Do You Want a Future? Learn How
To Solve the Crisis of Humanity
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
This is Presidential pre-candidate Lyndon LaRouche's opening presentation to 100 young volunteers at the Nov. 2-3, 2002 East Coast Youth Cadre School, held in Pennsylvania.We're in a very interesting period right now. The entire system is disintegrating. There are two things we should consider: in general, the nature of the disintegration; what's wrong with your parents' generation, as such, which is the same thing: disintegration; and, what is the crucial aspect that your role has to be, in your generation, in order to fix this world mess. The role of leadership.
And, the latter part will be something you know something about, because I've been emphasizing it, but most people don't know anything about leadership. You see what we elect in government, you realize that the voters in this country don't know what leadership is. If they were out picking a bride, you don't know what they'd marry! They just don't know what anything is. I saw some mules out here—they'd probably be eligible in certain tastes of some of these voters.
But anyway, we're not in cyclical crisis. The idiots today are talking about: "Is this a depression, like the 1929-33 Depression?" Well, it ain't, buddy! The 1929-33 Depression was of the character of a cyclical depression; that is, it was built in to the way the system functions, under the influence of the British System, or the Adam Smith system, as it's sometimes called; or the Free-Trade system. Any such system operating upon European standards of economy—not American, but European standards of economy, especially under the influence of the Free-Trade system—will have inherently in it, business cycles. The business cycle is caused by the character of Central Banking systems, or something that imitates a Central Banking system.
Now, in the past, most of these cycles have been cycles of Boom and Bust. The boom was partly absolute growth, real growth, and the bust was largely a financial growth, which caused an economic collapse. But, because of the political impact—and the partial bankruptcy of the system, and the political impact—recovery efforts were made sooner or later. So the system did not collapse; it went into a relative collapse, but then came back. And that's the characteristic of the late 18th Century, through the 19th Century, and 20th Century.
The American System vs. the Imperial System
What happened was—and I've explained this—what happened about 1960-65, was the character of the system was changed. Now, the United States, in particular—apart from the influence of slavery and a few things like that,—the U.S. economic system was a productive system. The leadership of the United States aimed at creating a national economy. We called it a Federal Republic. George Washington did not like to use the term "Federal Republic." This is not a confederation of states; it is a unified nation. And the concept of Manifest Destiny, by people like John Quincy Adams, who was one time Secretary of State, President, and so forth; and by James Blaine, a famous diplomat; the idea of Manifest Destiny was this: We were going to free ourselves, as a nation, from the diseases of Europe, which meant the legacy of the feudal system, including the institution of Monarchy, and the institution of oligarchical or noble classes. We were to be a class-free society, politically, with elected leaders, who would represent a republic, in the sense of Solon or Plato.
That was the ideal. They couldn't do this in Europe, because Europe had too much baggage. It had the baggage of a Venetian system, which was the Anglo-Dutch liberal system, which was inherently an imperialistic maritime system, based on looting. The British System was always an imperial system. The Dutch System was always an imperial system, which depended upon looting other parts of the world, to sustain itself, as well as looting people in their own countries, as the poor who were looted to sustain the wealthy.
Our objective was not to fall into that trap. Our objective was to have a true nation, a true republic, with the best ideas of Europe, but without the diseases. We were not able to do that, because of the French Revolution. The failure of Lafayette and Bailly to succeed in establishing a constitutional Monarchy in the late Spring of 1789, and the King's rejection of the proposed constitution, led to a situation in which the British Monarchy, through the British Foreign Office, organized a series of coups inside France. The first was July 14, 1789. This was the beginning of fascism, or modern fascism. Many French people who are foolish admire and celebrate July 14, 1789. Really intelligent and moral French people deplore the occasion. It was a fraud run by two British agents: the Duke of Orléans, who was a British agent, and his accomplice, another British agent, Jacques Necker. And the two of them ran this operation. The purpose of the operation was to prevent the organization of a true Republic of the type that Bailly and Lafayette had attempted to establish as a constitutional Monarchy.
This went from bad to worse. There were good elements in the process, such as the work of Lazare Carnot, who, in a period of about two years, saved France from total destruction, as a military-political leader, one of the developers of the modern policy of strategic defense, and so forth.
But, most predominantly—You had a man who was called a "piece of shit in a silk stocking": Talleyrand. Even Napoleon called him that. And that was an insult to silk stockings [laughter]. You had the police chief, Fouché—these characters were real scoundrels. What this did—since the United States had been able to establish itself as a republic, independent republic, with the aid of our allies in France and elsewhere—the collapse of France as an ally, from its own internal destruction, in the unleashing of insanity organized by the British Foreign Office, in the form of first, Orléans, Necker, Barras, and then, after that, the famous Jacobin Terror. And, following the Jacobin Terror, the first modern fascist state, the Napoleonic state, modelled upon Caesarism, as a model, and on Roman law, as the French Code Napoleon, to the present day. The is a Roman, Romantic, anti-republican system of law.
So therefore, France, with all its weaknesses, had been a principal ally of the United States, with complications, suddenly ceased to exist, and the United States was faced with enemies in Britain, among the Dutch, who were a more complicated business, but the Anglo-Dutch oligarchical system, and the Hapsburgs, who were inherently evil. So we were faced with that.
Treason Against the American System
Very early in the Republic, under the Constitution, we had troubles. The troubles were largely organized by British or French agents, inside the United States. This caused a spread of populism, such as the Whiskey Rebellion, which was largely organized with French help. Then you had the Essex Junto, from up in Massachusetts—these were the people who became, very soon, in the 1790s, became leading drug pushers, drug traders, working for the British East India Company. These guys were traitors to the United States from before the existence of the United States. And they remain such today.
You had phenomena like Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr was not only a traitor, contrary to all rumors; he was specifically an agent of Jeremy Bentham, who was head of the secret committee of the British Foreign Office. This was a secret committee which organized the French Revolution, including the affairs of the Bastille and the Jacobin Terror. They sought to organize that in our country. The British tried to play the French conflict with the United States to the advantage of the British, by pressing the United States to say, "Come to protection of a treaty with England to help protect you against the evil coming out of France."
So the United States was torn apart during the 1790s. People who had been leaders in the founding of the Republic, went crazy. Jefferson went absolutely crazy and degenerate! He wasn't a traitor, but he became almost a French agent by his own folly, and his support of populism. On the other side, you had the organization of the riots, later on. So, populism became the destructive force inside the United States, which was able to flourish, because of the collapse of the authority of the government, because of our weakness in respect to foreign powers, and because of the lack of leadership, a lack of leadership produced largely by the demoralization of people who had been leading figures in the American Revolution.
But nonetheless, our intent always was: to free ourselves from the European system! Not from European culture, but from the European system, typified by the Anglo-Dutch liberals, the Venetians, the Hapsburgs, the Spanish. The Spanish were always our enemy, up through the middle and late part of the last century. The slave trade in the United States in the 19th Century was run, after the Napoleonic Wars, by the Spanish Monarchy on a franchise from the British government. And the British protected the Spanish Monarchy. And it was the Spanish Monarchy that did that. It was the Spanish Monarchy that collaborated with the French, including Napoleon "the Turd," the nephew of Napoleon I, another fascist. And this fascist Napoleonic tradition in France allied with Britain, and allied with the Spanish pigs, people who organized support for the Confederacy, and who organized the takeover of Mexico, in an actual invasion and occupation, by putting a Hapsburg pig on the throne of Mexico.
And this has been the problem. And the Spanish influence in the Americas, in terms of the Spanish Monarchy, has been predominantly negative. The French influence has been corrupt, partly by intention, but partly because of the fascist tradition embedded in France in the aftermath of the Jacobin Terror and the establishment of the Napoleonic tyranny, which is a Caesarean tyranny. And Napoleon I was the forerunner of Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. There's no difference between these two sets: the same thing. Populism in the United States has always been the basis for right-wing movements and fascism. Yes, you had right-wing forces, you called them, or the oligarchical or wealthy forces. But the mass base, on which the Confederacy depended, on which every kind of tendency toward fascism in the United States occurred, was always based on populism, the so-called mass cult of popular opinion, of individual popular opinion: Take care of your local interests; take care of your neighborhood, your family, and the short-term interests; don't become involved in defending your country.
American Fascism: Example of the Moonies
And it was that corruption which led, as now, to a fascist tendency in the United States. The Department of Justice is practically a fascist institution. Not only is the head of the Department of Justice, the Attorney General, a fascist, and an idiot as well; but he's a religious nut, of a very specific type.
I'll give you an example: the cast of the Moonies.
The Moonies are not a religion. They are a pro-Satanic, sex-and-money cult. They are the hard core of the organized, mass-based right wing in the United States. Falwell is a Moonie asset. Robertson is a Moonie asset. Most of the kooky, quirky types of religion, of all types, in the United States, are owned by the Moonies! If you've got a nut in your family, that's probably a secret Moonie!
Imagine an idea of religion—get the picture. Just take the theology of Moon. What is Moon's theology? [laughter] I hate to tell you, but you've got to know. Moon has a criminal history. He was arrested in Korea for running a sex cult. That is, he was converting the female parishioners by taking them to bed. And if you joined his church, you had to go to bed with him. Now, this is when he was younger; I don't know what he does now. But he was arrested and imprisoned for this practice, of taking young girls, seducing them into the church, and taking them into bed; and doing it on a large scale. So, finally, the Korean government imprisoned him for this practice, of which he was guilty.
He then went forward, with support from within the United States, and so forth, to become an international religious organization, tied to an organization called Moral Rearmament—a British operation—a peace movement, whose purpose was, to bring fascist dictatorship and war throughout the planet. It's a peace movement! Turn everything into pieces, eh?
What they run in the United States, is this doctrine. The doctrine is very simple. It's a rationalization—it's not new—it's known from the First Century A.D., as the original anti-Christian Gnostic cult; the original Gnostics. Their doctrine was, either that Christ wasn't crucified, and that he married Mary Magdalene and went off and began breeding in Tibet, or someplace like that, in Central Asia; or, that he got himself crucified—which is Moon's theory—before he made children; and therefore, he failed in his mission. Moon says now, "I am the successor to Christ. I made a lot of babies; and I didn't get crucified!"
And that's the basis of the Moon cult. You join the Moon cult; you become a part of their religious group; by virtue of sex, you become part of the chosen people. And you're gonna get taken care of. You don't believe it? Moon comes across with the money, the gold watches, and other things to prove it! He's taking care of ya! He's buying your parson. He's buying your politician. And he's a right-wing fanatic.
What's he part of? He's a part of WACL. WACL was organized by the Moon sect—the World Anti-Communist League. WACL is tied to the Ku Klux Klan organizations throughout the southern states. This is Moon! This was CAUSA. This is Oliver North. This is Iran-Contra.
What does this mean? I described this for one reason: To point out to you, how degenerate our people have become; because the spread of cults—such as the cult represented by that lunatic who is Attorney General, and the lunatics of his own kind which he's bringing into the Justice Department; the lunatics like the spread of the Moonies, taking over one part after another of leaders of organizations of different constituencies—could only be possible if there were a deep and spreading moral and intellectual degeneracy in the population in general.
FDR Saved the United States from Fascism
That's part of your problem. The other part of the problem is this. Franklin Roosevelt saved the United States from Hell, and much of the world besides. Because what had happened with the assassination of President McKinley in 1901—which is a successful assassination in favor of the Vice President, Teddy Roosevelt, whose uncle, and the guy who had trained him and sponsored his career, was the chief of intelligence for the Confederacy during the Civil War; so Teddy Roosevelt was a son of the Confederacy, and he was a son of something else, too. His chief successor, whom he brought into the Presidency by the Bull Moose campaign, was Woodrow Wilson, who reorganized the relaunching of the Ku Klux Klan, officially, from the White House, as President of the United States! He was a fanatic for the Confederacy.
Then you had Coolidge, who came in as a President by a series of events during the 1920s. So in the period from 1901 until 1932, the United States was dominated, under most Presidencies, by treasonous, Confederate-related fascists, who set out with the British to build a new world system, a new world empire, under which the oligarchy of English-speaking nations would rule the world as a permanent empire of the world as a whole. That was the ideology.
This fell afoul of the 1929-33 Depression. They wanted to have a coup in the United States, of the type they—the British—organized in Germany, putting Hitler into power. We had an attempted military coup organized by Wall Street in the United States, with the intent of killing Roosevelt and preventing his election from becoming certified. This was presented in detail, in a report to the Congress, by a top Marine general, who described in detail what had been done in planning this plot, of a military coup in the United States, in the 1932-33 period—to bring to power in the United States, a fascist movement comparable to that of Hitler in Germany.
Roosevelt saved the United States from that. Roosevelt reversed the policies which had moved in that direction, and revived the American Tradition. That did not mean he solved every problem. It meant he changed the direction in which things were going. And then he died, prematurely, though of natural causes, predominantly; because he'd had polio; and even though he'd had polio as an adult, nonetheless, poliomyelitis is a crippling disease which does shorten the life-expectancy of anybody who suffers from it. So even though he was, relative to me, a young man, he was already aged and dying of overwork and old age, at the time he was elected President for the fourth term.
The Democratic Convention of 1944
The enemy knew that. So in 1944, what they did was they moved in and said, "Roosevelt's going to die. Now we can get rid of him." Now, what was the significance of that—1944? In Summer 1944, Democratic Party nominating convention; what was the significance? In June of 1944, the allied invasion of Normandy had been successful, which meant that the Nazi regime's military potential was incurably threatened; the war was lost to Hitler. The German generals, in July of 1944, plotted a coup against Hitler. The coup failed for one reason: The British betrayed the plotters, and the plotters were foolish enough to trust their planning to the British; and the British betrayed them to Himmler and Company; and these guys were rounded up and killed. But the point is, the German generals should have acted earlier, back in 1933 and 1934, to get rid of Hitler, knowing what that represented; and didn't do it. So many of them died, in July 1944, in a belated opposition to Hitler, at the point that it was clear the war was lost. That's why they went for it. That's why Rommel went for it. The war was hopelessly lost, to Germany, with the successful breakthrough in Northern France, which totally outflanked the capability of Hitler's military forces.
So at that point, what happened to the right wing in the United States? They said, "Okay, we miscalculated. We put Hitler into power...." And they did. Harriman, and Morgan, together with the former head of the British central bank, the Bank of England, personally put Hitler into power in Germany in January of 1933, and supported him through 1934. They intended to keep the United States out of the war. It was the British who organized the America First movement, to keep us out of the war in Europe! Why? Because they were peaceful? No. Because they didn't want the United States involved in the war, the way they planned it, because if the United States were involved in the Second World War, the United States would come out of the War as the world's top power. That, the British did not want; nor the French.
So therefore, the original plan was to keep the United States out of the war which the British had planned: the Second World War. The plan was to send Hitler east to become deeply involved in a conquest of the Soviet Union; and when his troops were heavily engaged in Russia, to fall upon his rear from Britain and France, and thus wipe out all Continental power from that point on.
In the middle of the 1930s, the British discovered, lo and behold, that Edward VIII favored Adolf Hitler. This could not be tolerated any more. So they went to the United States, and said to Roosevelt, "Huh. Look what's happening to us!" And Roosevelt, under the circumstances, agreed. From 1936 on, the United States was prepared for war. A war caused by Hitler, immediately—the threat of Hitler was real, it had to be stopped—but the war had been organized by the British and French, and the group we call the American Tories inside the United States. They came to Roosevelt, and said, "Bail us out." And he said, "I have to. Despite you bastards, I'm going to bail you out, for the sake of humanity."
So at that point, he set into motion war plans, consistent with his attempts to build up the infrastructure of the country earlier. So that when we went into war, in 1939-1940, we were prepared conceptually for the kind of logistical victory we accomplished in that war.
But in the Summer of 1944, after Roosevelt had saved the world from Hitler, and now that Hitler was inevitably defeated, these right-wingers said—together with Churchill and his like—"We don't want this guy any more! And we don't want a Vice President who would continue his policies if he died in office." That was to get Henry Wallace, at that point the Vice President. So they intervened massively into the Democratic Party convention, in the Summer of 1944, to put a pig in as Vice President, Harry Truman—he was a real pig, believe me; you just don't know him as well as I do. I was in Asia at the time. I could smell him all the way from Asia. I knew what species he was. The poor cousin of the hippopotamus.
The Utopian Policy
So what happened was, when the war had been won—and the war was won, totally, by June of 1945. Japan was hopelessly defeated. MacArthur and his staff had reported that. There was never a necessary intention to invade Japan. Japan was defeated. The Emperor of Japan had transmitted acquiescence to the President of the United States—earlier, under Roosevelt—to the conditions of peace which were actually enforced under MacArthur in the post-war period. So there was no reason to bomb Japan. There was no reason for the fire-bombing of Tokyo, which was against civilian populations—a continuation of the same thing that was done by "Bomber" Harris in Europe. No need for it, no military reason. This was mass murder, with nuclear weapons, against the civilian populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Deliberate. Ordered by—Harry Truman; under the influence of Stimson and these other right-wingers.
Why did they do it? Why do you drop nuclear weapons on a country that is defenseless, and on civilian populations? Why? To introduce a new policy of imperialism, globally. The policy was that of H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell. It was to say, "We must get rid of what the United States represents, as a republic, by creating an empire." By destroying those things inside the United States, and its policy of Manifest Destiny, which is a threat to these interests, centered in Europe, and their sympathizers among the right-wing American Tories in the United States.
This became known as the Utopian policy of Bertrand Russell and H.G. Wells. And Bertrand Russell was the man who organized the nuclear warfare—including the bombing of Japan; Bertrand Russell was the man who proposed preventive nuclear attacks on the Soviet Union, in 1946! The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 was part of Bertrand Russell's plan. Bertrand Russell personally built, top down, every bit of the structure of the command organization, politically and militarily, which ran this nuclear policy in the post-war period.
The policy of the United States under these freaks—and I say the term advisedly, you are not to confuse them with human beings—was to build on nuclear weapons to eliminate classical strategic defense; to eliminate the kind of military policies we had employed in World War II; and to go to a policy of a so-called nuclear triad: Instead of a classical strategic defense policy, to build a triad of nuclear-armed ground, sea, and air forces. The purpose of these forces was to create nuclear terror, so severe that countries would give up their sovereignty rather than resist this imperial power. That is the policy of the U.S. military faction represented by this bunch of draft dodgers who are controlling the non-existent mind of the President of the United States today!
That's their policy! The policy is not Iraq. The policy is not this, it's not that, it's not terrorism. Who do you think organized terrorism? It wasn't some bunch of Arabs! The terrorist organization they refer to was organized by the British and the United States, with the help of Israel. Those are the terrorists. You want to get rid of terrorism? Get rid of that. Does anyone propose to eliminate the nuclear terror operations of Ollie North? Or the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, who is an integral part of the Utopian apparatus behind this nuclear terror? Who is a backer of Ollie North; who funds this right-wing crap to the tune of billions of dollars a year, which he gets largely from drug money. He's one of the biggest drug-traffickers on this planet, operating with impunity from inside the United States. And that's our problem—so far.
The American Intellectual/Military Tradition
But then, they had to do something else. They had to destroy the character of the United States. That meant to them, they had to destroy that section of the U.S. population which had elected Franklin Roosevelt to four successive terms as President; the Franklin Roosevelt who was the man they feared and hated the most. Therefore, it was not enough to get rid of Franklin Roosevelt. You had to eliminate the possibility of the American people electing a new Franklin Roosevelt to continue the kind of policy that Franklin Roosevelt represented. Therefore, Truman was put in. Therefore, the nuclear weapons were dropped. And therefore, they began to destroy the morals of the American people, with the witch-hunt atmosphere of the 1940s and 1950s.
It wasn't Joe McCarthy that was the problem. It was Harry Truman. Harry Truman was the man that organized the witch-hunt. Harry Truman was the bastard.
What happened then, was—Eisenhower and MacArthur were the two leading military figures from World War II. Both had become Generals of the Army, a new rank created for them in acknowledgement of their work. MacArthur was actually a genius. Eisenhower had been trained under him, up to the grade of Major; and despite the fact that he had made a "career move" with financial interests in New York such as Bernie Baruch, Eisenhower was a competent military figure in the American Tradition. Thus, the two—Eisenhower and MacArthur—represented precisely the forces which the Bertrand Russell crowd and the imperial crowd, the so-called Utopians, had to get rid of, from the U.S. military.
Now, the U.S. military who are objecting to what poor, kooky Bush is doing today in the Middle East—like Zinni of the Marine Corps, and so on—they are not the greatest strategists the world ever developed. But most of them went through military service, as lieutenants, captains, and majors, in the Vietnam War, the Indo-China War. They knew from their experience inside that war, that that war was a bummer. There was no good reason for that war. The United States should never get in such a war, ever again. They continued in military service after the end of the war. They gained promotions as officers. They went to command school. They had all these other opportunities, through the advanced strategic studies, of military history, how do things work in warfare? And therefore, they came out of that with a pragmatic understanding, both that this was wrong, and they should never let it happen again; and, they had a sense of what we call "exit strategy." Don't get into a useless war you can't get out of. And that's what you're seeing from the U.S. military today, except for a bunch of clowns who are thrown in there just to give some spice to it.
They're against this war. The world is against this war. Asia's against the war. Europe's against the war. Most of the people of the United States are against the war, in fact. Forget the phony polls. Go out into East Podunk. The majority of people do not want to be involved in this war. They don't want to stand up in front of the press and say, "I'm opposed to the President." But they don't want any part of this war. The shift now is to more and more emphasis on the economy, not the war. We don't know what's going to happen Nov. 5; but we know this shift is now ongoing.
'By Default, the Problem Falls on Me'
So these generals, who are not the best strategists in the world, nonetheless come up with the idea of "exit strategy"; exit strategy—which is not a very good military concept. But pragmatically, it's sound. They're saying, "This does not make any sense. There is no reason to do this. Why are we doing it?" Then they say, "But the President is the President. He gives the order; we have to follow it." So those generals who are out of service—retired—who are freer to speak than those who are in serving capacities, have tended to speak out. And this is true around the world. It's a crazy idea.
Why are they doing that? It's not a concern about Iraq. They're not concerned about this problem; they're not concerned about terrorism. That's all phony, they don't care. What they're concerned about, is that the system is falling apart. You can no longer run this system under the existing institutions of representative government. Therefore, you have to do as Germany did in 1933-34—establish a dictatorship, a military-style dictatorship, not of the generals, but of people like our Chicken-hawks, our draft-dodging war-hawks. You have to create that kind of tyranny; a police-state tyranny, like an SS tyranny in Germany! to control and terrorize population into submission, which is about ready to revolt against the loss of the conditions of life, and the political rights on which they've depended up to now.
That's our crisis. The alternative would be, what? Would be to reform the system; the economic system, the financial system. And who is proposing that? [applause] Eh?
But why—and I'll get back to that later, but just to interpolate this point—there are several reasons why I'm a leader in the world today. One reason is, nobody else is. By a process of elimination, I've become a key leader. I'm sort of the Last of the Mohicans, eh? So by default, the problem falls on me.
But what's the issue? The problem is that the crisis is systemic, it's not cyclical. It is not a business, boom-bust cycle problem. It is an actual disintegration of the total system, from which there is no possible recovery! That is, the system, in its present form, could never recover; can not outlive the months immediately ahead; it's over! Could the economies continue to exist? Yes. Could nations continue to exist? Yes. Could there be a recovery from the economic depression? Yes. But could there be a recovery under the continuation of the present monetary-financial system, and the present policies of government and the present policies of the IMF?
So therefore, in order to get the world out of this financial crisis, this economic crisis, you would have to change the system. And that's not such a radical thing in many respects. Because you look at what Roosevelt did in 1933-34; and while what he did then would not be adequate for today, the same basic approach would work today; the same direction, and we would work our way out of this mess within a quarter-century, within a generation—like your coming generation, your coming adult years. We could work our way out of this mess in about a quarter-century to 30 years, worldwide. The opportunities all exist.
But in order to do that, we have to scrap the system, the monetary/financial system. For example: We're going to have to write off the books, over a half-thousand trillion of nominal financial assets.
Take the case of Brazil and Argentina. There's no possible way that Argentina or Brazil could submit to the conditions of the IMF, without collapsing their economies in such a way as to collapse the IMF. There's no way in which Brazil and Argentina could survive, except by policies which would, themselves, directly collapse the IMF into bankruptcy. So there is no solution in IMF terms. The IMF, if it gets its way, loses; it goes down the hole. If it doesn't get its way, it loses; it goes down the hole. So the time has come, that order means, you have to eliminate the IMF in its present form. Which means, you have to go back to the kind of system which operated during the immediate post-war period, from 1945 to about 1964.
New Bretton Woods
We could do that. It's a simple thing. We have governments in the world which are now moving in that direction. I'll give a list, just to indicate the feasibility.
Largely through my efforts, and the efforts of our associates, but my personal efforts are at the front of the list: In Italy, we have had resolutions by leading bodies of the Senate of Italy; by a majority vote of the Chamber of Deputies—that's the lower Federal house of Italy—calling for exactly what I've designed. This call is based on a number of resolutions which have been adopted in that country, in support of my specific call for a New Bretton Woods system. You have now, in Russia, in China, in Korea, in Japan, in Southeast Asia, in India, and in Western Europe generally, an emerging plan—as an alternative to the policies of the United States today. The emerging plan is, screw the United States.
It's very simple. You look at what happened. In 1998, I pushed for an immediate action, on the basis of the 1998 financial crisis in New York. I proposed that Russia, China, and India form a tri-partite triangular agreement which would bring other nations of Eurasia into partnership with them, to set up a system of security, throughout Eurasia, and economic development, which would address these problems.
Clinton was on the edge of a adopting such a policy. He announced it in a tentative way, typical of Clinton, in September, in a speech he gave at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. Then, typical of Clinton again—I used to call him "President Chicken" (he wasn't a cow; he was a chicken. But he could, on occasion, produce more bullshit than any other man in human history. When he would get into a bind, he would bullshit; and all the bulls in America could not match him in a bull-shitting contest, when he got in one of those modes)—he backed down. In October, they went with a new deal, out of fear, terror. His life was threatened, and that sucker, Monica Lewinsky [laughter], ruined his career. So he chickened out. He was never too tough. He was very bright—probably the brightest guy we've had in the Presidency, after Roosevelt, in the 20th Century—but not much when it comes to fighting for a principle. He would fight for his career. But his place in history was something he lost sight of.
You know, a real President would always be a President, and govern by the idea of, "What am I going to look like in history, because of what I did as President?" And a good President ... is President for the future. My identity is involved in what I do as President, for the future of the people in this country. That is something Bill couldn't do. And that was a fatal weakness in his Presidency. And that's why the bullshit would come out; whenever a conflict came, he was bright enough to know what is true, but not moral enough to commit himself, and put himself on the line to do it. And therefore, whenever he would get in one of these squeezes, the manure would fly. The next press conference. And he would get very angry if anyone challenged him.
We were at that point. Because of the Russia crisis, they had the appointment of a new Prime Minister in Russia, Yevgeny Primakov, who was an old hand, and who's back in the picture now—on the sidelines, but as a very influential advisor. Primakov echoed my policy of the so-called Triangle, the Eurasian Triangle, in an address he gave in 1998, in Delhi. It was the announcement by the Russian government of a new policy, of this triangular cooperation. As a result of that, the United States' and other pressure came on the President of that time, Yeltsin, to dump Primakov. Primakov was dumped. A Russian Presidential election came into play soon. Putin was eventually made President of Russia. But at that point, the triangular policy was crushed; it was called off, officially.
We continued with it. Then, gradually, it began to come back in. It came back in, in particular, around a number of things: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization efforts on Central Asia; the bringing of India as a partner into the Shanghai Cooperation Organization orbit; the extension into Southeast Asia with the so-called ASEAN+3 organization, which you now see emerging.
So you began to see these nations of Eurasia coming together. Germany is bankrupt. All Western Europe is bankrupt. There's no way it can survive. It can't make enough money to pay its bills. It needs exports. The only export market in the world that's significant for Germany, for example—which is the keystone nation of Western Europe—is China. India is a very important market for China; but China is the only growing market for Germany exports. And these are largely high-technology exports, on which the German economy depends.
The Eurasian Land-Bridge
So now you had a natural tendency of Western Europe—from the northern part of Italy, from some forces in France, from Germany and elsewhere—toward a Eurasian cooperation bloc, around the ideas that we had spread in terms of the Eurasian Land-Bridge.
Then came this issue of the intervention of the skunks in Washington, to try to bust up a reconciliation between North and South Korea. Now, North and South Korea have this significance. Korea is a separate country culturally. It is not China; it is not Japan. It has cultural conflicts with China and Japan. It has its own cultural characteristics—not uniform, not homogenous, but they're distinct. Korea has a specific history. The unification of Korea in practice—not necessarily politically, as a political solution, but in practice—is extremely important for all of Eurasia.
Why? Japan is now a junkpile, but Japan still has within it an industrial potential which is valuable for the world. Its financial system—forget it. Take the Japanese financial system out and burn it, is the best thing you can do for the Japanese people. Get rid of that thing. It's a disease, it's not an economy. But you have to save Japanese potential for industrial goods, especially capital goods. Why? Because Japan is an island nation, which does not have the raw materials within its own territory to meet its own internal needs, or food. Therefore, Japan must export to live. Therefore, Japan must produce products, and market products, which are useful, primarily, to its Asian neighbors—high-technology products. Despite all the nonsense, despite the fear of the United States, that's what goes on there.
So in this process, the United States, under two phases—first under Clinton, but when Monica was running loose, eh?, and Clinton backed off on many policies; and secondly, under George Bush's Administration, especially with his crazy, lunatic outburst he made in January of this year, as his so-called State of DisUnion address, the "Axis of Evil," that idea (and the Moonies were at work)—apparently, the negotiations for cooperation between North and South Korea were off the table. But they got back on the table. How'd they get back on the table? Well, President Putin of Russia, and President Jiang Zemin of China, and related forces, moved in on the situation to get North Korea to adopt the idea of reopening the North-South negotiations, in order to breach the DMZ, to reconnect the rail systems between North and South Korea.
Now, the importance of that connection, for Europe or Asia, is tremendous. Look at a map. Look at the areas. Chinese development; Japanese development; look at the areas. Look at the natural resources of North and East Asia. What is the importance of that railroad? When you connect the rail system of North and South Korea, from Pusan at the tip of South Korea, into Russia and China, and you extend those links, you now have extended a development corridor, based on transportation, from Pusan to Rotterdam in Europe.
The development of such systems of high-density transport means a transformation in the economy of all Eurasia. When you look at the cooperation which is being developed with Southeast Asia—the complex Mekong development agreement just reached among the nations of Southeast Asia and China; new agreements with India—you see a process going on in Eurasia, continental Europe and Asia, of cooperation among completely dissimilar states, with dissimilar characteristics, but with a certain very important common interest.
The common interest is: security and economy. No more bloodshed. No unnecessary wars. And development of the economy.
The System Is Bankrupt
So what has happened recently, around this negotiation, is that Eurasia is becoming united by default, because the United States is crazy. And frankly, that is not an exaggeration. The President of the United States is, at this point, functioning as clinically insane. And most of his advisors around him are worse. You see his behavior in Mexico. This man is beginning to disintegrate. He can't cut it any more. He can't make it. And the world sees this. The man is crazy. They say, "What are we going to do?"
Well, they're not going to buck the United States if they don't have to. They're going to go their own way, as they're doing in the United Nations, trying to jam up this Iraq war. Jam it up. The United States can not conduct the war unilaterally. If it does not have the support from other parts of the world, the consent to run such a war, as a uniquely U.S. aggression against Iraq it can't work. The United States is bankrupt. We're probably running a quarter-trillion-dollar deficit in the U.S. economy right now, the U.S. national budget—a quarter of a trillion deficit in the U.S. budget. The budget deficit is growing every day. Unemployment is galloping. Industries are collapsing. Whole communities are collapsing. Half the states in the United States are bankrupt, of the Federal states. The system is falling apart.
Therefore, you have a situation in which some of the ingredients of a solution are being arranged as potential, for a new international system.
The only new international system that will work—all these elements are useful, but the system must have a basis—in order to develop the world, to reorganize the bankrupt economies, you must do certain things. You must have a line of 25- to 30-year credit, at simple interest rates not in excess of 1-2%. The credit will not come from private investors, not largely. It will come from governments who create debt which they monetize; and they loan this monetized debt, as either trade credit, [or] capital credit, for capital formation in countries which need development, such as Asian countries, South America, Central America, as well as our own internal infrastructure.
Now, you can't pay for this out of current funds now. But if you go into debt to hire people, to employ firms, to revive skills that are lost, to put them into large-scale transportation, energy, water management, health-care systems, educational system projects, you will revive employment, increase the tax revenue base by reviving employment and useful activity; and you will also create things which are useful to humanity, which we will pay for over a 25-year period.
So we're going into hock to ourselves, and one another, to create this credit at low interest rates; we'll regulate it with a fixed exchange-rate system so things don't fluctuate wildly; we'll regulate the international markets as we used to do; we'll create internal regulation; we'll create international trade regulation; we'll make agreements to that effect; and we'll organize the world around a joint effort of nation-states to rebuild this sick world—this sick economic world. It'll work out just fine. But in order to do that, we must make certain changes.
We must sink the present monetary-financial system. It's a very simple procedure. It is called bankruptcy. Now bankruptcy is not what happens to someone when his credit card blows out. That's a form of bankruptcy. In this case, Wall Street is going to eat the bankruptcy. The financiers have to eat the bankruptcy, because they are the ones who faked, they are the one who committed the fraud; and they are going to have to eat the bankruptcy, because the obligation of government is to defend the general welfare of all of the people—not only the present generation, but the future generations.
Therefore, we must do nothing, in the bankruptcy reorganization, which sacrifices the present and future generations' welfare for the sake of so-called "honoring debts" claimed by financier interest. "Everyone's going to take his share. Those who committed the crime, are going to take their share. Those who created the swindle, are going to take their share. Those who were cheated, are going to get their share."
Because you have got to reunify the people around a common purpose, a sense of mission—say to people, as Roosevelt said in his way, in his time, "We are going to cure the problem. We are going to bring justice to every person in the United States. Economic justice. We are going to end the suffering of the forgotten man." And that is our mission.
So the problem is, someone has to come in with the hard leadership. And we are talking to people in all kinds of circles about this, and in every conversation at a high level, the same thing comes up: "Yes, you are probably right. But it can't be done. Because government is not ready to do that yet." I say, "Well, if government is not ready to do that, then government is going to disappear. What do you do then?" Because it will! You are in a breakdown crisis. You are not in a depression—a cyclical depression where things will eventually bounce back. It will never bounce back. This thing is dead; you have to bury it! Or it'll pollute the neighborhood. And you have to create a replacement system, based on the best experience of humanity to date. And you must do it on the basis of agreement among nations, which recognize what their common interests are. That's the essential crisis.
Leadership vs. Popular Opinion
How did this happen? It happened because, if you have stupid people, of the type who will support the Moonies—or the type who becomes the Attorney General of the United States at this point—if you have such stupid people, in increasing numbers, then you can not have a republic. You can not have a republic based on populism—on popular opinion—because popular opinion in history has always been wrong. It is good leaders—like good teachers—who educate the population to overcome the mistakes that the population itself makes. So you have to have leadership. You have to have a citizenry, however, which, while it may not come up with the right ideas, has at least to consent to the right ideas. It must adopt them. They must be rational enough to understand what you're talking about. And you must make every effort, of course, to make it understandable. But you've got to have a receptive something there. You've got have some brain registering there, or you're not going to get the message through.
Now, the way you get a dictatorship, is to destroy the morals and intellect of the population in general. You make the majority of the people stupid and crazy. And the result is, you'll get a dictatorship. And the dictatorship will be created by the very people who are revolting against authority. They'll create the dictatorship, because they will create a vacuum, in which there are no political institutions which are responsible, but only a bunch of crazy people, watching glad-eyed, like some big, all-night rock concert—Not exactly your basic, good college campus lecture audience. Anyway. So what they did, is they set out to destroy the character of the American people, which I bet was not perfect. I had a lot of complaints about the character of the American people, a long time ago.
But what they did is, they said we are going to destroy the kind of economy, which requires the education and employment of intelligent people in increasing levels of skill and productivity. So, what did they do? They said, we are going to a post-industrial consumer society. This is exactly what the Roman oligarchy did, during and following the Second Punic War, when they proceeded to set up the Empire. They turned the citizens of Italy into stupid jerks. You know, with big football games—large arenas. Big rock concerts. Nero having a homosexual marriage and enacting it in public, on a stage, as the Emperor of Rome? This was entertainment in those days. Lions eating Christians, or Christians eating lions—that's entertainment. Like today. You watch television—you see so-called "entertainment." Movies—so-called "entertainment." Plotless themes! What are they? What is a videogame? What is a video, generally? A video is something that makes marijuana look sane [laughter]—because it is scattered. There is no idea to it. It is a rapid-fire sequence of poorly connected impulses, which have a certain emotional-associative effect. They are methods of escape from reality, escape from sanity.
That's what happened to us! This was the cultural change that occurred during 1964-65, in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, and others. This is what happened to us! So what has happened since the middle of the 1960s: In this period, we transformed the U.S. population—in its employment, its education, its healthcare, its entertainment, and other activities—from an intelligent population, with all of its shortcomings and weaknesses, into a population which is no longer capable of caring for itself. It can no longer think.
Look—what is a passing score in a university? Well, it's probably down in the men's room [laughter]. Because you have designed multiple-choice questionnaires. The multiple-choice questionnaires are designed to be scored by computer. The classes you are taught, are rehearsals—whether in secondary school or in university—they are classes taught to prepare you for multiple-choice questionnaires. The university looks good, if you get a good computer score on a multiple-choice questionnaire. That's called, to quote President Bush, "The education thing" [laughter]. You know, have a picture of the President up there, not labelled President, but "The Education Thing." People may get the message! Well, what do they do? What they do with these questionnaires, is they dumb the questionnaires down, as the level of intelligence of the population collapses. You have people coming out of secondary schools, who are not qualified to graduate from grade school! You have people coming out of the universities who are not qualified to graduate from high school. And you pay more for it—$20,000 or $50,000 a semester—and the parents are sending you there, what for? To know? No! To get social status! You may be an ignorant bum, but at least you got a degree! And you can go out and advertise yourself as a payable prostitute at these prices!
And then, you found out, in your generation, the deal is off! You pay the money, you get the degree, you go out in the street, there's no employment—there's no future, and you know it. Your generation knows it—that's your advantage. Your parents don't know it—or very few of them do. They don't accept reality. They are poor, dumb parents, like poor Rip Van Winkle, sleeping his way through the Catskills. Wakes up one morning 20 years later, and discovers that civilization has passed him by, a generation has passed him by.
Your parents' generation, generally, has withdrawn from reality, and are living a kind of Baby Boomer fantasy life, a state of denial, trying to imagine that they're happy; and very rarely are they happy. But their happiness consists in imagining that you're happy.
Think of it. You know it. Most of you know that experience. They're not happy. They're very miserable, and when you touch certain issues, they fly off the handle, they go wild; or they go into fits of various kinds, withdrawal fits—"Your mother is very unhappy; you have made your mother very sad. You should apologize to your mother. Your father is going to have a mid-life crisis. You should apologize to your father immediately." For what? "Well, you didn't say what he expected of you. You didn't bring in an eligible mate that he approves of;" or something like that.
From Producer to Consumer Society
So what we did, is we produced a population which is officially dumbed down; that lacks the skill, the knowledge to perform functions of modern technology. We don't have modern technology. We import it from slave labor in developing countries. It's called globalization. And globalization means the "glob" that's growing on your head.
Because you don't have anything. We have a nation that can not produce its own needs. We've destroyed our farms. We've destroyed our industries. We depend upon cheap goods from China, or some other part of the world, where virtual slave labor is employed to produce those goods. We don't produce for ourselves. The world is not producing an adequate amount to meet its own needs. The rate of production, relative to population worldwide, is collapsing, with a few contra-indicated tendencies, as in China and a few other places. But generally, that's the situation.
We're a dying society. We are a consumer society. And you look at the morality—if you compare the ideas, the topics, the behavior, of people in your parents' generation, and what's going on in your generation; and you look at the moral degeneration of your parents, and what they were 20 years ago—if you look back on them 20 years ago, you would say they were vibrant, active, and more like you. In the past 10-20 years they've decayed. They've gotten old, prematurely old. They're in flights of denial from reality.
The credit card phenomenon is a good case of this. People believe in going into debt. They buy a house, not on the basis of what they can afford, but can they meet the monthly payments? If they get more money, they'll try to buy a more expensive house, and go more deeply into debt, in order to have that more expensive house—based, not on what they can repay, not a buying-out of the mortgage, but can they carry the monthly carrying charges? They'll buy automobiles on the same basis. They'll consume unnecessary things. They'll reach out to consume things they don't need, at least relative to what their purchasing power is. They'll put themselves into debt. They make debt slaves of themselves.
Why? Because they're living in a consumer society. In my generation, and up into the middle of the 1960s, the standard was, that we were a productive society. And you judged your performance and your security by what you were able to produce. You would say, "Look, I've got a skill. I can walk into this guy's joint; I can work for him; and I can produce for him; and he can afford to pay me for this. I'm productive. The products I work on are good. The result of having these products is good. I don't have to apologize to anyone for my existence. I'm a useful human being, whom any guy in his right mind would want to employ."
And we produced wealth in this nation; we were the biggest wealth producer in the world, per capita. That's good! It's good to be like that. That may not be all there is to it, but that's good.
What happened in the middle '60s, is that that changed. We went from being a productive society, who took pride in the dignity of what we were able to do—we considered it oppression to deny some part of society the right to get the kind of education, the kind of job access, in which they could do this; this was called discrimination: denying people access to the kind of education of employment which we considered necessary and just for anyone to have access to—but that's changed. Now—"Look, man; the problem is your head. You got to get something to fix your head." Entertainment. Change of sex. Change of species. Whatever.
So we have gone to become a consumer society. If you look at the degradation of ancient Italy under the Roman Empire, following the year 200 B.C., and that process, you see the same thing is happening to us.
You Want a Future?
Now, in this process, there are two aspects of leadership. You, in your generation, can only defend yourself by becoming leaders, in two senses. First of all, you have a bunch of doormice—your parents' generation. Maybe not your particular parents; but the generation is hopeless. So what are you going to do with these doormice? You know, it's like Alice in Wonderland, where the doormouse keeps drowning himself in the teacup; the Mad Hatter has to intervene to pull him out of the teacup so that he doesn't drown himself. Your parents are like that. They're doormice—not all of them, but some of them. What do you do? You are the future. You're not the future itself; the future is your children, your generation. That's 25 years from now: Presumably you've had children, or your friends have had children. So as far as your generation is concerned, these children are the children of your generation. What are they going to have before them 25 years from now? What kind of a life, what kind of a nation, what kind of a world are you going to give them?
Now, you can't give that to them all at once. Because it's going to take a quarter-century to build this country out of the mess we're in, economically, right now. But you can, potentially, as leaders of a new generation, create the circumstances which will enable the children of your generation to succeed. And people will honor your generation for centuries to come because of that!
Now you need the help of your parents' generation. But they're off sleeping like the doormouse in the teacup, drowning themselves in their delusions. They don't need pot to drown themselves; they just drown in a teacup. You have to do what has been done before: The reason that youth movements create revolutions, is because the youth, when faced with a prospect of no future, or a very bad future, say, "Well, we can't change everything. But we can get out there and begin to organize our own generation, and our parents' generation, to waken them, to act to get us all out of this mess."
In other words, you have to change your parents. You have to educate your parents. You do it largely by example, not by lecturing them—although you may do that. You do it by example, You do it by doing the right thing. And that shows them that something is possible in this society, because you're doing it. Because no matter how stupid they are, they know that you are the future. When push comes to shove, when they're facing the grave, they're going to say that what they have, going into the grave, is what they've left behind in the form of your generation.
Therefore, you have that blackmail ability to reach them [laughter]. "You want a future, after you're dead? We are the ones that will give it to you."
That's the principle of leadership. Let's get to that. What's wrong with this society? The human race is capable of all kinds of wonderful things. Virtually every person born is capable of doing wonderful things. You demonstrate that every time you replicate a fundamental discovery of universal physical principle, or some similar kind of discovery. You show that you are not an ape. You are a human being; you can do something that no animal can do. You can discover a universal physical principle—either originally, or, more frequently, by re-enacting the act of discovery of a previous generation. You can share that with one another, as any good educational system will do.
And this sharing of this process of discovery with one another, is what makes a youth movement function. It's not the individual action; it's the sharing of the experience of discovery, and helping one another in a kind of Socratic dialogue, to begin to really understand these things. Don't rely on sitting here, with frustration, trying to master something. Fight it out! In a Socratic dialogue, thrash it out; work through it. And that process, that sense of unity, gives you a sense of power, and gives you a sense of leadership, because you don't feel stupid. You know you know something. You know you represent a process of knowing, a process of leadership.
Immortality in Mortality
Now the problem is, that when push comes to shove, most individuals fail because they fail morally. The moral failure has two aspects to it. On the one hand, they don't have that sense of identity. We're all going to die. It's inevitable. Mortality is mortality; it means ultimate death. So therefore, what is your interest in life, if you know you are going to die, sooner or later? The pleasures you get out of mortal life? No, of course not. The money you get? No. All of these things disappear the minute you go into the box. You no longer feel and enjoy them.
What's important, therefore? What's important is, what is the meaning of your life? What is the meaning of your mortal life? What are you doing for humanity?
It's what you would demand of a President. You want a President who is not concerned about his personal self-interest, in the sense of money, this, or that. You want a President who says, "I am the guy you can rely upon, to make a decision based on the interest of coming generations, as well as the present generation, the present nation."
That is my identity, and that is my immortal identity, in the sense that Solon of Athens is immortal, that Plato is immortal, that all the great scientific discoverers are immortal, because they all gave to humanity—sometimes in a simple way, as simply as devotion to raising children, for example, in the old days. Immigrants coming into this country would raise children with the idea of sacrificing for those children, in the sense that their children and their grandchildren would be able to achieve something. And they would sacrifice joyfully for those children; not because they had a sense of merely sacrificing, but because the idea that their children and grandchildren would be successful was the meaning of their life. And they expected some respect for doing that. That's all they demanded. Some affection and respect for doing that job.
Now that is the basis for leadership. Political leadership has to come on a somewhat higher level than the simple personal sense of immortal identity. You have a mortal existence, but that mortal existence must have an immortal identity. It must be something that's meaningful to society after you're dead—what you have done must be meaningful for society after you're dead, whether in terms of a few people, or the society as a whole.
In a President or another leader of society, you want a higher standard. The individual who is capable of being consciously dedicated to the future of that nation, the world, and humanity.
That's what motivates a scientist. A scientist who's any good doesn't work for money. They may demand money. But that's not what makes them a scientist. They're a scientist because they can't help being a scientist. Their sense of identity requires that they be involved in discoveries, if it takes decades—as in the case of Pasteur and many others—decades to realize the discovery on which they had been working. Their identity is located in what they contribute of permanent value to humanity, or implicitly permanent.
What you require of political leaders is exactly the same thing—a long-term dedication to the future of society. The problem in society is that so few people, so far, in known human existence, have more than momentarily achieved that sense of immortality within mortality. And therefore, when it comes to pressure—someone says, "Look. I know you believe what you're doing. But don't you think it would be in your interest to compromise?"—by joining the Moon cult or some other foolish thing like that. "Look, they'll give you money! They'll give you money! Don't you want some money? Look! Sure, you've got your principles. But don't you need money?" Or other things. "Don't you need a little sex?—you know, the Moon guy, he'll get you a nice, pretty Japanese girl, who'll do anything you want." That's what the Moon sect does. It goes out and takes these young girls, recruits them into this cult, and throws them out as sexual objects to numbers of greedy men. And the greedy men get themselves, you know, a young Japanese juicy girl, eh? who's thrown at them, who does everything for Moon. And she does it for him, because she's doing it for Moon. It's a sex and money cult.
How is this possible? It's only possible if your sense of the immortality of your mortal life is lacking. Because when people think about God, they say, "The eyes of God are looking at me. And whatever I do is seen. And my immortal value is what He sees. And I must see that in myself. And I must act accordingly." That's all there is to morality. There is no other morality. Imagine the eyes of God upon you. Are you doing something that is constructive, that is useful, that is honorable, and will be honorable for the rest of eternity—what you're doing now? If you feel that, if you have that confidence, you are unbeatable! Because your life means something; you are achieving something.
The problem with these stupid politicians that you complain about, is they don't have any morality. They say, "Yeah, maybe you're right, maybe you're right, but it'll never work." You mean saving the United States will not work? Then what the Hell are you doing here? [laughter, applause].
A Youth Movement Is a University
So therefore, just to wrap this up, at this point, what you have to look for, is these kinds of considerations, and you have to realize that a youth movement is not simply a collection of young people. We have a situation in which there is no educational system worth mentioning in the world today. But, a youth movement—the way I've tried to indicate to you, with examples such as the question of the fundamental theorem of algebra—a youth movement is a university. It's a movement of action, and it's also a university. By working together around things of relevance to humanity—humanity as a whole, the nation, humanity—by working around those things and saying, "We need to know those ideas which are necessary for us to be effective in this world."
That's a university. There's a certain generality of knowledge which is required, as well as particular fields, which other people would admire—that you're doing it. Just as in any good university, or what you would imagine would be a good university. And therefore, you have to be, in a sense, a university on wheels, a university of political motion, eh? Not a bunch of stupid, "Yap, yap, yap. Here's the party line." I don't believe in a party line. I never could tolerate a party line myself. We don't have a party line. We have a commitment to immortality. The immortality in mortality.
We have a commitment to taking the poor fellow out there, who has no sense of life, who is desperate, and is about to commit suicide, and give him a sense that in their life, there's something which is immortal, which they must not sacrifice, while they're mortal. They must use their mortality with a sense of being a human being. Not simply in a passing moment of time, but in the expanse of humanity as a whole. What does the rest of humanity think about you, from the past, in the future, as well as the present? They depend upon you. What about all those people who suffered in the past from a grave injustice? Aren't they looking forward, implicitly, to someone among their descendants or others to come along and justify the life of suffering they lived? To realize it?
Take the question of the education movement among slaves in the United States. You had the great movement of Frederick Douglass: a great educator. What happened to this movement, the freed-slave movement; that is, slaves who became free? Generally [they] concentrated on education, and Frederick Douglass epitomizes that. One of the most highly educated and cultivated men in America! Other leaders of the anti-slavery movement, like Douglass, were of the same character. They said, "We have to be the best, for the sake of our people. We have to be the best. We will know everything that it's important to know from humanity." Then what happened is, after the Civil War, these guys who were opposed to this, moved in with this idea of de-educating African-Americans, the freed slaves. They'd give them an education which does not cause them to "rise above their anticipated station in life." "Don't give them an education that interferes with their cotton-pickin' happiness." Eh? Instead of saying, "We want to create geniuses where there were slaves," as Douglass did.
That's the same thing you have to say when you look at Africa today, or Central and South America—misery today in Mexico—as I have been looking at it. Or in Europe, or other parts of the world. You have to say: Here are people; they're human beings. Each one of them is capable of a quality of genius. The great crime is that they're denied that which is in them. We have to inspire them and help them to achieve that. And even if they don't fully achieve it, if they see themselves as in the process of bringing that into being, then you can inspire them. And they will get infinite strength from the sense of what they are.
It's what Martin Luther King represents. Martin Luther King, in a sense, is a figure in the legacy of Frederick Douglass: a true Christian, in the true sense. Not one of these quirky, kooky kinds of things. A real one, who said, in his speech on "the mountaintop": "I've been to the mountaintop. If I have to die, at the hands of my enemy (i.e., J. Edgar Hoover) for the sake of this cause, I will die. Because I must do this for humanity." It wasn't just for the ex-slaves, or the descendants of slaves; it was for all humanity.
Martin understood that. He understood what the sublime principle was: If you're truly a Christian, in his view, you must be for all mankind; you must be a leader, and you must put your life on the line for the sake of all humanity. And once you get that sense, and you get the joy of being that, then, you're undefeatable. Thank you.
