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'THE KEY TO THE UNITED STATES IS THE UNDERSTANDING — OF THE PRINCIPLE OF IMMORTALITY'

Here is Lyndon LaRouche's address to the European LaRouche Youth Movement Summer Academy on June 23, 2005. The nearly hour-and-a-half presentation before some 70 young people, was followed by some three hours of open discussion, which is not included here.

Okay, all right, now we can give you some good news, and some bad news—alternating. The good news is that at present, my position in the United States is, in respect to the U.S. Senate and some other institutions, is such that, in a sense, I am advising and to a large degree steering what is happening to combat the Bush problem and to deal with the onrushing collapse of the world financial system. So I'm in a leadership position of an unusual type in respect to the political institutions of the United States. Therefore, you should be optimistic.

Now, you should be pessimistic, because there's no one in Europe in government, or in a leading position of government, who is capable of saving their own ass, let alone their own country, hmm.

And the bad news, is that we're on the verge of the worst financial collapse in modern history, much worse than that of the 1920s and 1930s. And it is already happening. It is not something that might happen: It is already happening.

The bad news, also, is the fact that, as I indicated, that Europe, presently, would not be capable of saving itself without the United States. The leadership comes from the United States, or there is no Europe, period.

The good news is, there are people in Europe, who could respond to U.S. leadership, and thus save Europe and contribute to saving the world. The bad news, is that some people in Asia have the illusion, that they have a solution, an alternative, to the U.S. and even possibly Europe, but especially the U.S. That is an illusion, a very dangerous illusion.

Now, the point is this: The American System, and what it means for the world today, given these facts, of reasons for optimism and reasons for pessimism: Now, almost no one in Europe understands the United States, largely because they don't wish to. And the excuse is, that George Bush is a very bad President. He's not a bad President: He's a stupid one. He's a psychotic. The bad news, is the Vice President is a sociopath: He knows what he's saying; he knows the words he's using. But he's an evil person—a sociopath. He's a man who would delight in beating his wife and children, several times a day, until they were cringing in terror. That's his personality.

But why is the United States unique, despite things like George Bush, despite things like the Nixon Administration, despite many other things that occurred? Why is the United States, today, capable of saving the world, or providing the leadership to save the world, where no other part of the world could do it? That's what I'm going to deal with, here: Not only the role of the United States, but what the problem is in the world at large, which only the United States can lead in fixing.

The United States can not solve the problem all by itself. It needs partners. It needs collaborators. But, only in the capacity of being collaborators of the United States can those relevant nations of Europe and Asia save themselves. They could not save themselves, by themselves. They're not capable of it, emotionally, or intellectually. And there are reasons for it. There are institutional reasons.

Now, the institutional reasons, in the case of Europe, have to do with the reasons why the United States came into existence in the first place. And the key thing I'm going to throw at you now, is the question of spirituality, the question of the idea of immortality, as I address in a number of things I've written: To understand the United States, you have to understand the principle of immortality. Because, if you look at the individual citizen of the United States, a typical case, you would say, "This country has nothing that unusual in it. Nothing better than a European in it." And going, case by case, individual by individual, you would tend to think that.

Now, we have a much better government in the United States, in the form of government, than exists anywhere in Europe. Or in Asia, for example. And I'll deal with that.

But, the key to the United States, is the understanding of the principle of immortality in a real sense, as I've often described it. Remember, you had, the world was living in Hell, for most of the period up to the 15th Century—the world as a whole. There may have been parts of the world that were up at times, and down at other times, and so forth. But the world was pretty much in Hell—until the 15th Century Renaissance.

The modern European nation-state came into existence in the Renaissance, the 15th Century Renaissance centered in Italy. The first nation-state, as a nation-state, came into existence in France, under Louis Onze, Louis XI. The second nation-state in the world, came into existence in England, under Henry VII, largely as a result of the influence of the success of Louis XI's France on Richmond, who lived for a while at the court of Louis XI, who went to England and became Henry VII by eliminating Richard III. These two nation-states were called, then, in French and in English, "commonwealths." The distinction was, an old principle which is largely a European principle as we know it: It's the principle of the common good, or the general welfare. Which is the principle which is featured by Plato in his Republic, in the mouth of Socrates as against two other characters in that particular document: Glaucon and Thrasymachus. Thrasymachus as the image of evil, the image of Nixon, of the Bush Administration, Adolf Hitler, Mussolini and so forth. Hmm?

So, in this, the idea of the common good occurs first in a known form out of the mouth of Socrates, through Plato's writings. The general idea, the same idea, had existed earlier in the form of the letter by an aging Solon of Athens, to the citizens of Athens, who had made a mess of his country.

The idea of the commonwealth was then picked up, presented formally by the Apostle Paul, as in I Corinthians 13, the typical case of this: The principle was the Greek-language principle of agape, the principle of the nature of the human soul, the nature of the human identity, which requires that all human beings be acknowledged as having this kind of identity, which I'll get into.

This was then a known idea, which existed in European experience largely through Christianity, through the Augustinian tradition in Europe. And spread all over the place, into other countries, including Islamic countries, the founding of Islam. But there was no state of that form. Society was a society in which most of the people were treated as human cattle, and only a few people enjoyed the privileges of the culture of the country. Most of them were subjects, and treated like cattle.

Now, the example of this from the Classical Greek, is the case of the Prometheus Trilogy of Aeschylus, in which the image of evil is made clear, particularly in the second part—the surviving, known second part, more or less complete part of the Prometheus Trilogy, Prometheus Bound. In which, Prometheus, who is considered immortal, can not be killed by these evil gods, is nonetheless condemned to permanent torture, because he gave knowledge of the scientific knowledge to the people. That was his crime.

The characteristic of the oligarchical cultures, which is the source of the doctrine of environmentalism today, is a pure Satanic evil: You can not, you must not, provide the people with knowledge of science. And you must suppress the practice of the knowledge of science.

This is the principle of evil. It's a principle of evil, which was established in modern European society—including the United States—beginning, actually, in the post-war period, with the fear of nuclear weapons. We must eliminate all dangerous weapons. We must eliminate science, which is the creator of evil. This is strict stuff from the most ancient and most evil societies. "We must prevent people from developing and applying scientific knowledge of the principles of the universe." And that's the character.

You have, in the case, of all societies, the institution of slavery, or of peasantry, of serfdom, always was this. It's the principle of the Physiocrats in France, for example: Quesnay and Turgot. The suppression of science, from the people. The lords, the nobility may enjoy science, at their pleasure—but they must not share it with the people! The people are what? According to Quesnay: The people are human cattle.

Why did the Spanish start slavery, in the way they did? The Spanish, with the aid of the Portuguese, went throughout Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, and they hunted down people, the way you hunt down wild animals. The killed the old bulls who could fight back. They killed the older men, generally. And they took the surviving young women, and the surviving children, and they put them into slavery. They then transported them across the Atlantic, to all parts of the Americas, as slaves, and said they were property, and their children were therefore property; and they would be property forever. The Spanish started it. The Portuguese participated.

The Spanish continued to do it, with the exception of Charles III during the 18th Century. They continued to do it until the 1880s. Spain was evil. It became evil, officially in 1492, about that time, with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, which was beginning of the Hapsburg launching of religious war in Europe, which continued through 1648, until the Treaty of Westphalia.

Again, this is the theory of treating human beings as cattle: putting some in slavery, others in serfdom. And most of the people in the world today are serfs. Look at the people of Germany, under Hartz IV. What is this? And what's the objection to it in Germany, today? It's the principle of the commonwealth, the common good—the general welfare, which is in the German Constitution, as a feature of the Constitution. Many European constitutions have a specific law, which is a general welfare law: The state is obliged to serve and protect the general welfare. But, in Germany it's just been repudiated, officially, by Hartz IV. By a Social Democratic government, which is going to collapse, at least this government's going to collapse—and maybe all Germany will collapse—as a result of these kinds of policies: the policies of the Social Democracy. The Greenies are the worst, on this policy; and the policies of the conservative parties. The other parties in Germany, are rotten. Either they are against scientific and technological progress, particularly against the application of it to the needs of the people. Or, they are simply like Mont Pelerin Society ultra-conservatives, they're against anything that interferes with what they call "free trade." So therefore, if you're going to sacrifice anything, you'll sacrifice the people, before you sacrifice free trade.

So, what we're dealing with as evil, is very ancient. And although human beings have always been potentially creative—every individual human being is creative—societies have come into existence, under which the beast-like people have been able to subjugate and control most of the population.

And it's only in modern European civilization, and the struggles within it to establish modern European civilization, the roots of this in ancient Greece—in one faction of ancient Greece—against Roman society, which was thoroughly evil from the beginning. The Roman Empire was simply the worst; that was already embedded in Roman civilization—it was already there—it became manifest in the form of the Roman Empire.

The Middle Ages were evil, from about 1000 AD until the Renaissance, Europe was dominated by a Venetian oligarchy. The Venetian oligarchy was of a form of a financial oligarchy. The same kind of financier oligarchy that controls all of Western Europe today. At that time, the Venetians ruled by taking something which had been created by the Byzantine Empire: They took the hoodlums of Northern Europe, called Vikings—they were robbers and rapers and things of that sort. They were the ones who were enraged against Charlemagne, from Saxony, who decided to remain heathen, and they went to the northern part of Jutland and they became Vikings—which just means "robbers." Robbing and raping, hmm?

They became quite good at using ships to raid on coasts. So, they raided on the entirety of the civilization of that area, and made colonies, just went in and made colonies and raped. Which is the origin of Sweden. [laughter] The Swedes stopped doing it when they got tired! Hence the Swedish population has declined since!

But anyway. This is typical: You take a bunch of people. You degrade them to virtual gangsters; then you elevate them into a political force. And as political force, with gangster instincts, they go out and they create political power.

So, you had the first use of these Vikings, of any significance, was first against England. Now, England had been Christianized (you wouldn't know that today, but was). It had once been Christianized. But, that got fixed. But, in the meantime, they were being harassed by all these invasions from the Vikings, which were the populations of Sweden, Denmark, and Norway—coming across in ships, landing on a local area, looting and raping in the local area. And these were a pestilence. But, the most important part of the pestilence, was a group of these settled in northern France, and became known as Normans, in France. They were given a concession out of Charlemagne's kingdom, called Normandy. And with this, they built up their strength, and were deployed, by a coordinated attack by the Vikings, including the Normans, on England. That you had a Harald, who was the King of the Saxons—the Saxons had been Christianized by the way; and the Normans took care of that. They removed that, and Christianity has not been restored in England, since.

But, you had the attack from Norway, one group of people attacked England from one side. And while Harald was leading his troops from that one battle he won, to the coast, the Normans from Normandy attacked from the other side, and that was the Norman—that was one of the first crusades, was the Norman Conquest. The first crusade, formally, was actually the Albigensian Crusade, against the people of southern France.

So, what happened then, as the Byzantine Empire collapsed, the Venetians rose in power, as a state power. The state was largely that of a maritime power, and it was largely based on looting, through financial looting of various kinds—slavery, other things. So, the Venetians operated and controlled Europe, through the Normans, who spread as a power, the Norman chivalry.

And all of the Crusade period, is characteristic of this. The characteristic of the Crusades, from the end of about 1000 AD, until nearly the end of the 15th Century in Europe, was dominated by this Crusader mentality, in which the Normans were the Crusaders, essentially. The Papacy was controlled, most of the time, by the Venetians and Normans, usually the Venetians. So you had this Venetians controlling the Normans.

The way the Venetian system worked, which explains what's wrong with Europe today, because Europe is being operated by an Anglo-Dutch version of the Venetian system: The problem of Europe, which is crucial to the present crisis, there is no independent government anywhere in Europe. Doesn't exist. All governments are subject to so-called "independent central banking systems," such as the ECB.

So therefore, there is no government of Europe, which is a real government. And this is an extension of another process, which is called "globalization." Globalization, and the idea of a European Constitution, to eliminate the existence of the nation-state, are a plan for degradation of all humanity throughout this planet, and to a vast reduction of the human population, based on lowering the standard of technology practiced. As by the Greenies. This is your typical problem.

Now, the question is, since about the time of the beginning of the Vietnam War, the United States' involvement in Vietnam—which is the most recent part of a phase of something—we have been in an anti-technology, anti-science drive in economy worldwide.

Now, this has taken two forms: Some people say, technology has shifted to Asia. That's an illusion. An illusion among some Asians. Because, as I've said earlier, and I'll say again here, globalization is a fraud. It's a criminal fraud. What's happened is this: Is that, we had countries in Europe and North America, in particular, which had achieved up through the time of Roosevelt—had achieved a certain level of technological progress, which continued despite certain problems in the post-war period, up until about the middle of the 1960s.

But then, what we did, is we began to ship production of goods that we used to produce, into countries which had cheaper labor. And cheap labor became the rule of the game. Less and less skilled forms of cheap labor, by changing the characteristics of production so you could use cheap manpower, poorly educated and unskilled, by structuring the process of production in ways which required less intellectual development.

And less intellectual development means less intellectual development of children. Because, it's in the education and conditions of child-rearing, that you produce an adult who has creative potential. You may have people with creative potential in populations which are poorly educated, but they are always small exceptions, minor exceptions in total population. The total population is brutalized, reduced to intellectual brutishness. They may have instincts and have all the qualities of a human being otherwise, they can be reached, but they don't have this creative impulse that a well-educated, well-developed child does.

So, what we did, is we said, "We're going to get cheap labor." Now, what did we do? We shipped production of goods, out of Europe, out of the United States, into countries which were either poorly developed, such as Asian countries or South American countries.

Or, in the case of South American countries, in many cases, they had not been so poorly developed—they'd been sort of Second World-level development—but we had broken them. We broke them in the 1970s, with the new monetary system. We took away their protection of their development of their industries. We smashed their governments, if their governments tried to develop. And we forced them to impoverish their own people—and loot them through London, London financial sources. Then we moved in. And we put our investment of production into these areas of cheap labor.

That was not really cheap labor: What most idiots don't understand, is that manufacturing of high-technology products is not something you can do in isolation. You have to have a modern infrastructure to do it. Modern infrastructure constitutes about half of the total investment of any economy—modern infrastructure. That means 50%, or one-half of the total income of a nation must be spent on infrastructure: These are water systems, education systems, mass-transportation systems, power systems, so forth. These are the preconditions of production: The investment in high technology, transportation high technology, infrastructure, is the basis of production. It doesn't produce any marketable goods, or very little in the form of marketable goods, except in the form of general services. These are things which affect all of the people. Water systems do not affect "someone." You don't get a water system for your house. You get a water system for the entire area, the entire state, the entire nation. You don't get electrical power for one house—the Greenie idea of having some, some Trittin, and you put him up on a tower and he spins. [laughter] You don't have decent housing in one house—you have to have a community. You don't have decent education in one house. You have to have education of a population as a whole.

So therefore, you have to have the development of the infrastructure of the entire society, whether it is involved in actually producing anything directly, or not. Now, who can do that? Who can invest in the entire economy, which can not take a profit out of, in the sense of profit of some local manufacturing? Only the entire society. So, 50% of any modern society, depends upon the development of basic economic infrastructure. The productivity of that society will be determined by the level of the development of infrastructure: That is, the productivity in private industries, or individual industries, will be determined by the infrastructure which is associated with that entire society.

Therefore, if I take product, and I'm trying to produce it, say in India, which has some high-technology people, well-educated people, I've got the problem that 70% of the Indian population lives in terrible conditions which are now worsening. In China, about 70% of the population lives in desperately poor conditions, in the hope that what will happen, is that China will develop in the next two generations, and they'll be able to overcome the great poverty of 70% of the population.

In India, there's an ideological resistance, based on the caste system, to actually developing the mass of the Indian population. And so, therefore, you have about 30% of the Indian population which has a relatively improved condition of life, through technological development. But, this is at the expense of 70% of the population of India. You have, in China, you have some billionaires. What they tried to do was a good idea, but the way it worked out, it didn't work out well, because they promoted so-called "free trade." So, they produced a surfeit of billionaires, who are not useful—their existence is of no usefulness to China, or anyone else! You just spread the influence of more potential fascists. You turn Chinese communists into fascists—that's not a very good idea!

So, whereas the mass of the Chinese have not been improved, and the emphasis on development of China's territory, while it's still going on—better than India in that respect; the emphasis on infrastructure is greater—but they don't have an integrated society which is capable of sustaining themselves. And because they're very proud folk, they don't tend to think in those terms. They're an Asian culture.

Now, what we've done to Africa: We have a policy of deliberate genocide against Sub-Saharan Africa. What's going on is deliberate genocide, which was established as a policy of genocide under the Nixon Administration, or right after Nixon, under Henry Kissinger and others back in the 1970s. They said, "Africa has raw materials. Those are ours! Those are ours—not theirs! Ours. Therefore, the African people are using up the raw materials—which are ours!! We can't let that happen.

"These guys want to increase their level of technology. They'll use up more raw materials—which are ours! We've got to reduce the African population, and we've got to prevent them from having technology. In order that we can steal the raw materials. For us! And we'll let the British in on it."

That's genocide. A policy of deliberate genocide on a global scale, practiced under certain influences in the United States and the United Kingdom. And others go along with it. Europeans, you know, when they want to be criminal, they say, "There's nothing we can do about it. Our Anglo-American masters have spoken. We have to either tolerate or participate in this genocide." And being Germans, we can say, "Well, it's them. It's them. There's nothing we can do about it. We fought two world wars with these guys. We can not do anything about it. We have to put up with it. But we can make noises about it. We can quietly snicker, at how corrupt these people are." While Hartz IV is going on in Germany. We don't do it to the Africans, we do it to Germans.

Well, what is it? What is it? It's reality!

So, these conditions, the problems of this type were inherent in Europe, even after the Renaissance, after the Fall of Constantinople. And don't blame the Turks for the Fall of Constantinople: Blame the Venetians. They were coming back, and they used that to prevent the success, realization, of the great accomplishment of the great ecumenical Council of Florence of the middle of that century. It was stopped. It was the tendency to unify all Europe around a common purpose, by dealing with the division of religious bodies, to eliminate them through this great ecumenical Council of Florence.

And what happened is, that by occupying Constantinople, which had entered into a treaty agreement of unification, they stopped the unification process. And then created a condition of religious warfare centered on the Balkans, which became the motive for the Venetians to take control of society. They didn't entirely succeed, despite the Hapsburgs, who were evil from the beginning, who were a product, a creation of the Venetians.

But, Europe was plunged into religious war, for a period from 1492, with the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain, until 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. And, it was not until the Treaty of Westphalia, that Europe actually got its conscience back, in denying, saying "religious war will have to stop." And the principles of Westphalia are the foundation, actually, of anything that's decent in European civilization since that time.

And you'll hear attacks on the Treaty of Westphalia by every guy who is pig in Europe, today. They'll say, "The Treaty of Westphalia has failed. The Treaty of Westphalia caused wars. The Treaty of Westphalia was this, and so forth, by the nation-state."

All right, now: In this circumstance, you have the history of mankind, is, now—essentially, the history of progress of mankind, is such that mankind, as we think of it today, and his potentiality, is largely thought up in terms of the Renaissance, the 15th Century Renaissance. In turn, anyone who understands this Renaissance, looks back, as the Renaissance leaders themselves did, to ancient Greece. And not to anything in ancient Greece, but to a very specific thing in ancient Greece: Plato.

And Plato, as some of you know, because you've gone through this material, Plato's conceptions were based on the work of the Pythagoreans before him. And on the influence of Solon and other things of that sort. Which were based in turn on Egypt: The scientific conceptions on which European civilization was based, were those which were taken from Egypt. And were adopted by the Pythagoreans, as the method of scientific and other investigation, through what was called Sphaerics, which was simply looking at the universe astronomically in an obvious way. As navigation, ocean navigation, would push into it. Look at it as, "up there": You have stars and planets. You have things which have a fixed period, which seem to repeat. And you have those things that are different—they may repeat, but it's more complicated.

So therefore, the idea of seeing the universe as a boundless sphere, and you inside it; and you're looking up from Earth, at this boundless sphere, and you're trying to figure out how the rotation of the Earth is going to deal with your observations. And you try to develop a consistent understanding of the universe, starting with the idea of, "the universe is what's up there, in this vast sphere, within which all these things are moving." Sphaerics. And you find, as those of you who have entered into elliptical functions, the initial confrontation with elliptical functions, and then into Abelian functions—which some of you have done, I think, and we've done it in the United States; quite good work is being done now, in that direction, by the Youth Movement—you begin to understand what a Riemannian universe is.

So, the germ of these ideas, the first time we have these ideas in a consistent way that we can trace them, we can back-trace them now to ancient Egypt. We can make implicit assumptions about the culture out of which ancient Egypt developed, by looking at evidence, now, from the standpoint of knowing how the Pythagoreans thought about Sphaerics.

And Plato, particularly—remember, Plato comes after the Peloponnesian War. Whereas the Pythagoreans long precede the Peloponnesian War. It was the decline of the Pythagoreans, which leads into the horror-shows which become the Peloponnesian War: the rise of reductionists. In general, like the Eleatics. Which destroys the ability to think about the universe. Which leads back into this kind of thing, this Zeus worship kind of nonsense.

I mean, Zeus was evil! All the Olympian gods were evil! Except Athena—and she was not a Greek Olympian god: She was Egyptian. They changed her name. She was an Egyptian immigrant into Greece. She came to try to clean up the mess.

I mean, you get it, even in the Homeric thing on the case of Ulysses, where Athena is constantly intervening to help Ulysses, against the other gods! And he comes back to a peaceful, happy life at his home, at the end, after all these unpleasantnesses to which he was experienced.

But, the Greek gods were evil! And when you understand that the Greek gods were all evil, then you begin to understand what the problem is. And you look at it through the eyes of Aeschylus, in the Prometheus Trilogy, on the issue of Prometheus, and you see exactly what the problem is: What is Prometheus?

Prometheus is a figure of Greek myth—but not mythical, he's an actual person. But, he's a figure who acquires mythical significance, in the course of history, the pre-history of Greece. So now, but, who is Prometheus? Prometheus is Pythagoras, in the Greek history. I mean, he's not the literal—that's not. But he is the relevant Pythagoras, that is being attacked, in Greece, by these reductionists.

So, from that, Plato, as a follower of the Pythagoreans, with a great project intended to deal with the problems of Carthage and Tyre, to eliminate these dangers, and to establish an order of civilization, with the aid of certain Egyptians, including the Cyrenaicans, throughout the Mediterranean: This is the project which was carried out by Alexander the Great, who was an enemy of his father, Philip of Macedon; and it was a project to deal with the war (which Philip of Macedon and the Persians had already started, planned) under advice from the Platonic Academy of Athens. The Platonic Academy of Athens, whose activities in this respect are referred to by Plato, in the Seventh and Eighth Letters—this was the basis of the project, a project to develop a civilization by uniting forces around a conception, in the tradition of the Pythagoreans.

Now, this is where everything that we have in Europe comes from—and the United States. Everything comes from this. And we had a freakout, in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which is the voice of the Mont Pelerin Society, otherwise known as the voice of Satan, hmm? [laughter] I mean, Satan has to have a voice everywhere, you know, he has a representative in Frankfurt. In Frankfurt, it's the FAZ. Or, sometimes called the Werz [ph].

So, this is where it comes from.

Now, what happens? Europe is now brought back together, after a long period of disasters, the Roman Empire, the medieval period, all these things—and into the Renaissance. What happened? Well, the Classical Greek knowledge came back into Europe, as Classical Greek knowledge in the Renaissance. That was a key feature of it. And these ideas, these projects, which—as in the Seventh and Eighth Letters of Plato, and the whole of Plato's works—all come together as one thing.

And we're dealing with people who were highly educated people, leaders. Cusa laid out much of this: You look at Cusa's work, and in Cusa's work, there are elements which refer, actually, to this kind of project. The project, for example, of going around the world, to deal with the problem of the Constantinople crisis: How to go around the world, to circumvent this problem—it's strictly from Plato! Same project.

Well, what happened, as a result of this conception, is that we had the colonization of the Americas. And there was the colonization by the Portuguese and Spanish which was predominantly evil. Because the Portuguese and Spanish, at that time, were operating under evil influences, typified by their engagement, chiefly, in the African capture and trade in slaves. You had the English and French colonies. The French colonies, especially those in Quebec, which were one thing; those into the South and in the Islands, which just like the rest of the pigs. You had colonization in what became the United States.

Now, in this process, which, under the conditions of the emergence of the Thirty Years' War in Europe, a group in the Netherlands and England, which were later overthrown in the Netherlands, started colonies in North America. The most notable ones, initially, were those at Plymouth, the Plymouth Brethren, which came directly out of the Netherlands, out of actually a republican group in the Netherlands at that time; and then, England.

The primary model for what became the American Revolution, was established in 1630, as a colony, called the Massachusetts Bay Colony. It was under the leadership of a brilliant Englishman, of scientific accomplishment at the time, [John] Winthrop, and it developed Harvard University in its better incarnation. And over the period from 1630, until 1688, when the Anglo-Dutch Liberals moved in—and then actually took over England later—but moved in on the colonies then, you had the beginning of a struggle. Then the Anglo-Dutch Liberals, once the question of the Dutch being absorbed by the British was settled, and the Dutch agreed to go into the rear end of the British and become Englishmen. So, what you had, was the transfer of what had been the Venetian system of financial oligarchy, which they originally had run through the Norman, now became, adapted itself, to the Anglo-Dutch. As a matter of fact, many Venetians changed their names to Dutch names or English names, but it was the same Venetian families

What dominates Europe today, is that tradition of those families: a system of financier-oligarchy. What is called "capitalism" is not—has nothing to do with the system of the United States. The United States is not a socialist system, nor is it a capitalist system. Capitalism is essentially the slavery of Europe, and anyplace that Europe can reach, enslaved to the European financier-oligarchy.

That's capitalism.

Because, in any sane society, 50% of the total expenditure of the society is for basic economic infrastructure. Which includes the education of the mass of the population, at a level sufficient for that culture, and for the future. Therefore, the state is primary: Because, yes, you have a section of private investment in industry and similar kinds of things in society, but that does not run the society! The society has to be run by the state, which takes responsibility for ensuring that the conditions of life of manufacturing, sales, agriculture exist; but has to ensure the infrastructure exists on which to base that.

So, what's happening now? Globalization: What we're having is the destruction of the state, the destruction of the state under what? As by the proposed European Constitution: Is to eliminate all power of the state to promote production, and to promote the general welfare. Because the power of the state lies in the interest of the bankers! The financial oligarchy!

Now, how does this work in terms of the Third World? In the Third World, it becomes even more vicious. Because you have people in India and China who think the world would be better off without the United States. They're crazy. They think the European model is a failure. They're crazy. Their own model is worse. Seventy percent of the population is condemned, essentially, to live in poverty, under a continuation of the systems of Asia. Seventy percent lives in Hell, and will continue to live in Hell.

But, it's even worse than that: Because, what we've done, is, we've destroyed the infrastructure in Europe and the United States, as a part of this export of production to these countries. What do we do? We say: We're not going to produce in Europe; we're not going to produce in the Americas, because the labor costs too much. Why does the labor cost too much? "Well, you have to pay them too much." Why do you have to pay so much? "Well, they want health care, they want this; they want pensions, they want.... You know, they're absolutely insane! Now, look at what they demand; it's unreasonable!" [laughter]

So therefore, we say: "Well, we're going to ship the production into poor countries, where the labor is cheap, and there's no wasteful expenditure on infrastructure to support the whole population."

So! What happens? Well, they don't have infrastructure. Therefore, what happens? The productivity—even though the industry at the point of production may appear to be as productive as it is, or cheaper than in the United States or Europe, it is not! And the difference shows, in that you can not sustain the population with that production. You simply disregard 70% of the population! But worse! The productivity of labor decreases, because productivity in production depends upon infrastructure. The effective cost of production, of any goods, depends not upon the technology which is applied within the plant. The ability to apply that technology, and to apply it effectively, depends upon the basic economic infrastructure, which should constitute 50% of the total expenditure of society. In other words, take the total expenditure of society, for all the things that profit industry: Now, double that amount. Now, you've got the proper national income of that society!

What do you have in Asia today? You don't have that. By cutting out over half, of the total income required, going below that, by letting 70% of the population go to a standard below the level of technology of production, you have condemned these societies to self-destruction.

If the Asians were to take over the world, as an Asian model, with Asian cultural values, contrary to the European model, the world as a whole would go to Hell. But that's the intention of these guys, who are spreading globalization! It's not because they made a mistake, and didn't understand what they were doing. This has been their intention!

And this has been their intention, since the start of the process, since ancient Greece. This has been the struggle, which Schiller referred to as the struggle between Sparta and Athens, from ancient Greece: the two conceptions of humanity. And economy, the way economies are run, reflects the way you think about humanity, when you think about the value and nature of a human being.

Now then, we get to the spiritual side of the thing. You may have observed, that everyone eventually dies. [laughter] Now, what is the meaning, of life, of an individual member of a species, in which every member of the species eventually dies? What's the meaning of life. You're born—what's your purpose in being? Dying. Why can't I cut out the middleman? Just die right away? Get it over with—rather than this torment, of trying to keep myself alive, and struggling to stay alive? Why not join a Buddhist monastery, and just wait for the inevitable to happen? Spin those prayer wheels, huh? Industrial activity.

The question then comes: What is the character of a nation? Well, the character of a nation lies essentially in ideas, or lack of ideas. Because, when you're dead, what about you lives? When you die, what lives? What lives, are the ideas which you have transmitted—either generated or otherwise transmitted in your own life—to coming generations. That's your meaning of your life.

Therefore, the character of a nation does not lie in the average opinion of any contemporary bunch of people. I'll tell you, you take the United States, you take the average opinion of the American—forget it! Take the average opinion of the European? Forget it! As you know! The whole Baby-Boomer generation could be wiped out, with no great loss to humanity. Why do we have to have this middleman? I mean, it's a very popular idea, these days, among young people, isn't it? Hmm? And they do have pretty sick ideas, I must admit. Lifestyles, and things and so forth.

But, what you have, the meaning of a society, lies in the role of the individual as a conveyor, and generator, of what amount to ideas. For example: When you're studying science, or you're studying great actual Classical artistry, you get the same the same effect. You're struggling with the same thing, today, with a young lady, Jessica [Tremblay], here—or, she was struggling with you, whatever—whichever way you want to put it! And, the issue is, what are we dealing with? We're dealing with the transmission of Classical artistic ideas, and people were having trouble—and I was observing this—because they don't have, really bel canto training. There were too many people, who don't have a fixed knowledge, but rather a movable do.

And a movable do, is the greatest obstacle to understanding music. Because, if you don't have a movable do, you're raw material; you can start to be educated. But, if you have the idea of a movable do, that will prevent you from ever understanding music! Because, it's the wrong system. And it's not physically sound, as you saw, it's impossible to sing properly if you're trying to sing with the idea of a movable do.

Now, take this problem, just as an example of this: Because, the problem is, is people don't understand sufficiently the relationship between what's called Classical art and physical science. They think there's a dichotomy. There isn't. There's a dichotomy only in the minds of some people. It's a disease.

Because, look at the scientific implications of what Jessica was dealing with today. Particularly this question, which we studied a number of times, on this question of the Lydian interval. And if you want to compare this, you take the Amadeus Quartet. Now, it's an old recording of theirs, and they were not able to get the opportunity to do a complete new pressing of the Beethoven Quartet series. But even the old one reflects it. It's not what Norbert [Brainin], if he were alive today, is the latest version of his view of the 132. But, the Opus 132 string quartet, is a perfect example of what I saw Jessica struggling with today, with some of the people in the singing: The Lydian interval.

Now, you have the case of the Ave Verum Corpus study, actually an effective study in the Lydian interval. And its importance, is that it can be done by a singing group of rather limited number, and adequately demonstrated. And therefore, it's something for an occasion, and it's an occasional piece which can be demonstrated on occasion. And thereby, you can get an insight into the Lydian interval, what it means.

Now, the Lydian mode is not a key: It's a mode. You're working in a key in a composition, which you interpret in terms of a standard European movable do major/minor system of keys. And you think you know something about music.

You don't know anything about music.

Because, music is not a cross-section, chord by chord, of the intervals of measures. Classical music is a process which starts from a breath, before the first sound is heard; and ends after a breath at the end of the last sound. The idea of a musical composition, which is really an achievement by the composer, is one which must be performed in a way, such that there is never an end of the intellectual continuity of that composition's performance from beginning to end. From the first breath—for example: The first thing you do, in starting a composition, is you take a breath. You do nothing. You clear the way, of all the debris. You create a special space, intellectual space, in which this music is going to be performed. And before starting the applause, wait a breath after it's finished. Because, the composition must be one idea through development from beginning to end.

Now, to achieve that, therefore, you have the cross-voice, which I saw Jessica handling with this education today, which is why I refer to it. The cross-voice relationship, and the intervallic values, particularly the significance of the Lydian mode, arises not in how you take a chordal structure and interpret that chord as a slice out of the piece. You have to go from one voice to the other, and see, what is the organizing principle across the voices in the passage of time. How do you shape it?

Now therefore, you hear something else. You hear what idiots don't understand. Many people talk about modes. They don't understand what modes are: Modes do not exist as the alternative to keys. A mode is not a key. A mode is a modality, of crossing two things: first of all, if you have a bel canto singer, it has to do with crossing the register shift intervals. If you're dealing with a chorus, it involves both the register-shift intervals, within the individual voice; it also takes the individual voices, which are participating in the line.

Now, you have counterpoint. Therefore, you have the counterpoint of the different kinds of lines, which is how you get a double Lydian interval.

So, the whole composition, now, because of the Lydian interval, as you were working through it today—the whole composition becomes a unity: a single idea. So, the objective of the composer, in the case of Mozart is to produce a single idea—not a series of notes. Right? And therefore, you have to have a modal presentation of this. You have to have something which will not let you go, from the first breath, until after the last breath. Nobody must be released to take a separate thought, or a separate start anywhere in between. The flow must be continuous. The flow is not in the sound. It's negative. The sound must not interfere with the flow. Because, what you want from this, is an idea, not a physical experience.

But, the physical experience must not interfere with the idea. The way you achieve that, is in a modal form. And the modes mean nothing else than that.

Now, let's think about life. Hmm? Life is like that. Think of life, in a people, as a great musical composition. In which some notes come in, and others die out. Some intervals come in, and others die out. So, what's the characteristic of the composition? The individual interval? Or, is it the composition as a whole? Is it the intention expressed by the composition as a whole?

This is the nature of society. You don't judge a society by saying, "Well, current opinion has it..." You say, "Well, current opinion is always wrong, so let's try something else." The characteristic of the United States today—and I say, "my United States" because, right now, I'm in the center of things that may determine whether civilizations rises or dies—and that's in the immediate future. The focal point of that function is in the U.S. Senate, which has in the recent period, over a succession of developments, has realized that, to some degree, I'm the guy from whom they have to learn what they have to do next. As a result of that, you have seen, from the United States, we have defeated a coup d'etat attempted against the United States government. Something that no European government could prevent. Because, there's no capability. In Europe, you always have coup d'etats. You never have an orderly change in a crisis period.

You have some near-misses, for example, de Gaulle, in the case of the great crisis in France, where he appeared on the French television saying, "Aidez-moi! Aidez-moi!" And he succeeded—in the Algerian crisis, the attempted coup d'etat, and he defeated it. But, it was the sense, he made a coup d'etat against the coup d'etat.

In Europe, you have coups d'etat all the time! Because the parliamentary system, which is one which is run largely by the Venetian financier-oligarchy, does not allow you in a legal form, to deal with the crisis! Therefore, in every case in Europe, in any crisis, you have the immediate dictatorship, as today in Germany, of a coup d'etat, of a police-state! It's an immediate threat. Because the Constitution, without an exceptional individual (and Adenauer was, in his time, an exceptional individual, who fooled the occupying powers, in a good way); without an exceptional leader, who can somehow, as de Gaulle did, bridge a crisis, Europe has no chance—except to have another coup d'etat. Because the constitutional system doesn't permit it.

Now, how does this show, in terms of the modalities of Europe, using music as an example of modality? Europe: They accept the idea of capitalism; and with the collapse of the Soviet Union, that disease became worse. The loss of the Soviet Union was a great tragedy for Europe. The existence of the Soviet Union was a great tragedy for the Soviet Union. But, the loss of it, was a great tragedy for Europe. [laughter] Because it convinced everybody that the capitalist system was acceptable.

Because of the general welfare question. The highest point of law in Europe, is not the general welfare. Europe is not civilized! It does not have a civilized form of government! Because, the general welfare principle is not the supreme law—as it is in the United States. The supreme law in Europe, is the power of the independent central banking system to determine what are the allowable policies of government, including those which bear on the general welfare. If the independent central banking system does not permit a measure which is necessary for the general welfare to occur, then it does not occur! Unless with a coup! Because, the system doesn't allow it.

Now, the point was: We, in forming the United States, formed the United States, and went to the decision of revolution, after 1763, when an empire was established. The empire was the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, of the British East India Company. Which established a victory over Europe, through the stupidity of Europe, the Seven Years' War. Every damned idiot, including, you know, Frederick the Great—who created a great disaster, among other things—ran a war. And Frederick was considered the darling of the British at that time, who supported him up until the time he might have been successful, at which time, they withdrew support! In a war, with the Austrians, with the French, with the Russians, and so forth.

Everybody in Europe was killing each other, over seven years, in the Seven Years' War, for what? For the great glory of the British Empire!

We're talking about immortality, again.

Thus, at that point, by the British being able to use the opportunity to grab Quebec from the French, and to grab India, the British East India Company became an empire! And what is called "capitalism" is the system established by the British East India Company, as an empire! Europe is living under an empire! The empire of British Liberalism, or Anglo-Dutch Liberalism.

And the irony of the British and Dutch ganging up on Europe in the recent period is just another example of that.

You had a second Seven Years' War. After the United States emerged as a world power, under Lincoln, in which the idea of the American model was spread into Germany by Bismarck; through the influence of List, in part, but especially the influence of Henry C. Carey directly, who was the leading economist in the world at that time.

The same thing was done by Carey in Japan. Modern Japan was created by the United States, through Henry C. Carey, and the American model.

And many other cases throughout Europe. A Russian, Mendeleyev, went to Philadelphia for the 1876 convention, the Centennial. And out of that, Russia became committed, under Alexander II, to the industrial development of Russia, and to the building of what became known as the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The great power in Russia is the scientific power in Russia—to this day. Intellectual scientific power; Vernadsky's part of that tradition. In the Soviet Union, the military capability was excellent, because it was scientific. The civilian economy stunk, because it was anti-scientific: It believed in Marxism, rather than science. And that was bad. You saw in the D.D.R. the same thing.

So, this was the tragedy.

But then, because the United States was a threat now, you had Russia, Germany, Northern Italy—Italy was achieving independence as a result of this process, the American process—Japan, across Eurasia, a great power was building up of nation-states, with great industrial power. No longer was the Anglo-Dutch empire sacred. No longer could the British dare to take on the United States in a military offensive directly.

Therefore, what did they do? They organized what became known as World War I! Which was a repeat of the Seven Years' War! In which the continent of Europe killed itself. And they organized World War II! For the same purpose. And Europe has gone through this experience of the Seven Years' War and two world wars, and through this whole process, and has learned nothing from it, in terms of the organic constitutional composition of its institutions.

And so, in the United States, the characteristic of the United States is the modality, which is represented now by me, in terms of certain forces in the United States around the Senate, which now respond to me. Why? Because I'm able to tap into what is embedded in them: a sense of the history of the United States, its Constitutional history.

What did they resist a coup on? On the question of the Constitution—the most essential part of the Constitution. When the American Constitution was founded, we created the most powerful form of Presidency the world had ever known. We knew it was going to be that. Therefore, we created checks and balances in the Constitution, based on the study of history, including recent European history, to set up what in the Senate was "powers of advice and consent." The House of Representatives is like a parliamentary institution. The Senate is not a parliamentary institution of the European type.

Nor is it an impotent facility like the so-called Bundesrat. The Bundesrat is, you know, it's like a meeting of gangsters: The proprietors of each local part of the country, meet and cut a deal, on "this here deal."

The Senate is a body, which is elected for six years' term of office, which never goes out of existence. The Chamber of Deputies goes out of existence, like a parliament goes out of existence in Europe. The parliament ceases to exist at the end of an election. A new parliament is constituted. There is no continuity of government. The President of the country is a joke! He performs certain institutional functions. This is typical of Europe. The French Presidency has become a joke.

The United States Presidency is a very serious institution. It's not just a person, it's an institution, which is continuous. Presidents change, but the institution continues.

The Senate has an election every two years—but of only one-third of the number of Senators. So, the same Senate, with changes of, at maximum, of one-third of its membership, is in continuous session, from beginning to end of the history of the United States.

So, this Senate is given the powers, over the Presidency, of advice and consent. Such that a minority of the Senate, one-third of Senators, can block certain measures on certain issues, which are advice and consent. The people who are behind the Bush Administration—don't think Bush is responsible for anything; he's not even responsible for himself. If he can manage his tricycle, that's an intellectual achievement. So, the powers, the banking powers behind this, were determined to break the power of the United States, to establish a de facto dictatorship of a Presidency of a defunct President—that is, intellectually defunct President. We moved to stop that. I moved to stop it! And we found enough people, in the Senate and elsewhere, who agreed with me: And we stopped it! We stopped it, because we had the ability to stop it. And we had the legacy of a history, to stop it.

And you don't have it in Europe.

What's the lesson to be drawn from this? The lesson to be drawn is, the history of the human race, to the extent it has progressed, has depended in net effect, on the role of European culture. European culture as a whole created the United States. It was created, initially, as a way of saving European civilization, by creating a flanking operation outside Europe, as Cusa had proposed: to deal with the problem inside Europe, to create a model of European civilization, outside in the United States, to correct the problems in Europe, to tip the balance of power. That happened a number of times. It happened from the United States under Lincoln, in particular.

The French Revolution prevented it from becoming a success. The French Revolution was actually the British Revolution: The French Revolution was not run by the French, it was run by the British. Yeah! Philippe Egalité, Jacques Necker, who were the principals behind July 14, 1789, were British agents: Agents of Lord Shelburne. Marat and Danton were agents of Lord Shelburne, through Jeremy Bentham, who was head of the Foreign Office, who trained them in England and gave them orders in France. The Robespierre monstrosity was a creation of the British. Specifically, of the Martinist cult, a Freemasonic cult, run out of the British Freemasons—and by Lord Shelburne and Company.

Napoleon Bonaparte: He was invented by the Martinist cult, by Joseph de Maistre personally. He changed his personality from a Jacobin to an Emperor. And Napoleon did nothing that Joseph de Maistre had not prescribed for him.

So, this process destroyed what was then, the pending consequence of the American Revolution: to establish a French Constitutional monarchy, modelled upon the American design. With similar intention throughout Europe. The support for the American Revolution from Europeans, was largely from people who had this intention!

The concern of the British was to prevent that from happening at the time. The British went back to the same thing, again, after the success of the American power as a threat to British power. And they organized World War I, as a repeat of the Seven Years' War, to destroy Europe. They organized World War II. It didn't work out the way they intended, but it worked out—for the same purpose.

And Europe has had constitutional features embedded in it, from its earlier history, and from that history, which prevent Europeans, under present constitutions, from taking the initiative to do what the United States must do today.

I can do it from within the United States. It's what I'm doing. Only because, life does not end with death. Because, human beings, unlike animals, are creatures of ideas. Ideas of principle are immortal. And to the extent that these ideas, or reflections of them, are embedded in the legacy of a people, its cultural legacy, that cultural legacy can be called upon, to induce a people make great accomplishments, or simply to save itself in time of crisis.

The problem in Europe, is that legacy is tarnished. The legacy in part is there. But the legacy of a system of government, which is competent to respond to a crisis like that which faces the world today, is utterly lacking. Without the success of what I'm doing in the United States, I can tell you the good news: The planet won't make it. Not at least for a long time to come.

With what we're doing, the planet can make it. But the United States can't do it alone. It can only do it, as the leader of an international effort, based on the ideas which are common! to the best aspects of European heritage.

But Europe can not evoke its own heritage, in that way. The United States must provide the spark, under which Europe is induced to survive, to save itself. And if Europe doesn't do it, then the whole damned world is going to Hell! Asia can't do a thing about it. It does not have the capability, of overcoming those inherited cultural features of Asia which stand in the way of its independently finding a road to survival.

It's up to us. It's our responsibility. And it's up to people like you, of your generation, to learn the lesson which I've just outlined today. And to realize, then you know what your parents' generation has done, that they're waiting for Death to come in and hope it takes them by surprise [laughter]. Because they don't have any sense of a future! They have no active commitment to building a future! They were destroyed, how? They were destroyed by the post-war period. They were destroyed by the Congress for Cultural Freedom—otherwise known as the Congress for Free Fornication. And they became tired. Their ability to fornicate became diminished, and they've lost their sense of purpose in life! [laughter] They intended to produce, not ideas, not even children—but only pleasure for themselves! And now they're living what substitutes for pleasure, which is called, "I have my own lifestyle." [laughter]

Okay, that's it. [applause]