, there's not much guts around. They will not take a chance on appealing to the people. They will not take a stand on the kinds of issues that affect the people.

For example, health care. Everybody knows, in the leadership of the Democratic Party everybody knows, that the whole health care—the promise of medicine, universal right to health care, is a fraud! As long as you maintain the HMO system, your idea of promising health care is a fraud. Because, what are we doing? We are not limiting people's right to health care. We are doing worse. We are destroying the source of health care! How many hospitals have been shut down in the United States since 1973? How many clinics have shut down? How many physicians have been put out of practice, in terms of numbers? What kinds of care can't you get any more, because it doesn't exist? What medication that should have been developed has not been developed, because it doesn't fit the program of the drug companies?

So, what we have done, is, we have destroyed the existence of the physical health care, which people want to promise they can have universal access to. And that is done by practically every health-care bill—except for one we've got coming up now out of Conyers—that has gone through the Congress. That has been the Democratic policy.

Go through everything else. Democrats do not stand up, and get the support of the people by any other way, except by addressing the real problems of the people, making clear what the cause of the problem is, getting the facts out, so they can understand. People don't understand what their problem is, the average person. They don't understand what their problem is. They understand the pain they feel. They understand the effects they feel. But they don't understand how this problem came into existence. They don't understand what the cure is. But we, who are in leading positions in the Democratic Party, or similar institutions, have the ability to know how the problem was created. We have access; we have the friends; we have the government bureaucrats, all of the other people who have the facts. There's no excuse for our not knowing what caused the problem, for long. And once we know what the problem is, we should say what the problem is.

And if you have a majority of people in the United States who are really determined to have an election, or to have a government they want, and you're willing to provide the kind of leadership they need for that purpose, you're going to get it. I don't care who's the President of the United States. We impeached Nixon, didn't we, virtually? Nobody in the United States, up to this point, could resist a serious mass sentiment from among the people of the United States. I don't care who's incumbent, in government.

The problem is we lack guts among our political leaders. And they blame the people, saying "the people aren't ready to support us." Why should they support them? Are you going to go to war under the leadership of a general who you know to be a gutless wonder? And the problem is, we have too many gutless wonders in the leadership of the Democratic Party. I guarantee you that if I had been elected, we wouldn't have any problem. Or, if I had been treated better by the Democratic Party during the course of the campaign, we wouldn't have this problem, today, I guarantee you! [applause]

Faith-Based Fascism

Question (from a member of the LaRouche Youth Movement): Lyn, in discussions over the past few days, you've addressed the issue of the state-based religion, and you've identified it as a major strategic flank in the immediate period, concerning outreach. Today, in your remarks, you said that the Bush Administration runs a right-wing religion, as opposed to a right-wing religion running the Bush Administration. From a strategic and economic standpoint, what directly is required for those who are participating in this fight? How do we address this? And please elaborate a little bit more on why you think this is such an important flank.

LaRouche: Well, you have a history of this sort of thing. For example, one of the prime examples of a state-based religion was Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King," who establish what he called a Christian church, which was actually a pagan sun-worship doctrine, and he used that as a state religion to control France. You had Napoleon Bonaparte, when he became Emperor, he did the same thing. He organized a state religion in the form of a Catholic Church, but it was based on the worship of Napoleon Bonaparte, essentially.

You also have, in the history of the United States, a precedent for this. People in governments have been orchestrating religions; there's a whole history, in European history alone, of religions—there's a history in the world as a whole, of religions which were created by governments to control people.

Now, when we modified our Constitution, for separation of church and state, we were aware of this, and we banned it. And George Bush has done it! It's a violation of the Constitution.

Now, this state-based religion has two principal elements in the United States. It's based on one thing, the so-called "wild Protestants," who were organized around the Nashville Agrarians, as the Thunder Cults, which is based on those Southern revival meetings where they produced more babies than they saved. Where the preacher did it. He saved souls in the tent, and went and made more outside the tent, back of the tent. The other thing was done from Britain: a variety of Catholic doctrine, which was partly invented from Britain and came from other sources, which is the right-wing fascist wing of the Catholic movement in the United States, today.

So you take the fascist Protestants and the fascist Catholics, and you put them together, and you call it a faith-based initiative. And what they worship is money. The biggest weapon used by government against the Civil Rights movement, has been the faith-based religion which has gone in to buy pastors in churches, to try to kill the Civil Rights movement by this operation.

What we have here—to make this as short as possible—what we have, is an orchestrated operation which now centers around Karl Rove, and the idea is to use this kind of religion by bringing—.

You know, Helga and I met with Cardinal O'Connor in 1994, in his office in New York. He said: Look at all these guys coming in, these crazy Protestants are coming in, trying to get into the Catholic Church, the diocese. What are they doing to me? And this is what it is.

So, you had the Bush crowd, or the crowd behind Bush, typified by what Karl Rove does, has created a religion around certain religious figures, including Billy Graham, and they've used this thing to create a systemic religious movement, which was used in two elections—especially in the last one—to organize a vote-suppression movement which gave an election, fraudulently, by virtue of votes pressured, to George Bush. That is a state-based religion.

Look at what happened with the Schiavo case: all the orchestrations. You see, every effort is to substitute the manipulation of religious insanity, actually, for politics. You saw that in the Schiavo case, the way it was orchestrated. Now, if we don't recognize that, do you know what this is? Do you know what faith-based religion is? It's the new Nazi movement. This is the mass movement of Nazis, and if you let this thing run loose, and treat it like it was something you just don't talk about, for fear of upsetting people, you know where you're going to end up? This is where you're going to end up: No country, buddy. This is fascism. It's a violation of the Constitution, because we know that the government of the United States, a section of it, the people in government, are running a religious cult around the theme of faith-based initiative, as a movement to control the politics of the population. That is precisely what the amendment of the Constitution prohibited, and that is what is being done.

The President of the United States is unconstitutional.

The Ibero-American Debt: A War We Can Win

Question (from Ibero-America): Mr. LaRouche, what's your basic proposal to solve the problem of the foreign debt of the developing sector countries? Obviously, of special interest to us are those of Latin America. Also, what do you think in particular of the recent accords struck by Argentina with its creditors on its defaulted debt?

LaRouche: Let's take the easiest one, the Kirchner agreement with the creditors. Well, Argentina was placed in an impossible situation. It could not possibly meet the obligations that were imposed upon it, and therefore it had to take some kind of defensive measure to establish the dignity of the nation of Argentina and its Presidency, its government, its people. I think a step was made which is not desirable in terms of its effect, what it didn't do, but it was a necessary step. And to the extent that it has given Argentina an opportunity...

For example: I think one should look at this strategically. You have a new sudden development in South America: Uribe of Colombia, Chavez of Venezuela, Lula of Brazil, together with the Prime Minister of Spain, have created an agreement on cooperation which anyone, one month before that, would have said was impossible. Hmm? What does that tell you? Something has happened. Now, you have Kirchner in Argentina; he didn't sign into this thing. But, what this does: It makes a change in the entirety of the situation of South America, and presents a very interesting challenge to Mexico, which is going through now a new phase of crisis, around the election of the President of Mexico, involving the figure of the Mayor of Mexico City. So this is the center of a crisis from south of the United States all the way down to Cape Horn.

The Chile problem is another case. It's erupted in Chile among the people who are concerned about the legacy of Pinochet there. So, Argentina is within a strategic setting, not an Argentine setting, not an Argentina setting with respect to its creditors. Argentina is also in the midst of one of the biggest factors in this recent crisis, is the Italian debt issue of Argentina, which came to light now: where? In Rome, yesterday, in the Parliament, on the question of the debt, on the question of a new Bretton Woods, which is the same issue as the issue throughout South America.

The history of the problem is, that in 1971-72, as the result of the change in the international monetary system directed by Shultz and his crowd, there was unleashed a process of looting and ruin of all the countries of South and Central America, and this was done by using the floating-exchange-rate system to create an artificial debt for these countries, and then to collect on that debt, so that the countries of South and Central America have more than paid every penny they ever owed to the international creditors. They really don't owe anything, if you take into account the swindle of the artificial debt that was stuck on them by Shultz and company by that regime.

So therefore, we have this situation, where these countries have been destroyed and looted, from the United States and Europe chiefly, as a result of this induced indebtedness. Now, the time has come, where in Italy, our friends in the Parliament have struck a blow for freedom for all humanity, in calling for a new financial architecture (which former President Bill Clinton called for at one point, in a different way, perhaps with a different intention, but he called for it).

So therefore, now, President Kirchner of Argentina is in a very interesting strategic position. Not with a perfect agreement on his hands, but with a fighting position. And like any good commander, what he needs is not necessarily a victory. The first thing he has to do is get a position on which he can fight, and then maybe he'll get a victory because he's got a fighting position. He's not all over the place. He now has a strategic position.

And therefore, I would say that I look at it from the standpoint of the Mexico election, the Presidential election. The issues posed by the candidacy of the present Mayor of Mexico City, and these developments, as all of one piece, and therefore is a very interesting strategic situation, which fascinates me. It's the kind of situation I love, where you can fight a war and win it.