This interview appears in the October 26, 2001 issue of Executive Intelligence Review. It is also available as an audio archive.
Our Republic's Historic Mission:
A Talk with Lyndon LaRouche
Democratic pre-Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on Oct. 9, 2001 by Jack Stockwell, on KPKK Radio, broadcasting out of Salt Lake City, Utah. The interview's full transcript follows.
Stockwell: Good morning, everybody, six-and-a-half minutes after 7 o'clock here on the 9th day of October. A terrific but wet Tuesday morning. My name's Jack Stockwell, I'll be here for a couple hours this morning, and on my guest line, I have Lyndon LaRouche, live from Germany.
And I'll have him here in just a second, and he is scheduled to be on this program with us for the entirety of show.
All right. I don't want to waste any time with this....
Lyndon, are you there?
Lyndon LaRouche: Yes, I am.
Jack Stockwell: Well, good morning. What time is it in Germany?
LaRouche: Well, it's six hours difference—well, in respect to you, it's seven hours.
Stockwell: Well, let's see. If it's 8 o'clock here, no, it's 7 o'clock here in the morning, so I guess you're mid-afternoon.
LaRouche: Yep.
Stockwell: Sept. 11, four weeks ago this morning, in fact, as I look at this clock, about eight minutes after the hour, this was the time we got the first indication, four weeks ago today, that something awful and ominous was going on inside of New York City, and we caught you, live on the radio, when this was taking place, so that you were kind of on the spot, at that moment. You didn't have news headlines. You didn't have news headlines in front of you to refer to, you didn't have any prompting to refer to, you had to kind of shoot from the hip, as that program was underway. And interestingly enough, the things that you described, four weeks ago this morning, piece by piece, have pretty well been verified by the press, by investigative groups, and agencies. Which I think, it's always wonderful for that kind of validation to come flowing through.
But, in particular, you talked a little bit about certain intelligence agencies, certain groups, wanting what has happened subsequent to that, to actually occur—which is essentially, this clash of civilizations. And what I would love to pick up at this point, is, over the last four weeks, as these things have unfolded, and as the Arab world has divided, and as NATO is starting to splinter a little bit in this, because some of them don't want to be involved with what Tony Blair and the Rumsfeld group in Washington have in mind, so, kind of bring us up to date. Take a few minutes to do that, sir, if you would.
LaRouche: Well, we're now in a mess. We're in an official war, which actually is being fought by the British and the U.S. forces. It's going to be a terrible mess, because you're dealing in an area of the world, which is not conducive to successes in fighting a war. There is this semi-desert area, Afghanistan, part of the "roof of the world," where the British, for more than a century, played a "Great Game" against Russia, and other forces, in this area of desolation, which is just an area for any occupying power for trouble-making among the neighboring nations. So, this is not going to be an easy go.
The next question, which has divided Washington, including the administration, is to whether they're going to take the pressure from those in the Israeli Defense Forces leadership, and Sharon, along with some people in the United States, to go to bomb every neighboring territory in the Middle East, which would be absolute insanity.
The danger here, is two things: On the one side, a real part of the problem, is the fact that, for over a quarter-century, the United States has been involved with Britain, and with some forces in Israel, in building up, among themselves, more or less cooperatively, something that has come to be called "international terrorism"—it was called Iran-Contra, other things. The operation began with Brzezinski, while he was National Security Adviser, in getting the United States, through recruiting people from Islamic Jihad and groups of that type, to go into Afghanistan, to fight a war against Soviet influence, trying to undermine the Soviet Union by getting this kind of war going, inside Afghanistan. As a part of that operation—in its larger form, such as the general Iran-Contra, Guatemala, so forth and so on—the United States, Britain, and, to some degree Israel—and also others—have participated in creating a phenomenon, which some people like to call "international terrorism." It's actually irregular warfare.
But, what we've created is actually a rag-tag of ex-military veterans, in retirement, or, now working as mercenaries; various kinds of volunteers, typified by the rag-tag around Osama bin Laden, typified by the Taliban government of Afghanistan, which is more than general nuisance for the world. One of the key problems, here, is, that this environment, of this rag-tag of mercenary, and terrorist, and whatnot forces, has become like a disease—a planetary disease, which lives, largely, financially, logistically, on illegal weapons trafficking, or what should be illegal weapons trafficking, and drug trafficking. For example, the Taliban government of Afghanistan is largely financed by its sale of opium, and producing and dumping opium on the world market. You have in Colombia, the FARC: a major terrorist organization, lives in the same way. You have a problem in the Balkans, where in Kosovo area, you have a terrorist mob, which is deployed (with the protection of some British and American influences), as a terrorist element there, largely funded on the basis of drug trafficking and similar kinds of operations.
So, on the one hand, you do have what has been rightly identified, in the case of Osama bin Laden, and the Taliban and so forth—you do have a disease, a kind of criminal element, or what should be viewed as a criminal element, loose in the world. And, that problem should have been brought under control a long time ago. As a matter of fact, it should never have been started, if people had had their heads screwed on the right places.
We have another operation, which is quite different, but overlaps that. Someone is running a fun-and-games operation against the United States, from, in part, the inside: That is, what happened to the United States, on Sept. 11—if you view, at least the technicalities that are well-known—
Stockwell: Lyndon, before you get into this, and I want you to really concentrate on the details of this, I do have to pull in a traffic report....
[traffic report]
Ladies and gentlemen, if you're just tuning in, here, at 15 minutes after the hour, Lyndon LaRouche, calling into our radio program, live from Germany. And, we're kind of picking up where we left off four weeks ago. And, we've been talking here, for the opening moments of this program, regarding a lot of the motivation behind a terrorist network that exists in the world, that was created, essentially, by intelligence operations, a number of decades ago; and now, they've kind of gotten out of hand, to some degree. But, there is another aspect to this, because—and this is what Lyn's going to go into, right now—is the technicalities that were involved four weeks ago, involves an awful lot more than just somebody sitting on the back of a yak, with a cell phone in some cave in Afghanistan.
So, Lyn, let's talk about the technicalities involved with a simultaneous operation, involving four large jets.
LaRouche: Well, what I'm about to say, is not unknown, nor is there a lack of concern about most of what I'm saying, among relevant elements of the government, including some close to the President at this time. There may be some disagreement with some of the assessment I make of this, but, I think, on the leading elements I'll start with, right now, there probably is not much disagreement.
Now, politically, the administration, along with the major media, is emphasizing this Middle East-Osama bin Laden thing. That is, as much of the leading British press has said: They don't believe any of it. That is, we all agree, I think, that Osama bin Laden is a nuisance, a disease. We agree, the Taliban thing is a problem. We agree, things like that are major problems. But, beyond that, there's another view of the matter. We don't think that's the problem. We think that is a part of the problem—an important part—but not the problem.
So, in the meantime, while the attention is being focussed on the Middle East and places like that, other things are happening: First of all, look at the security situation, as of Sept. 11. Now, there are two possible interpretations, technically, of what happened on Sept. 11. One: That, at a very high level, inside the U.S. security establishment, people who, in one sense, are functioning—in one capacity, are also functioning as a kind of a "Mr. X." And, these fellows, of very high capability, and knowledge, and skills, and connections, actually rigged what happened on Sept. 11. Because, there were, presumably, security screens, which existed, which should have prevented all, or most of that from happening. And, apparently, the screens were defeated. Or, the second conclusion: They were not up.
Now, both of these problems are serious: That is, if this thing is a product, entirely, of a coup at a high level, we've got a major problem, right inside the hard core of our intelligence-security establishment. If, however, this is not simply a product of that kind of sophistication, in running a coup, then, we have a degree of slop, built into the security system, which, in its own way, is as great a threat to the United States, as almost a major coup attempt would be at the high level. So, one of these two problems is there.
So, we do have a major security problem. Some of the security things are obvious: They're more of a military, or intelligence-security nature. Others are of a different nature. For example: We've had a breakdown in the number of hospitals in the United States, increasingly, since the middle of the 1970s—since "Big MAC" was installed in New York City, which is the real takedown of the medical system. I saw this, also, in the Veterans Hospital system in the 1970s; the Veterans Hospital system was being destroyed—not all at once, but inch, by inch, by inch, by inch. So, the structure that we had built up, on the basis of the lessons of history, including those of World War II, that we built up in the postwar period, as a health-security system, including work to prepare us to deal with newly discovered, dangerous diseases, or a recrudescence of an established type of epidemic from the past—these kinds of defenses are being taken down.
All kinds of security defenses, which ought to be a built-in characteristic of our system, have been destroyed, sometimes on the basis of "economy," or "budget-balancing." And, now, we find that the policy of the Bush Administration is changing, as a result of an ongoing monetary and financial collapse. And this thing is not going to be solved. There's no rebound, automatic rebound, anywhere in the future.
Stockwell: Well, this was going on, of course, before Sept. 11, and there's still a lot of people out there, especially in the press, trying to blame this on Sept. 11.
LaRouche: Oh no. You look at the figures: We lost—such as, take the Nasdaq area, the American investor, the trusting investors, who invested in the so-called New Economy, lost several trillions of dollars, of nominal financial assets, over the period since March of the year 2000, as a result of their credulity in thinking this wasn't coming down. If you look at the reports, which were coming out before Sept. 11, on the number of corporations that are cutting back 10%, 20%, 30% of the labor force; these are major corporations, in large degree. And you're going to see a lot more of it.
We are in a depression, not a recession.
Now, obviously, in the case of the airline industry, in particular, these scares and the impact of what happened on Sept. 11, put a dent into an already bad situation. But they did not cause the situation. We're now in the worst—we're actually, relatively speaking, in a worse, or more dangerous financial-economic situation, than we were in the beginning of the 1930s. Because, as some of us recall, after about a dozen years after World War I, we still had a lot of structure: We had industries; we had farms; we had basic economic infrastructure. So that, when the Depression hit, with full force in the early 1930s, we had a lot piled up there, of idled skills, idled farms, idled factories. And, over the course of the 1930s, and into World War II, we put these things back to work. And, that was the basis for economic recovery, under Roosevelt.
Stockwell: Well, also, most of the American population could run out in their back yard, and get their dinner, growing in their garden spot. How many of us can do that today?
LaRouche: I know. Well, that's the point. What happened, as some of us recall, back in the 1930s, we had people going back to the farm, because they had come from the farms into urban employment. And they went back to the farm, to their relatives, to eat chicken and a few eggs, and survive. That does not exist today. We don't have it. We have shipped our employment overseas. Our plants have been shut down, in using cheap-labor markets overseas. And, these things are now collapsing. The outsourcing game is over.
So, we're in a very serious situation. I don't want to spread doom—
Stockwell: No. I appreciate that. But, even Japan is now saying that America is no longer the importer of last resort.
[traffic break]
Lyndon LaRouche is my guest, live, calling in from Germany this morning, and we're kind of bringing things up to date since he was on here a month, or four weeks ago today.
Now, I would like to stay away from the doomy-gloomy stuff as well, because there is still such great potential to turn things around in this country. And, there are certain economic considerations, that can be made, decisions that need to be presented, at least implemented, as soon as possible, in the sense of reorganizing, not just the local business. I noticed a news blip that just said that bankruptcies are double, of course, what they were a year ago, and things seem to be worsening even more so on that particular avenue. Maybe we need to consider a reorganization on a much higher scale, a much broader spectrum, than just the local business down the end of the street.
And, this is an idea that's catching on very heavily, I know, throughout the rest of the world, and the world governments, as I read world headlines from around the planet: That they're all beginning to recognize that we didn't just hit the iceberg, we hit it some months, some years ago, and that if something isn't done quickly, and move in the sense of nation-building, rather than nation-bombing, we may have the 14th-, 13th-, 12th-Century lifestyle foisted upon us again, whether we like it or not.
LaRouche: Now, it's true. Now the fellow today who may be very useful to his or her neighbor, is the businessman who, sometime ago, went through a successful reorganization and bankruptcy, and what he would probably tell that neighbor, if he actually did pull successfully out of a bankruptcy reorganization, he would have said: "Well, first of all, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to accept the fact that my business had gone bankrupt. But then I realized I had to bite the bullet, I had to face that reality, and boy, am I glad I did." Because this was the way he saved that business, which may have been significant to that community.
I think we can apply the lesson which such people can tell us, to the more general situation.
We have a bankrupt U.S. and world economy. Right now, it's hopelessly bankrupt. There's no way this is going bounce back. You know, people who went to jail in bankruptcy, did so because they kept issuing, or taking credit, when they were already bankrupt. And the United States government, especially this Federal Reserve Chairman, is doing exactly that! We are hawking everything in sight, against assets which really do not exist, promissory notes which will never be paid; they never could be. We should have a reorganization of this economy now, in order to keep the businesses, the banks, and so forth, which are essential, going; to prevent employment from collapsing; to maintain pensions and essential services, and keep the economy going; and keep things growing. The same way that you would take a corporation, a company, that was essentially a sound company, but had gotten into financial bankruptcy—take that company, put it through reorganization, save it, and bring it back as a viable part of the community. We're going to have to think in those terms.
The problem now, is that the egos of Wall Street, and the egos of people who are looking at assets they think they have, but they don't really have, because they're already worthless, are clinging to that, not willing to face the reality that we've got a sick economy. That the policies of the United States over the past more than 30 years have been increasingly bad. We've got to dump the kinds of policies introduced by, especially Nixon and Carter; go back to a sensible policy we had earlier, and we can come out of this fine.
And we have friends around the world who are ready to cooperate with the United States, to create the kind of opportunity for us as a nation—which we need as export markets—to build up our industries again, and to find the markets abroad which are stable markets, in which our products will be used—high-tech products, in particular—which are going to help develop the world. China, India, other parts of the world. Build up South America, Central America. Look, this is an immensely potentially rich area in terms of natural resources, Central and South America, especially South America. Look at Patagonia: If we had the infrastructure in there, and helped them, cooperated with these governments to build that infrastructure, we would find these assets, mineral and other assets, are there, would be accessible.
We can develop Africa the same way. The African shield, is one of the richest sources of minerals in the world. Africa has a tremendous agricultural potential. This area can be developed. The development will require technology. We, and the Europeans, and others will supply that technology. We need that kind of a system. And, under those circumstances, instead of looking at the crisis, which is the worst in a long, many centuries; instead of looking at it with fear, we have to say, "All right, we're going to bite the bullet. We can come out of this alive. We just have to get ourselves organized to face reality, roll up our sleeves, and get back to work."
Stockwell: These ideas that you've been proposing, and the economic situation we're in right now, you have of course called years, decades, ago, describing, year by year, and—I don't want to really say forecasting and predicting, but just describing the trends that would bring us inevitably to the point that we're at now. I've noticed when I read the world headlines, that your name is mentioned constantly, through the nations who want to come together to build some kind of a unifying pact that would be more devoted towards nation-building, instead of nation-bombing, or nation-raping.
But in America, it's as though there has appeared across the word-processing screens, of the press writers, coast to coast, whatever you talk about, you don't talk about LaRouche.
LaRouche: [laughs] Well, these fellows are afraid of me. I don't think so much the reporters and editors who do that sort of thing. But I think the people that own them, don't like me at all. As a matter of fact, the people who own the New York Times, who own NBC, who own CNN, who own the Washington Post, these people have personally, on the record, and publicly, made no bones about it: they hate my guts.
For example, in 1974, the New York Times did a hatchet job on me beyond belief, beyond what they did to anybody. What they did to Nixon was mild compared to what they did to me. It was all, mostly lies, and so forth—defamation generally.
Then in 1976, the Washington Post published in its editorial column, that I would get no coverage except the most libelous sort, and there would be no coverage of any activity I did. And generally, they've stuck to that all these years. NBC, the same thing. CNN and crowd, the same thing.
But, the problem here is, that this country is divided between two essential factions. One are the patriots. And, I'm a patriot. Not very popular these days, not a real patriot—the tradition of Benjamin Franklin, and John Quincy Adams, and Lincoln, and so forth. But the other faction, which Franklin Roosevelt called, not originally, but, he just used the term again, the American Tory faction, which is made up of people who, from Boston, and so forth, worked as drug pushers for the British East India Company, back, beginning in the 1790s. Bankers like Aaron Burr, who set up the Bank of Manhattan. This crowd in New York: Martin van Buren, that tradition; and the Southern slave holders. And this tradition of slaveholders, Wall Street bankers—which includes major financial houses from Wall St., Washington, D.C., Boston, and so forth—and the tradition of the Yankee drug trader: this is the tradition which has great power in the United States. This is what Roosevelt fought against, this is what Kennedy challenged, and this is what I challenge. And these guys think, particularly after the last 35 years development, they think that they've got a locked-up situation. That they control the shop.
I come along, and I raise what Henry Kissinger described with hatred, as the American Intellectual Tradition, and they say, "Shut this guy up. Don't let anybody hear a word he says! Just defame him."
Stockwell: Well, in the sense of not letting anybody hear what you have to say, when Kissinger wrote that letter to William Webster, and said "Get LaRouche," and so, then they come up with this orchestrated situation to get rid of you, as Kissinger wanted, here in the late '80s, I noticed that when criminal charges were filed, and court proceedings were underway, both in Boston, for the first one, and Alexandria, for the second, even then, they wouldn't let you talk.
LaRouche: Yeah, sure.
Stockwell: Even when your freedom was on the line, they wouldn't let you talk in front of a jury.
LaRouche: Well, they know what they're doing. They want to get you, they want to get you. It's the legalized equivalent of murder. And you know, our Justice Department, or a large part of it, is controlled by the financial houses, and the major law firms.
This has been the arrangement, especially since Teddy Roosevelt was President; Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson. And most of the big financial houses, of Washington, D.C., New York, Boston, and so forth, and the major law firms, which are tied to those financial houses, and which largely run the Justice Department—if you trace the financial houses, and law firms, and you look at people who go into government, as officials, and come out of government; go back into private practice, make a lot of money; go back into government, then go out of government, make a lot of money in private practice, and go into it, you have a revolving chairs, musical-chairs operation, which, these are the people who, with hands and feet, generally control a lot of what our government does, and what a lot of other leading indstitutions—like major financial corporations. Financial corporations are not controlled by stockholders, and people who have actual interest in the corporation. They're controlled by Wall Street interests, or similar kinds of interests, in these law firms. And these firms do as they're told. If you see a firm, which was once a great firm, like Boeing, being pulled down, it's Wall Street.
You see many cases of firms which were great firms, in the sense that they produced a great product; they had producers in there who had great pride in what they do. Or, you see what has been done to the American farmer, the American family farmer, high-tech farmer. Destroyed, the same way. It wasn't his fault. It was rigged. And that's the problem.
But some of us, I think, and me, in particular, think that what's important in life is not what most people call success—personal success. What's most important in life, is what people should think about you after you're gone; what did you do for humanity while you're here. And those of us who think in those terms, we tend to act a little bit differently, than some of the other guys who say, "Oh, don't do that, you'll get into trouble! You'll lose your job! Nobody will like you, your neighbors will shun you!" And people who are intimidated by those kinds of fears, just don't have the guts to do the job, unless some poor sucker, like me, takes leadership, and they may, under certain conditions, follow a guy like me, and get through the problem safely.
Stockwell: You know, one of the things that attracted me to your way of thinking, to begin with, some years ago, was that everybody hated you. The liberal element, what you would consider the socialist-communist element that the conservatives are always so upset about—they don't like you. The conservatives don't like you. Wall Street doesn't like you. Most Presidential administrations—although there was definitely an affinity between you and Ronald Reagan—the administrations before and after, don't like you, or what you have to represent. The banking interests don't like you. And as I would read and study more and more about this all the time, I'd sit there and scratch my head, and: "Who is this guy? Who is this guy that all the powerful institutions...."
See, I used to draw a spectrum that I was taught in high school. "Here is the Left, which is epitomized by communist thinking. And here is the far, far Right, which denigrates from conservatism into fascism, into anarchy"—a continuum that I've never really found to exist in reality, but it did in the mind of my 11th-grade history teacher. And both ends, of whatever entities—whatever entities I could define on either end of the spectrum, as I read their publications, or comments that they may have made about you and your organization, they all dislike you greatly.
But the people who do like you, I have found, that I have come to know personally, are some of the most informed, most well-read, people I've ever run across. And so, when Kissinger finds you representing the American Intellectual Tradition, the guys that know what's going on, and are really calling the game, in the sense of "All right, all right, boys, you know, the jig's up. We know what's going on here." You probably represent a greater threat to the oligarchy, and the exposure of their nefarious doings, than any other organization on the face of the planet.
However, not only are we in a time when your organization constantly exposes the nefarious efforts of these people, but we're also in a sinking ship!—that is accelerating the problem. And so we not only have a decline of morals, and a decline of personal responsibility, and a decline of the kind of thinking of: "I want to leave a legacy for my grandchildren, that they will look up to the life that I left them." But also, we may find ourselves, before the end of this year, where our dollar won't buy what it'll buy today! And we're only talking two and a half months from now!
LaRouche: Yeah, we're in the end phase...
Stockwell: We're in the end phase...
LaRouche: of this process. We have to change soon, or this thing has no bottom to it. Contrary to the effusion of Secretary O'Neill, this has, in its present form, this system has no bottom to it, and nothing has come out of the administration yet that would even begin to cut into the problem that we face. It's a disaster.
It's been coming a long time. It's a systemic crisis. It's not an episodic, it's not a cyclical crisis. We've just been doing the wrong thing.
You know, Ross Perot was damned—I never liked the guy too much—but he was damned wrongly by Gore, when Gore was Vice President, on this question of outsourcing with respect to NAFTA. And Perot was right. He may have had the wrong spin on it, but it was right: that the jobs and the well-being of American communities were being destroyed by exporting U.S. jobs, agriculture, and so forth, to cheap labor markets. It was a mistake—a very bad mistake.
But the problem we have, is, largely, the destruction of our banking system by Paul Volcker, with his interest-rate hikes in 1979 through 1982. This was wrong. Kemp-Roth was wrong. Garn-St Germain was wrong. Many of the decisions we made were wrong. And we've been going along for years, for over a generation, making wrong decisions, starting with such things as that momentous August 1971 catastrophe of Nixon. Carter was a bigger catastrophe than Nixon was. And we've been going along, saying, "No, everything is going to be all right. You'll see, everything will be all right. They know what they're doing." And the economy has been ruined. Things are getting worse and worse, especially for the people in the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Worse and worse.
And we've now come to the point where we've hit the bottom of the barrel. And it's leaking. So, people just didn't see it, they didn't want to see it, they wished to believe, hopefully, that this thing would not touch them. And now, it's touching them.
[commercial break]
Stockwell: All right, we're back, we've got about 14 minutes left in the first hour of this program. You're listening to the Jack Stockwell radio talk-show program, and my guest, Lyndon LaRouche, calling in live from Germany.
Four weeks ago today, he was my guest on this program, and it was right during the attack on the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, that the program was taking place. That show has been printed in a booklet form, 400,000 copies of it have been printed, and in foreign languages, and has been sent around the planet. And I still have several of them here at the radio station, several of them at my office. If you missed the program with Mr. LaRouche four weeks ago, you can get it word by word, written out.... And I still have people coming by my clinic, asking for copies of the tape of that program. I don't have copies of the tape, but I do have a booklet, and I want to give the phone number of their organization, because the very things that Mr. LaRouche is talking about right now, come out weekly. And you can get a free copy of their magazine, the EIR, Executive Intelligence Review, by calling 1-888-347-3258, 888-347-3258. And ask for a free copy of the EIR. And I'm sure they'll be more than happy to forward one to you.
And so, Lyndon is here with me now, and we're talking to him from Germany, and we've been discussing the kind of situation in which we find ourselves today. Bankruptcies twice what they were a year ago. Trillions of dollars have been lost in the marketplace. One sterling example that I used some time ago, that I picked up off the news, was what happened with Morgan Stanley Dean Witter? (I think I said that backwards.) However, where they took a fellow who had been working for Microsoft, his $700,000 in option values, and reduced it to $400—thus, showing how dangerous the market is right now.
But every time, Lyndon, some money is dropped into the market, through Secretay O'Neill's initiatives, or somebody else, and there's a temporary retarding of the slide, suddenly there's a whole new—the talking heads of the weekends, and a whole new almost-P.T. Barnum show, as to how, "Well, we've dropped as far as we're going to drop, and now it's time to turn around."
And what you're saying is, "No, we haven't seen the worst of this yet. It could get a lot worse." But at the same time, isn't there something to be said for trying to get everybody to get back into the marketplace? Don't run into a hole. Don't bury your head in the sand. Don't hide out in the hills with your food storage, and your water, and your guns, and your bullets, but stay out there active in the market. Isn't there some benefit to that?
LaRouche: Well, let's take the case of Credit Suisse, I mean, not Credit Suisse, I mean Swissair.
Stockwell: Okay, just within the last month, has declared bankruptcy.
LaRouche: Swissair one day went belly-up. Now, Swissair had made a very foolish investment, under the influence of certain bankers who had taken over leading banking institutions in Switzerland, private banking institutions. And with taking over Sabena, which was a bad buy. This transformed the most successful, and most solid, airline in the world, Swissair, into a financially bankrupt mess. So, one day, this past week, Swissair planes weren't flying—they were grounded—because they didn't have the money to buy the fuel to put in the jets. And half the fleet is totally grounded, as least the last I heard. But, just before the grounding occurred, there was a meeting of some of the people, and they took a part of the element of Swissair, which is called Crossair—about half the aircraft—and decided to keep that in operation. But the bankers behind the thing, said: "We're not going to throw good money after bad."
What's happening on the market in New York—New York markets and other markets of that type—is good money is being thrown after bad. What are you talking about, when you talk about "rebounds" in the market? Now, Congressmen and others are very enamored of what they call "The Market." And, if you ask, "What is this animal, called 'The Market'? Does it have six legs? Does it have two tails? What is this animal: The Market?" The market is not employment in industry; the market is not production of goods; it's not social welfare, it's not medical care. What is the market? The market is the nominal value of highly questionable paper, which is called, politely, "shareholder value." Now, when they jack this market up, by inflationary measures, such as the type that Greenspan keeps pulling, and others push, desperately, they're not actually improving anything! What they're improving, is the perception of a market, which is not reality! It's only the so-called "nominal value" or "shareholder values." In other words, the index, the reflection has gone up; but the man has not improved.
And, if you look at the reality, you look at the number of jobs lost, firms closed down, major cutbacks, look at the the housing bubble. Look at, for example, in terms of the market: One of the biggest bubbles, right now, since the New Economy went bubble-up, is in real estate. What has happened? There's been a big speculation in the real estate market. As a result of this speculation, the perceived value of a house has increased. So, now the poor fellow, who has got a mortgage on this house, finds that his house has increased in perceived market value. This fellow now goes to the bank, and finds out, that his bank is willing to increase his mortgage, to absorb some of this so-called "increase in value" of this house. He then takes the money, which he gets from the loan, and uses it to support his income, his private lifestyle.
Now, this market is going to come down. It's a completely inflationary market. What happens to the poor guy, who suddenly finds that, what he really bought into, was not the benefit of having more cash in his pocket; but, he finds out that he's going to be burdened, for the rest of his life, with a hopeless bankruptcy, the burden of that mortgage, which people are trying to collect from him and his family, for the rest of his life. So, the reality of the situation, and what people think, by reading statistics, or what they hear on a news broadcast—thinking the market has gone up—well, what's the market? It's a balloon! Somebody puffed it up. Are they going to pop it?
Now, look at the reality. What about employment? What about purchasing power, of family households? What about: How much equity do you really have in that house, when the market value of that house goes way below, what it's listed on the mortgage as. That's the reality, and that's where the problem lies.
Stockwell: We have, I guess, about four and half minutes left, before we go to top of the hour. During the next hour, I want to get into: How we get out of this mess? And, not just in the sense, Lyn, of nations, nation-state building; and not just in the sense of protecting nations' sovereignty. But, the guy down the street. The guy down the street, who's sitting there right now, pulling his hair out of his head, because the only way out he can possibly see right now, would be personal bankruptcy; or, selling the family business, that's been around for five decades; or, the family farm, or whatever.
And, I want to get more, into the sublime areas of life, and maybe, even bring in the Divine, here, a little bit. And some concepts on God, and man's relationship to God, and, not necessarily soteriological or Christological concept, but, just more, in the sense, of—you know: Christ came, not just, in the sense of a spiritual sense, but also in a temporal sense. What He did essentially, saved the world; especially the mess that the world was in, at that time. And, maybe, move into a direction like that. If that would be all right with you?
LaRouche: Sure!
Stockwell: Okay. We'll try doing that during the next hour. In the three or so minutes that we have remaining: I know that you are constantly being asked for interviews, all the time, now, because it wasn't that easy getting this one scheduled. But there seems to be a growing invitation on the part of foreign nations, not the least of which, is the major, leading nations on the face of the planet, for the implementation of your New Bretton Woods concepts. And, in fact, one fellow out there, Rohatyn, trying to steal some of the ideas.
The press has kept quiet—not just the smear—but the quieting aspect of what you have to suggest, when you would think, at this particular point in time, they would be aware of the fact, that without a complete reorganization of the financial structure of this planet, they have as much to lose, as anybody else!
LaRouche: Well, one thing that they fear losing—it may be a phantom—but, if the girlfriend you love so dearly is non-existent, she's like, sort of Jimmy Stewart's big white rabbit—he doesn't want to give it up. And, what people are concerned about, who express that view, is, they will say to you, privately: "But, this guy—what this guy is proposing, is a threat to what we consider our way of life." And, the problem that comes up, is, that the guy in the street, the average person, who works for a living, or farms, or whatnot, wouldn't understand that. He'd say, "Whadya mean, your 'way of life'? It's not mine." He'd say, "I want to take care of my way of life. My way of life, is feeding my family, or having some future for the community. Having some kind of security. What you're talking about, is: your making 'shareholder value' profits on the market, at our expense. Not necessarily at our advantage.
"Whadya mean, your 'way of life'? Isn't it important to save us?"
And, the issue, of course, is the issue of the general welfare. The nation was founded, on the principle of the general welfare. This is expressed in the first three paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence, but made explicit in the Constitution, in the Preamble to the Constitution.
[news break]
Stockwell: We're back, it's seven minutes after the hour of 8:00. I'm Jack Stockwell. I'm talking to a good friend of mine, one I've come to know over the last few years and have been back East, and have sat down with him and had some conversations: Lyndon LaRouche, live from Germany this morning.
As we were discussing in the last hour, trying to bring things up to date, since four weeks ago this morning, when Lyn was on my program during the attack at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and we've been discussing the situations and the issues that have arisen since then.
Interestingly enough, a lot of what he had to say, kind of in a situation where he was under the gun; he was on the spot, no doubt about it, when we were talking about this four weeks ago. Many of those things that he described at that time, since have been verified. And a lot of the international press, I've noticed, is starting to pick up some of the things that he was saying then. Some of the things I've noticed over the weekend, Lyndon, is the British press is very upset with their own leadership now, Tony Blair. the Economist, part of the scriptural aspect of the oligarchy itself, is starting to get upset with some of the things that Tony Blair is trying to do, enforcing war in the Middle East, Huntington's "Clash of Civilization."
Being in Germany, and seeing the German newspapers, and the headlines all the time around you, being interviewed by members of the various European states, what is their take on this? What is their feel about this? How are they feeling about this Chapter 5 issue with NATO, and one for all and all for one, and this imposition upon them to draw into and be involved with this Clash of Civilizations that's unfolding in the Middle East and in Eastern Asia? And, what is their general attitude about what happened four weeks ago?
LaRouche: As of now, as of this past weekend, there is a differentiated view among countries such as Germany, Britain, Italy, Russia, and France. I don't have much significant from France right now, but there is a differentiation. Now, let's compare them.
The British, who see themselves as, in a sense, a top dog in the world, the British establishment, are very frank in their opinions, and they don't hesitate to say what they believe. In general, the British are, of course, for supporting what the United States is undertaking, but with reservations. And their contempt for the behavior of Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, is beyond belief. Some of the language I've heard reported directly from personal conversations from some people in Britain, absolutely would shock Americans.
Germany still thinks of itself as an occupied country. They will not go against, at least up to now, the Anglo-Americans. They've been twice defeated and twice occupied by foreign powers, and they're a little bit shy about bucking the Atlantic powers.
In Italy, the Italian government is a little more free-spoken; not quite as free-spoken as some of the British press, but more so.
Russia is extremely quiet, because the government of Russia is cooperating with the United States, with President Bush, but they don't see much good coming out of the way things are going. That is, when it comes to dealing with the Taliban, they probably estimate that a lot of mistakes will be made. A former commander of the Soviet forces in Afghanistan, the last one, General Gromov, had some very strong words to say about this is a very foolish approach to what's being done there. It's not the way to approach it, and Russian experience should have taught the Americans to do better in that country.
Others are just being quiet, but they're very concerned. While supporting the opposition to Osama bin Laden and opposition to the Taliban government, and sympathy with that, and desire for cooperation with the United States, they are grimly concerned that this thing is going to backfire against the United States, and they don't really want that to happen.
So, that's some of the differentiation.
In the United States, I think that you'll find there's a lot of criticism on the streets, privately, if you talk to people. It's in the press that you get a reading on the American people which I think is not fair to the American people. When they're challenged, as you know in our society, they tend to say what they think they're expected to be overheard saying, not what they think. And then, when you challenge them privately, personally, without screaming at them, but just challenge them, you tend to get a different response. They're much more thoughtful. I think that Americans are much more thoughtful than might appear to be the case on the surface. They're worried.
Stockwell: Well, we're already getting anti-war demonstrations.
LaRouche: Yes, but that's natural. But I don't think that's quite yet mainstream. I think the mainstream is the American who may not be wearing an American flag, may have taken off the yellow ribbon a few years ago, but he's thoughtful, or she's thoughtful, and they're saying, "I don't understand this, it's terrible, I've got to support my country, but I don't understand it."
Stockwell: Exactly. So, we see this profusion of flag display going on, on automobiles and windows. People who, to some degree, haven't even voted for the last ten years, are now suddenly putting flags all over the place. But back to this discussion of the European situation. They're closer to what's going on than we are, of course. We still have this isolationist: "Well, it's their problem, it's over there, we don't need to worry about this kind of stuff."
LaRouche: Exactly. For example, Europe is extremely upset about this Middle East situation. No German, and no German politician, will criticize Israel. But, they are actually in a state of anxiety about what the Sharon government and the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] is doing. And every Israeli leader, such as Shimon Peres, for example, of the Labor Party, who's in the government, or other critic of the Israeli policy, among Israelis, will receive a fairly open hearing in Germany. This is the case where the German says, "Okay, this is an Israeli speaking, and therefore, we Germans are allowed to share their concern," but they will not attack Israel. But, they do respond to the fact, and they are concerned about this. They're concerned about the Middle East generally.
After all, remember, Western Europe's market is largely the Mediterranean region, it's Africa, and it's Asia in general. That's where the big market is for Europe, apart from their trade across the Atlantic. And therefore, they're looking at a situation in which a collapse, or disruption of Eurasia at a time when all of Western Europe is bankrupt, that is, all these economies are collapsing—there's no prosperous economy anywhere. And so, therefore, they're very concerned. And they express that in these indirect ways.
But I say, in the case of the British—you'll get privately from some Russians—but from the British establishment people, you'll get the most explicit, to-the-point criticism of the folly of what's happening, what the United States' policy is now, how foolish it is, particularly the Blair version of it.
Stockwell: They're brutal! They go a lot further in the British press—I've seen it in The Times and the daily Sun in the stuff I've read on the Internet—and brutal is probably not the right word; it's worse than that—describing their leaders of state, as opposed to what the American press will do, regarding our leaders of state.
LaRouche: There's general contempt for Blair, and the Blair government, in the British Establishment. If there had been an opposition party, with a name, it wouldn't have taken much to beat Blair.
Stockwell: Just this last May.
LaRouche: Yes, right. That's the problem. But what their concern is, and their rage, is they're saying, "This is idiotic! This is not the way you do things! You don't tell lies like this, in order to get a war going, just because you want to get it going." And the British also remember, the Establishment does, these guys have four generations, five generations, they know this area; the Middle East is the playground of Britain. The Asian subcontinent, Afghanistan in Central Asia, are the playground of British imperialism, the British Empire, for years. They know a few things about this area. And they know that what Washington is doing, based on the psychological pressure on the White House, and the psychological pressure by people like Wolfowitz's backers, Richard Perle, and people like that, they known that this is. And they're saying, "This is insane! We hope that Bush will stand up to these guys and will not capitulate to pressures from people like Richard Perle and company."
Stockwell: I think if you went to the average Palestinian, they would agree, and admit, that they could live together in peace with the Jews. And I think if you went to the average Jew in Israel, they could live together in peace with the average Palestinian. And you could take that a lot further, not just that immediate area. You would find that, even though there are some differences among sects within the Moslem faith, and the Hindus to the far East, or the Christian element to the far West, as far as the Islamic world is concerned, most people are like they are over here. They just want to be left alone, they want to be able to live in peace, and provide some kind of an inheritance for their children and their children's children.
But there's a faction on this planet, that sees mankind as another animal to be husbanded, and completely disavows, not necessarily the existence of God, but at least the immediacy of God's relationship to man. How do you see that, Lyndon? What does it really boil down to? Man's destiny on this planet as a child of God, and our relationship to that God.
LaRouche: First of all, when we're talking about God, we're talking about a concept which is generally limited to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, or at least traditional aspects of Judaism; specifically, the reform Jewish tendency of Moses Mendelssohn and company, during the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, before Hitler. So, there's a certain commonality there, a certain ecumenical commonality. This is expressed, for example, by the relationship of the President of Iran, in speaking in Berlin, before his recent reelection, about a dialogue of cultures. You have the efforts of the present Pope, John Paul II, going to Kazakhstan, stopping in Armenia, and so forth, with the consistent emphasis on an ecumenical approach, not some kind of a pantheistic Roman Empire, all-the-religions-get-together kind of nonsense. No, there is a real current here.
Now, the question is: What do we mean by God? Obviously, did anyone ever shake God's hand? Well, except in the case of Christ, and those who knew him personally, one wouldn't say that one had shaken God's hand. One does not have a personal relationship with God in that sense. Certainly not a sensible one. What do we mean then? We mean exactly what the first book of Moses, the first chapter of Genesis says, man and woman made equally in the image of the Creator of this universe.
What do we mean by "image of the Creator?" Well, that means some quality of man, man and woman, which is different than any animal. That man is not a product of animal life. Man has many of the attributes of animal life, but he's not an animal. What's the difference? No animal ever made and communicated and validated experimentally validatable discovery of a universal physical principle. Only man has done that. Only man can communicate such discoveries to his fellow man, by replicating, inducing them to replicate the same discovery that he or she made.
By this means, and only this means, our species has been able to increase its power in and over the universe, reflected in a higher standard of living, all the things that go with that. That man's power over the universe, though gradual and slow, is nonetheless efficient, just as life, and it's taking over the abiotic planet, over billions of years, to create a biosphere, our oceans, our atmosphere, our soils, our sediments, and so forth—all the things that life depends upon—were created by living processes. Slowly, over billions of years. Human life, cognition, the discovery of ideas, takes over more and more power in the universe, gradually, but very efficiently and persistently.
And thus, we can say that we see in this ability of man, this ability to make those kinds of discoveries, and implement them, and show the power, the efficiency of these discoveries, in man's relationship to nature, that man has a quality which is distinct from that of the animal, a quality which is not to be found as rooted in non-living processes. That is, you'll never get an idea from a machine. You'll never get life from a machine. You get life from life, and cognition from cognitive beings.
And thus, we say, in a sense, that is the where the idea of God comes from. It's a reflection, when you look into the eyes of another person, in terms of a cognitive experience of ideas, you see the image of God is reflected in the exchange of eyes, because of knowing what's going on in the mind behind.
Now, this has a deeper meaning, too. Think about: what is our power as a culture. All the things that we have, that we know, we take for granted, that have been transmitted to us by thousands of years, millions of years, of culture. These things have been transmitted to us. These all represent discoveries of universal physical principles—either principles of abiotic systems, or living processes, or cognition itself. And it's these things that give us our power, today, in the universe, and over the area around which we live.
What is this? How do we get this transmission of these ideas? Well, we have to exchange these ideas with people like, say, the ancient Archimedes, or other people who lived thousands of years before, or hundreds of years before, or languages whose roots were developed by mankind, tens of thousands of years or longer ago. So, we have a relationship to the past, not in terms of our senses, but in terms of the transmission of these ideas, to us, to our generation, on which our life depends. And presumably, we're going to add something to this store of knowledge, and pass it on to future generations.
So, we have a sense of ourselves as: Yes, we're mortal, we're like animals, we're mortal, we're born, we're going to die. But what does that mean? Because, since the ideas that we receive, the ideas we transmit, the ideas we generate, connect the distant past and the distant future, ideas which are important in shaping not only the condition of man in the universe, but the universe itself.
Therefore, we are at the same time, immortal as well as mortal. We're immortal in the sense of the immortality of this power. And we recognize that, in this phenomenon, in this characteristic, which has sometimes been called by theologians, the simultaneity of eternity, that we see a reflection in ourselves of the image of God. And, therefore, we know that.
The idea of Christ is the image of God's child coming to us, to awaken in us this quality, this perception of ourselves, and to transmit that message to coming generations. And to transmit that attitude, not only to convert people to Christianity, but to transmit that attitude concerning man, man's nature, and God, to other people, whether they're Christians or not. And that becomes a functionally essential part.
How can someone die for their nation? How can someone put their life on the line for humanity? Unless they think that their living, and their willingness to put their life at risk, is worth it, is in their self-interest. Because it's something they have to do, to give lasting meaning to their having lived. That's where true courage comes from. I think that's where true morality comes from. If you don't have that kind of courage, you don't have it.
So, those of us who do have that sense, of what immortality really is, our function is to try to transmit and awaken that in many of our fellow beings, who don't quite have that view. It's what a great commander does, a military commander does in war, is to awaken in the troops, for whom he's responsible, to waken a sense of their identity, as something which is worth putting life at risk for. Or anyone who does a courageous act.
For example, some of the firemen going into that building in New York City: They're putting themselves on the line. They're expressing the meaning of their life, by putting it at risk for the purpose of doing good. That's where we've lost a lot of it, in the counterculture, in the degeneration of our culture over the past 35 years in particular, even longer.
In my experience of life, this is the essence of the point on which the moral degeneration of our nation and its people has turned. We've gotten away from that sense.
I think a lot of people who consider themselves religious make a mistake of just trying to say it's a matter of blind faith, that they believe certain words from the Bible. To me, that's a mistake, because that's something you've learned, it's not something you know.
Stockwell: Then, can you experience God?
LaRouche: I think so. I do. But in this way, not in some fantastic way, some mythical way. You find in yourself a passion to do good, and you recognize that. You know, the wonderful thing about Kepler was, and I've pointed this out to many people many times, about his use of the word "intention," in describing the characteristics of the planetary observations which led him to the discovery and definition of the principle of gravitation. He described it as an intention of the planet, which could not be explained by statistical study of the behavior of the planet. Intention, which is another word for passion.
One of the great sterilities in education of mathematicians—a mathematician is a person who goes to the blackboard who gives you the opinion of the dead, because he describes things, on the blackboard, in which there is no passion.
Stockwell: That's the sum total of education in America today.
LaRouche: That's right. That's what wrong with it. There's no passion. The universe is full of passion. You know, what we call universal physical principles, or the principle of life. You've seen it. You've seen life expressing its struggle to express itself, as distinct from dead matter. Intention. Passion. And we call it passion. Kepler calls it intention. We call it objectively, physical principle.
Or take a great musical composition. What's the quality of it? The dead notes on the score? Or is it the intention which is expressed by the composer, which the performer grasps, and conveys to an audience. Intention.
So, when we are doing good, and know what is truthful and good, we experience a certain kind of joy, a very special kind of joy. And those of us who think about it, and think about what the Christian experience is, call that the sensibility of the presence of God.
Stockwell: When you see what's happened in our culture, this lack of passion, this lack of intention, being replaced by something more like, "Well, what's in it for me?" "What can I get out of this?" "What feels good?" "What do I want to do at the moment that will get me out of the pain that I'm in, emotional, physical or otherwise?"—rather than that expression of that passion of life, that compels us to be our brother's keeper, without compulsory means; to take care of one another not because we have to, but because we see in that the true meaning of a passionate life, that we would in fact—something we saw much more so in World War II than we probably would see today, that would lead us to the ultimate sacrifice of laying down one's life for another.
LaRouche: The problem here is, it's a pervasive corruption of society, which is called, in philosophical terms, it's called existentialism. It's the existentialism of Immanuel Kant, of Karl Jaspers, of that Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, or of Heidegger's follower, Jean-Paul Sartre. The Nietzchean view of life. The H.G. Wells view of life.
What people say today is, there is no truth. They say, there is only opinion. For example, Al Gore would insist upon that, in his rather savage attack on the Prime Minister of Malaysia some years back, back in 1998, he attacked him—defended the interaction of many opinions, billions of little opinions, expressed about money—i.e. George Soros and company, on the exchanges. And Mahathir, by interfering with what Gore called free trade, was interfering with this opinion, as opposed to some kind of coherent moral intention. I pick on Al because he's typical; he's perfectly justified, he deserves it. But he's only typical of the existentialist view which we know as the attitudes of Theodor Adorno, or Hannah Arendt, or Hannah Arendt's boyfriend there, the Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger. The existential view, which says, we don't know anything. We only have opinions. And if this kind of decortication, which has become a characteristic of the society, as we went from pragmatism to outright existentialism, from William James and John Dewey, to outright existentialism—this is the moral degeneracy of America, which takes over the pulpit.
I sometimes watch some of these Bible-thumpers on the television screen. I see existentialism. I see an absolutely profound immorality, expressed in just exactly this way. It's a lot of noise, and fuss, but no substance to it. Because people have lost of sense of truthfulness, that we must find the truth, and we must find something which is not considered truthful because the news media says it's truthful, or because a textbook, or some multiple-choice questionaire says it's truthful, but because we know it's truthful in that way.
Stockwell: You served in World War II, and you now—for my audience's benefit—you're knocking on 80, aren't you?
LaRouche: Yeah, sure!
Stockwell: You're almost there.
LaRouche: Well, I expect to do a lot better. To the great dissatisfaction of Henry Kissinger, who's two years younger than I am, I'm in much better health than he is, especially mental health.
Stockwell: Well, you have some experiences from the depression, and the mind-set of Americans back then. And you served in World War II, I believe you were in India?
LaRouche: I was in India, Burma—
Stockwell: And then you have had various political and economics, and persuasions since then, as you've kind of discovered the meaning of your own existence. What do you see as a typical American mind-set today? As opposed to what it was, say, just prior to World War II?
I mean, we're sitting here virtually on a powderkeg. We could be—World War III may already have started, and we don't know it. Or, it could speed up here quickly in the next few months, where we could say, we are now officially in World War III. Now, hat I'm looking for is some kind of a comparative observation here, between the mindset of the typical American—1938 to 1941—as opposed to right now.
LaRouche: Well, I think the change was 1933, with Roosevelt. We were terrible, generally, from the 1920s. This was the Flapper Era. We had an immorality which was pervasive in the 1920s—particularly, I can report on the late 1920s, where I was in a position to record my observations—to the present time. Which is comparable, probably not as bad, as now, but comparable to it.
We have degenerated greatly. I'm reminded of the famous writing of Cotton Mather, writing at the beginning of the 18th Century—Cotton Mather, one of the great figures of New England—saying we have shrunk until we are almost nothing. We had shrunk till we were almost nothing in the 1920s, and we have shrunk until we are almost less than nothing, today. That's the difference, particularly the last 35-odd years.
What happened, essentially, was, that when Roosevelt came along, I don't how brilliant he was. He was obviously very intelligent, very well educated. He was a true advocate of the American tradition, the American intellectual tradition—which came from his great-great-grandfather, who was a collaborator of Hamilton. But, he inspired the American people at a time they needed inspiration. He inspired it first, when he spoke in his campaign for the Presidency in West Virginia—the "forgotten man." And suddenly people who had gone grey, with the effects of depression, picked up their eyes, and said, "Someone cares." Then he, entering the Presidency, he spoke of "We have nothing to fear as much as fear itself." And that was his policy. So that, the change was, that an American who was stricken by the fear of the depression and its effects, confident that there was some hope—it was often a begrudging hope, but a hope that we're going to do better—and that carried forward into the war, and toward the end of the war.
I think that when Roosevelt died, we were already in a crisis. I recall vividly—I happened to be in India at that moment—and a bunch of GIs asked me to meet with them. Just an ordinary mixture of GIs, because I was some kind of figure then, in my own way. They said, "What's your opinion of the significance of the death of Franklin Roosevelt?" And I said," I'm afraid for our nation. I'm afraid for the effect of turning the government over from a great man, to a very little one." And, I was right.
And that happened. We began to degenerate.
But we didn't lose it all at once. I think the thing that really wrecked us, the turning point in our destruction, was a combination of the [Cuban] Missile Crisis, followed by the assassination of Kennedy, the entrance into this hopeless Indochina war, and so forth. These things produced a demoralization, which fed into the counterculture, and the long slide downward toward Hell, which we're been embarked upon ever since that time.
That's the way I see it. And I see that the problem is—and I see it from my childhood, even before these events—is that, children, even today, as then, do not believe in truth. Not really. Because, as I've said many times, what I recall from my parental household, and schoolmates, and so forth, from childhood, is, my parents, when company came, lied all the time. Company lied all the time. It was called polite lying. And then when the company would leave, they'd talk behind the back of the company that had just left. And having said to them on the way out, "Let's do this again. It was fun."
And that's the way my schoolmates behaved. That's the way the teachers behaved. Some not, but most did. And the fact that most of the people I knew, were willing to give up morality, for what's called public opinion. They'd try to be in step with public opinion. This corruption, this weakening of their moral stamina, opened them up to submitting to the kind of influences which have, in a sense, disoriented them.
Stockwell: Yeah, I see that, I see that same pervasive influence, in the churches today, of this polite, quiet lying. Hold on a second, I've got another traffic update here.
[traffic break]
Stockwell: My guest, Lyndon LaRouche, live from Germany on the air with me right now. And we're just kind of talking about the basic state of affairs of man today, and this demoralizing aspect that has come across us as a nation, as a people. This polite lying that you were talking about there a few moments ago, Lyn, I see that in church all the time. People who are in denial, people who are in pain, but you know, they're there because they chose to be there. We're looking for hope, here, Lyndon. No matter how desperate things get, I think even in the worst of the Dark Ages, before the Reformation began, when everybody served some higher power, and they were lucky enough just to find enough food in the dirt that day to eat—it's a miracle that mankind survived anyway, during those situations—but they, I don't think were looking for hope any more than we are today. We want some way out of this. A lot of us are looking for ways out of it, that negate the necessity of personal responsibility. We want somebody else to do it. We want somebody to come along, and turn that switch, give us that magic bullet, or shoot the magic bullet, that will somehow deliver us form our pain and our sorrow, without having to become personally responsible.
LaRouche: Sure, there's a simple answer to that.
Most people make a very simple mistake. They wonder how to take care of their self-interest, and how to make life feel good. They forget that the way you take care of your self-interest, involves two steps. Step number one, is, do good for others. Especially your nation, for people, for humanity. Step number two: Fight to make sure you have the ability to deliver that result.
In other words, our interest is our defense and development of our capacity to do the good which is our mission, that is, what we perceive to be the the special mission that we have; sometimes because of the events cast in front of us. Like, you see a terrible accident, and you're there; you never intended to be there at that time, but somebody needs help, and you're there. And you just hope you have the resources to be of some use at that time.
That's a sense of mission, in a simple way. And people have that sense about life: that you're here, it's on a short ticket—when you look at history, and particularly if you study history. And therefore what's important? You say, I'm going to live and I'm going to die. I don't expect to die soon, but we all will, you know. And therefore, the question is: What is my interest if I'm going to die, and I'm not going to take anything with me, except what I leave behind? That is, what I give. And to find that, doing that, is one interest.
Like, I take a certain amount of risk. People tell me I take a lot of risk in what I say sometimes. So what? Someone has to say it. It's my mission, and I'm just happy to have the means to be able to do some of that. I wish I could do more. But that keeps me fairly happy, and optimistic, even in some fairly bad situations. And I think that what people lack, is they lack a sense of mission, and sometimes I think, it's they lack their friends and neighbors don't accept the fact that maybe, they have a mission in life. I mean, there's something they should do! Something to do to make life better, in some little way, or some way, more important way. And that performing that mission—
A teacher in a school. A very important function, if they do it well. A teacher performs a precious function for these children. And if a teacher does it well, the children will become better people, as a result of that work. And the teacher, therefore, will fight, with the educational system, to give an honest education, according to need, to these children. And that will give the teacher the sense of satisfaction in life, that, when they die, they will have delivered something which is precious to generations yet to come.
What we deprived our people of, is both a sense of mission, and we have ridiculed, and put into disrepute, the idea that you should live with a truthful choice of a sense of mission for one's own life. It may change. But you always must have a truthful sense of a mission, which you are supposed to perform. And if you're doing it, or you're struggling to do it, you feel pretty optimistic about yourself, and living. And you have the strength to tell the truth.
Stockwell: Happiness will flow from that. Intention will flow from that.
LaRouche: People looking for someone to make them happy, when the point is, they should make themselves happy. And sometimes, often, the solution to make oneself happy, is to do something good for others.
Stockwell: In a sense that extends just beyond just planning your little Disney vacation for the family and the kids.
LaRouche: [Laughs] You know, as you probably have noted, that the most dangerous time in life for working people, is sometimes when they go on vacation. Not because of accidents, as much, as heart attacks and similar things tend to hit them, when they go on vacation. I observed this years ago. Older people approach retirement age, who have been hard-working men, and so forth, most of their life, in some skill or something, and you'd hear a year or two after their retirement, they'd die. And you'd sense that somehow their mission in life had been taken away from them, and that this was a dangerous time for them.
Stockwell: I wonder. Yes. I have patients in my clinic that I take care of, who retired either from the military, or some kind of government thing, 10, 15, 20 years ago, but then got into business for themselves. And they had the retirement pension stuff coming in. But on top of that, they went out and built a business, and are some of the happiest, healthiest people I've ever run across.
LaRouche: Absolutely.
Stockwell: And they're in their 70s, and their 80s.
LaRouche: Why not?
Stockwell: Well, we're going to go right now to the Wall Street Journal report for just a few moments, and then we'll come back, and finish with my guest, Lyndon LaRouche, live from Germany today.
[break]
Stockwell: All right. We're back. We're back with Lyndon LaRouche, live from Germany.
In the few moments that we have left here, Lyndon, you know I was thinking about, you were mentioning a sense of mission, and such. George Washington had a clear sense of mission. Abraham Lincoln, JFK. But these characters are almost mythical to the average guy on the street. How does one average Mr. or Mrs. American, develop a sense of mission, regardless of their age at this point, who may have felt that somewhere they missed the boat, when the missions were passed out?
LaRouche: Well, they have to find in themselves, something of value. I think a lot of people—you've probably seen this business with retired people—the retirement shock, which hits fairly soon in most people, after they retire. I've watched it. I've said, never retire, it'll kill you. Retirement is deadly.
Because, not only do they—their cardiovascular activity levels go haywire. When they were leading a working life, organized and so forth, they probably were living a healthier life in a sense of the way they digested food, and moved around, and so forth. But they lost a sense of purpose in living. First, there was the sense of freedom from work: They could do this, they could go here, they could go there, and so forth. But then, that didn't work anymore. Life became less interesting. A little excitement, titillation here and there, but the value of it—they just sensed that this was not as important any more. That their life wasn't that important any more.
And I saw, I've seen people give up their fragile grip on life, simply because it wasn't fun any more. Living wasn't fun any more.
When a crisis comes along, and I happen to see in my peculiar way of living, I've seen people come alive because they had a sense of mission. We're now going into the worst imaginable crisis—economic and related crisis—in which younger people, generally, don't know what it was like back then. They don't know what it was like, when lessons were embedded in history, which have to be turned to now to find models, examples, to show what we could do. In which people who are older, in particular, become extremely valuable now, because they did have an experience, which, if they think about it, and they think about the present situation, and see what the nature of the crisis is—if you discuss with them, how did we get into, 35 years ago and so on, how did we make the mistakes which have led to the destruction now? Why is it we had an economy that worked, with all its faults, between 1945 and 1963, '64, and an economy which has been going down the road to Hell, step by step, from 1966 on, to the present time. What mistake did we make? What's wrong? What lessons can we draw from comparing these two periods of American history, and then with periods before them?
Well, I think people of my generation, and some younger, may have some valuable insight into that. And therefore, they may have a very important political role to play, as well as a social role, or discussing with members of their own family and friends, in trying to get an appreciation of what is happening to this nation. They might find in that, a sense that, they have some knowledge, some skill, which may be valuable in contributing to mobilizing our people, as a people, to put this nation back on the right pathway toward getting out of this mess before us.
Stockwell: Well, I've got two minutes of this interview here, to kind of wrap things up. I would really like to develop this a lot further, this kind of an idea. But, you are known as an economist, and as a political figure, who has been held down extensively, within your own country; but welcomed immensely, and graciously, by leaders of state of other countries, and their various financial interests, who are very enamored with this idea of the New Bretton Woods. This idea of being able to put the development of productive and mental capabilities back on track. Without a mission, with a sense of hope and purpose, without intention, without recognizing our cognition as something that separates us from the animals, and presents us right before the throne of grace, these things would seem almost an impossible, an impossible event.
Ladies and gentlemen, I would invite you to read some of Mr. LaRouche's writings in this regard. You will find something here that is much deeper, and a greater expanse of thinking, and reasoning, than can just be simplified to a kind of "we, against the oligarchy" kind of mentality.
I want to thank you, Lyndon, very much for the time you've taken to do this, and the expense that's involved.
LaRouche: Oh, it's good to be with you, Jack.
Stockwell: Greatly appreciate this, and it was very meaningful for me, it's very meaningful for a lot of my listeners as well. I'm going to free you up, set you loose, and let you go, and hopefully we can do this again, before much longer.
LaRouche: Yes, absolutely.
Stockwell: In a situation where we have a much more clear intention in our own minds. That's my purpose on this show, is to try to bring some intention.
Thanks a lot, Lyndon, we'll talk to you later.
LaRouche: Thank you.
