This presentation appears in the December 5, 2003 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Dialogue With LaRouche in Detroit
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Excerpts from the discussion period of a LaRouche Presidential campaign event held on Nov. 20, 2003 at the Ponchartrain Hotel in Detroit. See also LaRouche's opening address. An mp3 audio archive of the envire event is also available: http stream or ftp download.
Q: ... Mr. LaRouche, would you be kind enough to repeat what you told me earlier, when I commented to you, about speaking with Mark Brewer, on the 15th; we were at a caucus session. And at that session, he clearly informed us, that Mr. LaRouche is not a Democrat. And, that only those candidates that would be on the caucus list, would actually be counted. Anyone else who was written in, would be lumped in with Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
LaRouche: Well, let's take a couple of facts about this, just to get the idea of how ridiculous this is. Currently, among nine nominal candidates for the Democratic nomination—officially registered candidates, with the FEC—I represent second in popularity; that is, among number of people who have made financial contributions to my campaign. Second. The first, of course, is Dean, and Dean has affiliates that I don't have, but that's all right. The others have bucks, but they don't have support. They others have bucks, but they don't campaign. They campaign, on these things they call campaign debates. And every one I've seen so far, is disgusting. The one in Detroit, sponsored by Fox-TV, which is hardly a good symbol for the Democratic Party! As a matter of fact, I understand that in most areas, Fox is considered a racist right-wing organization, and I don't know why the Democratic Party would want to be hosted by a fascist, or fascistic, right-wing, racist organization like Murdoch's Fox-TV.
But, actually, the performance of the candidates on that particular event, were about as bad, as Fox-TV itself. It was disgusting. All these campaign appearances, and these debates, have been disgusting. There's no independent voice. That doesn't mean that Kerry's incapable of carrying an idea across the room. He is. That doesn't mean that Kucinich is stupid. I think he's a little bit weak, in some respects, but he's an intelligent person, and he's actually intelligent on many issues, and does a fairly decent function in the Congress. I don't think anything of Howard Dean. He's a guy who never practiced medicine, but he does practice HMO, which kills more people than doctors could save.
So, this is the reality!
Now, what we have is, we have a President of the United States, George W. Bush, who is losing the next election. He's losing it on the issue of the war, which is becoming increasingly unpopular. He's losing it on the issues of the economy. But he might be elected! Why? Because, the Democratic Party is much better at losing, than the Republicans are! They work at it, as they did in California.
Just to give an example of this, because this question is probably in the mind of a lot of people, apart from being asked, appropriately, by one of our people here: In California, you had a fascist—I don't know whether he is a Nazi Party card-carrying member or not; his father was. But he thinks like a Nazi; he acts like a Nazi; he smells like a Nazi: Schwarzenegger. Whose qualifications for Governor, are those he displays in the movie as the "Terminator"! And, California is a predominantly Democratic state. Registered Democrats outnumber any other species in California. Now, they may come in different colors and varieties, but they're all the same Democratic Party species.
How could they lose a Recall election, to an unqualified, menacing, thug? As a matter of fact, the thug, who happened to be among those, who helped loot the state of California, through Enron-style operations! Now, how could the Democratic Party lose that?
Well, Gray Davis is not a bad guy. But, the Democratic National Committee came down on Gray Davis, and each of the other Presidential candidates who came in—including also Bill Clinton—came in, to tell Gray Davis to cool it. Now, Gray Davis is an experienced politician, and a well-known street fighter, when it comes to politics. He didn't street-fight. He could have taken on and beaten Schwarzenegger. But, he "took a fall"—as if the mafia had told him, "It's time to take the fall."
Not all of his people took the fall.
All right. We, with the youth movement, in California—we had forces which were adequate to deploy into Los Angeles County. We had the cooperation of the leadership in Los Angeles County for our operation. We also deployed in the Bay Area. At the time the campaign started, the polls were showing Schwarzenegger running 60-40 against Gray Davis. By the time we ended up, in Los Angeles County, we carried it 51-49 against Schwarzenegger. In the Bay Area, we did better. In the other parts of California, the state was lost, because the Democratic National Committee, and all of the Presidential candidates, except me, who intervened in that thing, had gone the other way, and forced Gray Davis to throw the election.
We then went with our youth movement, into Philadelphia, invited by Mayor Street, and [former Michigan State Rep.] LaMar [Lemmons] was there, when this action was conducted. And [State Rep.] Harold James set it up, and said, am I on board? I said, "Of course I'm on board. That's a done deal. We're doing it." So we did it. And, we turned a marginal situation in Philadelphia, into a landslide victory. Because the participation of the various forces, which were associated with us—that Harold James brought together, that we brought in—transformed the Democratic election campaign, from an election campaign, into a movement. We had a movement of citizens, in that city, and they carried the election, even against a very well-oiled Republican machine, which came in prepared to win.
Now, under these circumstances, since we win, and they lose, why was the Democratic Party convinced to do what it did, in 2000? To elect two bums, Gore and Lieberman—and by now, you should see what a bum he is; you may not have known it beforehand, but now it's easy. [Lieberman] is a guy, a right-winger, who was brought into high politics by William F. Buckley—the great Democrat—and fascist; with a generation of fascists. The whole family's a bunch of fascists! And, also brought into power, by money from the so-called gusanos, the Batista Cubans, in southern Florida. That's his constituency. He was picked for Vice Presidential candidate! He robs Indians! And since he doesn't have many Indians in the state of Connecticut, they invented Indians, and they robbed them: gambling casinos.
And Gore, who "couldn't lose" on paper, with Clinton backing Gore, he couldn't lose—but he did. And, he actually lost Florida. Sure, there was a certain African-American vote turned out in Florida, but they didn't get it counted. Because the Republicans had done their homework, and made sure that their absentee ballots were processed, whereas the Democrats didn't do it, and therefore, their absentee ballots weren't processed. And thus, a lot of African-Americans voted for George Bush in Florida. They regret it today.
But, [Gore] could have won in Tennessee. If he'd won Tennessee, if he'd won Arkansas, which would have been an easy win, Gore would be President of the United States, today! But, the bum wouldn't do what he should do. He wouldn't even cooperate with Clinton, at certain points. He went into this dive, in Florida, which was a sure loser—an unnecessary battle! He wasted his effort and money in Florida; gave up Arkansas and Tennessee; and lost the national election with the plurality of national votes!
And the Democratic Party has apparently—and Clinton, himself—have apparently learned nothing, from that experience.
So, the question is, not who's going to win the next election, but which party is going to lose it, the biggest?!
So that's the situation. What is obvious, is what I referred to earlier: We're in what I referred to as a reverse cultural paradigm-shift. The things that I'm proposing, the course of action which I'm proposing: Take politics back to the street! Take politics back to the street, to the real people. Take it to the lower 80% of family-income brackets. Don't depend upon the upper 20% of family-income brackets. Get the people back into politics: the lower 80% of family-income brackets. The poor, the young. Get them back in!
And, do it, not as getting one vote at a time. Create a movement!
Now I've designed the catalyst for a movement. And the catalyst for a movement, is a youth movement, which we've pioneered in creating, of a special type: of young people, largely between 18 and 25 years of age, that is, of university-eligible age; and we're running a "university on wheels," among people who are living on virtually nothing, next to nothing. They get their meals, and they get to find a place to sleep and do things like that. And, they're out organizing in teams. And they can out-organize per capita anybody else in the United States. They're the most effective political organizing force in this country!
Now they number in the hundreds. We're going to have a thousand of them deployed, probably by about February. We expect, by the Summer, before the Summer runs around: 10,000, of this type. With 10,000 such youth, we can turn the country around, we can change it. We can win any election, that is not done by a police-state method.
So therefore, here we are. These guys are losers. They're losers by every standard. The party itself, the party machine, the national chairmanship, is a loser, by any standard. Now, how can anyone say they're serious about politics, in excluding the real potential winner, in favor of a bunch of losers? And why should they try to bore the citizens to death, to have these nine clowns go on TV, for racist Fox-TV as a sponsor, rather than having a serious discussion of the real issues, such as the economy and war, and such similar things, before the public?
The American people want to hear about the war. That's why Bush is going down! The Iraq War. That's the trigger: Get this thing out! Quit! Get out of there! People are dying. They're sending people, who are normally family people, such as National Guardsmen and reservists—they're sending them into battle, for prolonged duty. That has a tremendous impact upon communities—because these are family people, with established families. To lose a member of the family, to have a member of the family go through trauma, and come back severely injured—the life-support of the family—and then, to deny these people the kind of medical care they require, as a result of these war injuries, and turn them back into the communities: That's not going to be popular!
And, we have a ratio of about—what?—out of eight trauma cases, seven now survive. So, it's a high rate of survival, relative to battle trauma, relative to previous kinds of wars. Which means, we have a lot of injured people, who are not being treated properly in most cases, coming back. And the families are screaming about it.
The economic question: Look around you. Look at the conditions of life of the lower 80%. Look at the 47 states in the United States that are bankrupt. That is, you could not raise enough money through tax revenue, to balance the essential cost of running that state. At least 47 states, if not all 50. And it's getting worse!
We have a trillion-dollar trade balance deficit. We're shooting toward trillion-dollar annual deficits.
The Housing Crisis
The thing is falling apart! The world is collapsing. We could have it, any time. A housing crisis. Just to give you another example—this may be long-winded, but I think it's probably valuable to you. Look, what happened? Look around you in this city: Has Detroit been depopulated within the past 15 years? All right. Has Michigan largely been depopulated, during this period. Why? Because the jobs are gone. This is all around the country.
Now, what happened? The people who moved away, in large degree—not all of them—would move in, as younger people, into jobs in areas in California, in Washington, D.C., other areas, where you have a housing boom. Now, this housing boom is rather disgusting: Because, they take a cow pasture; they put a bulldozer through it once or twice; they put a foundation on it, this area. They take a piece of tarpaper shack, virtually; they shrink-wrap it, with insulation; they paste some plastic on the exterior, to make it look like brick, or something else. They put a couple of faucets in it. They call it a house.
Now, people who want a job in this area, go into this area to take the job—because the job isn't here in Michigan; it's not in Detroit. They'll go down, to say, someplace outside of Washington. They'll move into this shack, and they find the mortgage is $400,000 to $600,000—for a tarpaper shack with shrink-wrap features. And, it's not even good for you, because if it's sealed, certain kinds of gases will get into the house, and they're not good for your health—on top of everything else.
Now, what happens is, these people are now losing money, because there is terrible inflation. Maybe some of you know something about this terrible inflation. You may have experienced it someplace. So therefore, people have trouble getting by, even families where you have two people with fairly skilled jobs, working two jobs in a household: They're not bringing enough home to pay the rent and the mortgage. Remember in the old days, you would consider, you spent 20% or 25%, at most, of your family income for housing. Now, what kind of salary do you require, by that standard, to maintain a house, which has a $400,000 to $600,000 mortgage value? What kind of a salary? You're talking about $100,000 income a year! How many of you get $100,000 a year? How many people do you know who have it?
So therefore, we have people who are on the margin of poverty, living in these tarpaper shacks, at a half-million or so, plus or minus, mortgage valuation.
How do they get by? A swindle was pulled, by a swindler called Alan Greenspan. He's the head of the Federal Reserve System. What he did is, he pumped money, through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He did it in concert with real-estate swindlers, who sell real estate. The real-estate swindlers in this area, say the area around Northern Virginia, would meet. And they would tell the bankers that the value of real estate in this area, has gone up! Therefore, these houses are all worth more. Now the banks are willing to give a 90% credit, on the value of the mortgage, to the nominal houseowner. So, they go down to the bank, and they get cash, by refinancing the mortgage based on the increase, the purely synthetic increase, in the value of the house. What do they with the cash? They spend it for groceries! And "foolish" things like that, to get by.
What happens then, if a 1% or 2% increase in interest rates occurs? Boom. The real-estate bubble goes. Housing shacks go down to half the value. And so forth.
And that's the condition we've created, as a result of this change in the U.S. economy. Instead of taking the area of Michigan, which is a natural area for certain kinds of production—and northern Ohio, the state of Ohio in general; you take this area, which used to be an area which was designated geographically, as a place for agriculture and industry, which has a natural potential because of the Great Lakes, among other things, for this, because of the transportation system that used to exist here. You move the people out of the area, the land area, which is perfectly habitable, economically functional land-area. You chase a part of the population into absolute poverty. You chase the other part, to seek jobs in these areas of these housing-boom speculations, and then you bring down the shebang.
This is the kind of situation we're in today. And therefore, the economic issue, the health-care issue, and other things—all other things that are crashing down on the people—. So therefore, suppose we, all of us, discuss in a Presidential candidacy, discuss before the American people, discuss the issue of the war: How did we get into this stinking mess? How did Cheney get us into it? How are we going to get out? Are we going to go into more wars? Can't we avoid more wars? Why have we got more enemies in the world, than we ever had before? Practically the entire world is against the United States today, just because of what happened since January 2002.
Isn't that worth discussing? Isn't that the issue? What about the economy? What about the condition of our people? What about the things that are threatening our people, including the health issue? Why aren't those being discussed, apart from some "master plan"? Why don't we say what was wrong, and say how we're going to fix it! But first, admit that it was wrong!
That's not done.
So, somebody says, I shouldn't be a candidate. What're you doing? Committing suicide? ...
The Financial Crisis: Perception and Reality
Q: ... In October, economist Paul Krugman wrote an article in the New York Times, and he described an impending economic crisis in the U.S. And he likened the situation of the American public to that of Wile E. Coyote and the Roadrunner cartoon: where Wile E. Coyote would run off the edge of a cliff and he'd run a short distance before he'd realize he was walking on thin air. And, only after he looked down, and realized where he was at, then he would fall. And, he described the situation of the American public, as at the point where it's walking on thin air, economically speaking, and only has to realize what the lack of economic foundation is for its economy, and then it will start to fall—meaning there will either be a sell-off or—in any case, ensuing chaos would be the situation.
Do you see an "Argentina"-type economic crisis here in the U.S., as inconceivable as that may be to someone of my generation?
LaRouche: It's not inconceivable. What you have to understand is this, about this question of myth and reality: That what people believe—you see, human beings are voluntary. Animals are committed to certain types of behavior, as a species or a variety of their species; it's almost a biological commitment. They have a very slight range of adjustment. Whereas human beings can choose—. Let me take one step back.
Now, think of this human mind, or the mind of an animal, as like a typical utopian geometry, in which you start with certain definitions, axioms, and postulates, and you assume that any valid theorem that you reach, any decision you make, must be consistent with those definitions, axioms, and postulates. In an animal, the range of definitions and axioms, is very narrow. The animal is capable of certain postulational changes; for example, when you make a pet of an animal, successfully, from childhood of the animal, you may induce this animal to behave, not like an animal, but like an animal who now is adapted to human beings. When you adopt a puppy, or adopt a kitten, for example, the thing will now respond to you. It does not become human, but it will seem almost human, because it knows how to react to you, as a puppy or a cat knows how to react to you, according to its axioms, and it has certain postulates which you induce. And, it becomes very attached to you. Sometimes you think it runs you; but, most of the time, it'll think that you are its mother, or father, or whatever. Or with a dog, you are the boss of the brood, of the pack.
But, with human beings, it's different. We have the ability to choose our definitions, axioms, and postulates. Now, we can choose two types: We can choose definitions that are accurate, or false. We can choose axioms and postulates similarly, true or false. Or, we can omit some knowledge of some essential axioms and so forth.
So, what happens is, that in mass behavior, people will tell you, and you can recognize this in various ways, "This is what I believe. This is what I have to do." Sometimes they aren't conscious of what these things are, but you can detect that by observing them. What happens in a cultural paradigm-shift, the set of definitions, axioms, and postulates, as a set, of a population is conditioned, in a way which is either relatively true or relatively false.
For example, the existence of the United States, as a Constitutional republic, had a great effect on the American people. And to this day, we benefit from that tradition, though most of us are not fully conscious of how that works. In Europe, they're different: In Europe, they've been living under, at least, in the relatively less un-free countries in Europe, they've been living under what's called an "Anglo-Dutch Liberal parliamentary system," in which independent central banking systems have the ultimate power. And every time there's a crisis, the parliament's overthrown and a new government is put in.
In our system, we have never had a change in our Constitutional form of government, since our birth! There's no other nation on this planet, which has achieved that success. So therefore, we have a relatively superior Constitutional system—when we use it properly.
All right, now what happens then, is that we, then, as has happened to us over the past period, by conditioning—"we have to accept nuclear weapons"; "we have to accept the Cold War"; "we have to accept McCarthyism"; "we have to accept this"; "we have to accept the lessons of the Missile Crisis"; "we have to accept the assassination of Kennedy, without a due investigation"; "we have to accept the Vietnam War; it'd be unpatriotic not to." Hmm? And so forth and so on. "We have to accept the free-trade system"; "we have to accept deregulation." So, we have a lot of these things we have come to accept, as if they were axioms of our economic system, and our political system. "You have to accept the leadership of the Democratic Party." Haha! I don't "accept" that axiom. Therefore, I'm not a slave to that axiom. I'm not going to be a dummy on somebody's string, like a puppet. I cut that string, and express my freedom.
The problem therefore, in economics, what has killed us, is, if you look at the three curves I often use, as a pedagogical [Figure 1]: What has happened since 1966, when the change occurred—under the conditions of the Vietnam War, certain changes in economic policy began to be introduced, as a product of financing the Vietnam War, in the 1966-67 period. We began to shut down the space program for example. We began to shut down high-tech. We began to cut down infrastructure development. All to finance this, to balance the budget for this Vietnam War, the Indo-China War.
Since that point, since about '66, the amount of financial aggregate—that is the amount of monetary aggregate and financial aggregate, per capita and per square kilometer, of the United States, has zoomed, at an accelerating rate. The rate of inflation in the United States, is horrendous. Somebody tells you there's no inflation, they're lying: They use the Quality Adjustment Index, the so-called "hedonic index." It's fake. We have the highest rate of inflation in our history—right now. There is no zero inflation. We have negative growth! Which is concealed, by pretending that there is no inflation. So, they use fake numbers, inflated numbers, and deny we're shrinking.
All right. What people say is, "No. You have to go by monetary policy. You have to go by free trade. You have to assume 'the price is right.' "
In the same period, in order to maintain this financial growth, we've been printing money. We make the Japanese print money, overnight, to finance the U.S. markets! The stock market is a bubble! There's no value in the stock market: It's a bubble! There's no solid, physical value there. It's less and less, all the time. But, we assume, according to the axiom, the puppet strings, "No-o-o! You have to respect that! Monetary authorities tell us...." "John Snow, the idiot, tells us...." Treasury Secretary. That perennial liar, who will never come clean, no matter how long he sits in his bathtub: Alan Greenspan. Never, never tells the truth.
But, in the meantime, if you look at the physical values, per capita, per square kilometer, in the country: Look at income; look at pensions; look at power generation and distribution; look at health care; look at education; look at the physical standard of living—and look at whether or not we're using up infrastructure we invested in a long time ago: highways, bridges, power stations, educational systems, all kinds of things. Are we using things up? Yes. We have been precipitously declining.
So, monetary values are up; financial values are up. Physical values are down. (Except for a few people, who are bloodsuckers, who seem to enjoy a richer standard of living.)
So therefore, the problem is, is that when people talk about Wile E. Coyote, Wile E. Coyote is the financial aggregate: He's soaring wildly. He thinks he's crossing the chasm, with nothing underneath. And then, one day, the world looks down underneath Wile E. Coyote, and says, "There's nothing underneath there. The jobs have gone. The production's gone. We're no longer a producer nation." What happens, when the world no longer gives the United States credit? And the U.S. dollar could drop to about 30%—it's already dropped about 10-15% in the recent period, under Bush. It's already dropped. It's going to drop a lot more. The drop is already occurring—but Wile E. Coyote says, "It's not occurring." [growling out of one side of his mouth] "The U.S. economy is sound. Our policies are sound. We're not going to change our policy. We're going back to more deregulation! We didn't do enough deregulation. We already destroyed California. We're not satisfied, there's still something left to California. We're going to put Schwarzenegger in, to really destroy it!"
So, that's what the problem is. It's not just a question of perception: There's a reality here. The reality is, one day, the motor doesn't start. And, that's the time you know, that Wile E. Coyote is going to go down.
Now Krugman is not entirely unintelligent. He's pro-Democratic Party, and he has some Wall Street interests, which are not exactly stupid. But I think the analogy is tricky, in the sense that this is not something that's purely psychological. Economics is not psychological: It has a reality to it, a physical reality. Can you eat? That's a physical reality....
Memory and Knowledge vs. Rote Learning
Q: Should schools teach memory improvement techniques? I think there isn't a subject that could help more, different people in different ways, if it were started in elementary school and incorporated with every other class they take.
LaRouche: People think that memory is like a computer memory. Human memory doesn't work that way. Actually, if you think about, you often find you can regenerate memory. You may call it recalling something, but it's actually not recalling; it's that you're regenerating.
Now, the way that you develop the mind, is to practice regeneration. How do you do that? You do it, effectively, from an early age; not by teaching people multiple-choice questionnaire passing; that's the worst thing you can do for the human mind. Never subject a child to a multiple-choice questionnaire. It's the cruelest, stupidest thing you can do to a child's mind. The thing you want to develop in a child—and in any person of any age, but it starts in childhood, obviously—the quality of being able to remember efficiently starts in childhood. How does it begin?
Well, do you "do as you're told," or do you have parents and teachers and friends who put you through the process of experiencing the act of discovery of truth? First of all, you have to believe in truth, don't you? And I don't think that many people in society today really believe in truth. "It's only a matter of opinion, you know. So all I have to do is remember your opinion; I don't have to know what the truth is."
The truth is typified by the discovery of gravitation by Kepler, for example. It's a universal truth. It can not be seen, smelled, or touched by other senses. You can't see it; you can't smell it; you can't taste it; but it's there! It's gravitation. It's an effect you can not deny. Every time you see Mars appearing to loop in its orbit, annually, you realize that there is a principle out there which is not what your senses tell you is there. There is a principle called gravitation.
There are other principles, which include general physical principles, universal principles of physics. We've discovered it. You can not detect any of these principles directly with the senses. And yet they are an efficient object. And yet, by man's controlling these principles, and using them, we're able to increase the human species' potential to live!
For example: If we were baboons—which many of our Democratic Party leaders are striving to become—then the human race would never have exceeded, in the past 2 million years—under conditions of the past 2 million years—would never have exceeded several million individuals living at any one time. You have now reported on this planet, over 6 million human beings. How'd that happen? No monkey could do it. (And we have a couple of monkeys running for President, don't we? But they couldn't do it.)
How'd that happen? Mankind made discoveries, by thinking. The mind discovered a principle which was an existent in the universe before man existed. But when we discover a principle, and we apply it efficiently by our will, we change the universe. We haven't added any new principles, as such, to the universe by doing so; but we have changed the universe, because we have included another means by which the universe changes itself. And that is by the intervention of the human will.
So therefore, we develop life. You develop the conditions of human life. You develop the technologies by which we prolong life, by which we increase the productive powers of labor. And that's the basis on which we know. Things we have discovered in that way, we know.
We also know, that what we discover with our senses, we don't necessarily know. Things that we thought we saw—eyewitness reports are the most unreliable sources (outside of—not like lying) of disinformation today. "I know what I can taste and see," and so forth. That's not truth. That's an impression. How do you know when what you've seen, is true? Well, you have to be able to demonstrate it. How? You have to show that your knowledge of some principle, applied in the universe, will actually make an improvement which otherwise could not exist. Then you know it's true. If it doesn't work, either the principle is not true, or you've misunderstood how to use it.
So therefore, if this kind of development in the child, of the ability to discover universal principles—and a child starts with many kinds of discoveries which they have to make in infancy; they're discovering all the time; babies are discovering at a very rapid rate under normal conditions. You may not see it, but you'll see the effect, of how a child, from one day to the other, may change in character. How in a few weeks, a child may change in his whole development and character. Those of you who have been parents know this. How in the early years, a child changes rapidly. And very slight changes in conditions, will accelerate that ability of the child to change. Favorable conditions will encourage the child to make breakthroughs; and you recognize them as breakthroughs.
Now therefore: Memory should be the ability to rediscover what you do not have in mind. Not a memory of an experience—yes, that too—but to be able to rediscover something you had forgotten, when you need to remember it.
So memory has a characteristic of not being digital, but more holographic. Look, your brain cells are dying all the time. And when you begin to get in bad condition, your brain cells degenerate more rapidly than you replace them. So you are constantly regenerating and replacing brain cells. So where is the memory stored? The memory exists in the form of a kind of holographic design, which is a process. And as you develop that ability, as you concentrate on discovering principles rather than trying to memorize experience, your ability to retain your powers of memory increases.
So if you want to teach memory in school, you have to start that way. And people, when they get older, can actually fight against the tendency to lose memory, by the same method. So what we should teach people, is that. Because when people start to lose memory, it becomes a problem for them. So why do we teach it? A lot of them teach it by one, two, and three. But the key thing here, is always start with universal principles. Always start with the difference between a human being and an animal. I like animals, but I know they're animals. I know the animals like me; they participate in me; they make demands up me. They feel that they have a right to control me. The dog that scratches the door, or the puppy who whines, or the cat who meows or does something else to let you know they want you to do something. But we're human beings, we're not animals. And that's the way the thing works.
Brainwashing and the Drug Culture
Q: My question is very related to that same question. It's more related to brainwashing. What is brainwashing? Why is it so prevalent? It's very important for our [young] generation to develop means to combat this. And you brought up this idea of a thought-object, and how we can have ideas in mind, with clarity, which you can recall and can use. How do you create an idea in your mind that you can refer to in a sense that is continually developing?
LaRouche: That's why I did what I did with the youth movement which we started developing several years ago, with a limited number of people in California. And the question is: You have to build a nucleus which is self-regenerating. So we did develop a self-regenerating nucleus of youth, and they spread their influence, without my intervention, themselves.
They key thing here, was to tap what I think is important. We're coming to a generation, part of a youth generation—and people who are older should think about this, think about it very seriously—the Baby-Boomer generation, in general, reject their own children. And the children know it. Now, the children have become young adults. They live in a terrible society, which the Baby-Boomer generation has largely created for them; a society of drugs.
Now, people will be shocked about drug problems. But they're often, as Baby Boomers, not shocked like young people today. Because young people today are living in a culture which is shaped by poverty and by a drug culture. The characteristic of the drug culture is the teacher in the school, that forces the child to take Ritalin, or worse, Prozac. Several years worth of Prozac will destroy a personality, biologically. I've seen it.
So we're living in a drug culture. People say, "You've got a problem? Take a psychotropic drug of some kind. Manage yourself with drugs." The children who've grown up now are imprisoned in a mass drug culture, which is probably rotating around some Rave dance scene, some gigantic Rave dance. These young people, if they're not themselves victimized by drug usage, have friends that are on the verge of destruction, and often suicide, as a result of the drug culture. This is aggravated by the fact that this is a "no-future" society, now; and therefore, suicide tends to be an "out" from a society which is painful, and which gives you no purpose for living as a human being.
So therefore, given this case, we have the young people looking at parents who have accepted this way of doing things—the post-industrial pleasure society, the consumer society, as opposed to productive society—they're not offended when factories close down. They say, "I can get it cheaper from China, I don't care if the factory closes down." They go to Wal-Mart's, and they say, "I buy at Wal-Mart's, because it's cheaper." Well, don't you know that Wal-Mart's depends largely on slave labor from poor people, who are moved into this, just like cattle? Don't you know that the Wal-Mart cheap prices are based on American companies closing up, and shutting down their employment, to buy their goods from other countries, where cheap labor produces them, as in China—not the United States? Do you know that when Wal-Mart moves into a county, there's a disaster for much of the county, in terms of business and employment?
This is the kind of society, the kind of culture—and when you have a generation, which says, "No, it's better, because I get more for my money." And you get young people who are faced with a society which is degenerating in this way, with a special kind of drug-culture envelope, which grips it. With the stink of suicide increasing among people, juvenile suicide or adolescent suicide trends, spilling over into people in their twenties as a result of this situation. And the older generation doesn't seem to care. It says, "Learn to get along. Learn to go along to get along."
So these young people say, they don't trust the older generation. Some of them trust me. Why? Because I understand the problem. And because I propose an answer. The answer is their own self-education. And the education has to be based on a principle of truth. And therefore, I introduced this Gauss 1799 paper ["The Fundamental Theorem of Algebra"], as an exemplary paper, because it shows not only a truth about mathematical thinking, about how the mind works, but also it gives us a connection to ancient Classical Greeks, the Pythagorean period. So, it's valuable. So you have a sense: Here are young people who see there's a gap, a break, in the culture, from one generation to the next. The Baby-Boomer generation is like something that came in between my generation and the younger generation. And the younger people feel that they're cut off from history, cut off from a meaningful connection to the past. Looking for a reality in the present, and therefore they have to have not only a sense of what truth is, but they have to locate it historically. They have to have a sense of history, the kind of thing I tried to summarize today, in my remarks today. You must give young people a true sense of history. Not history learned from the textbook, but history relived, re-experienced. You must relive the experience of generations before you. You must understand, and feel, what that mind ... was. Then you have to locate yourself, in respect to those past generations, and locate yourself in respect to the future, in that way.
So, the only way this can work, is by young people working it out among themselves. Because their parents' generation does not have the ability to understand this problem emotionally. And what proves it, is the way they vote! If the Baby-Boomer generation had any sense, they wouldn't vote the way they vote! And the only reason they're going to change, in the way I want them to change, is because the conditions of life, on the one hand, show them that their way of life doesn't work. They have to change the way they think, the way they behave. And because they're given an alternative, and the alternative comes to them in the form of seeing young people around them, who are moving ahead. And the people of the Baby Boomer generation will feel better, because they know there's a generation coming after them, and they know that the meaning of their lives can be safely entrusted to the work of the younger generation, and the grandchildren who come from them.
How Do We Find Personal Security?
Q: I'm ... from the Washington D.C. youth movement. My question stems from discussions with people in various strata of society, from people of the so-called wealthy, to those of the poor, to students, to politicians, everything from Congressmen to state representatives, laborers, union workers—and it seems you find that there's always a feeling, or a sense of security within the domain that they're functioning in, at that given point in their life, wherever it is. That if I maintain this present course of action, I'll be secure. The other guy might suffer, but my own boat is intact, my own room on the ship is sealed off from the rest of the ship.
So, in the light that obviously that pragmatism and that way of thinking is not security, and that security obviously stems from something that is the difference between man and beast, can you elaborate on what that is, to give people a better sense of what security really is?
LaRouche: Security lies in yourself, and the way it is done—that's why this youth movement, why this 18-25 working group of self-mutual education is so important. You see, the crucial thing is not really what you can know yourself. You pose the question: Can you cause what you know to be replicated in the mind of another person?
Now, so therefore, the second aspect of being human, is not really the individual mind's ability to see the laws of the universe, as an individual observer, intervening in the universe. But how do we, as society, interact with one another, to cooperate, in bringing about the application of these principles that we require for our benefits. Therefore, if you can cause another person, as in dialogue, as in, say, you've got a bunch of young people who are batting it around—like the Gauss question, which is still troublesome for many people—and as one gets the idea, and tries to communicate the idea to another, there's an interchange. And then there's a process of affirmation where they're able to affirm for one another, and demonstrate, that they actually do understand the same idea or principle, and are able to give examples of application, which shows they really know what they're talking about, and they mean the same thing.
So, when you get to that point, and you're able to communicate ideas, and to affirm them, as being valid, by replicating them in relations with others, and think of practical applications which show that you both have understood a principle which is right, and which works, then you have a sense of identity, of personal identity, as a human being, because you know that what you believe about yourself, is true. About the powers of your mind, you believe it's true. And that gives you the kind of confidence on which life is built.
If you take the same questions, and you take them out into social practice generally, in society, and you see people on the streets, who don't know this, who don't have a secure sense of what truth is, who don't have a secure sense of personal identity, who depend, like a so-called other-directed type, on borrowing their identity, in the favorable opinion of them by others, and therefore, they're controlled by what they think other people think about them. And the first thing is to be free of being dependent upon what you think other people think about you.
It's what you're able to think about yourself, and know it's true, that's important.
But this occurs only through a social process, in which you're able to collaborate with people, and discover that you really do discover the same things. They are practical. You understand one another, and now you understand yourself, because you now can see the inside of yourself, through the eyes of other people, in this kind of social relationship.
And that's why I insisted upon this particular form of the youth movement. It has to be 18 to 25 people, involved in these kinds of groups. The same kind of thing that's recommended for a high school classroom, or for a college classroom. Not mass classes. They stink. A lecture hall is fine—they have a function. But the actual learning work of education, occurs in the small classroom, with not more than 18 to 25 people, more or less than that. Because it's large enough to provoke interaction, and it's small enough that everybody has a chance to participate.
And that's what we're trying to do. It's this method; and if you understand it as a method—which should be what happens in schools from primary grades; good teachers would do exactly that. A school should do that. You should never—as I tell people, you should never test anybody with a multiple-choice question. You should throw the teacher out, flunk the teacher, if they give it. And flunk the school if they order it.
What I would do, on an advanced level, as I've told people many times, and I've done it—at the end of a semester, you give a questionnaire, with three hours to work it out. Five questions, of which you can select three of your choice. These questions will require you to consider things you have not considered up till now, but what you have learned, should have prepared you to attack and see a solution to the problem.
And that is the best way to test the teacher. Has the teacher of the class been able to communicate to the students a basis of knowledge, by which you can give them five questions, which they've never faced before, in a classroom setting? Let them choose three. And work them out within that three-hour period. If they can succeed in approximating a good answer, then the teacher of the course, has succeeded.
And it's the same kind of principle which should prevail, the same approach, the same concept, should prevail, in all education. And should prevail in every form of education, including social communication in general....
Restoring Quality Health Care
Q: Very proud, and glad to see you, Mr. LaRouche. As you know, I was there in India while you were there, in 1943 and '44, and people were making less than 10 cents a day picking tea. I was there when Mahatma Gandhi buried himself for seven days, trying to get his people to come together, and not to fight British people with rocks and sticks. They had to fight non-violent.
And I have a couple of questions, and two comments. I want to know the difference between democracy, and the way this world is going today, which is, what you call it when the rich get rich, and the poor get poorer—all right, I'll think of it in a minute. But jobs and health. My son was born in England, and I did not have to buy any milk, juices, and little baby things, for seven months, eight months or more, in England. Most of the world has free medicare, even in Poland, and other places I'm sure you know of. And here, it's so hard, and so rough, to get health care, for elder people and the most sick people. My neighbor I take to the hospital, and different places every week, who has been operated on, and it costs so much money. Most people that are poor, can't even get in the hospitals, unless they've got insurance.
What is it going to take for us to get Medicare in this country? And the difference between democracy, and ... no, not fascism, capitalism? All right.
LaRouche: First of all, you're a veteran. Okay, therefore you should be able to get through the Veterans Hospital system, the care that's coming to you, as a veteran. You should, should be able to.
Q: Should is right.
LaRouche: Now, let's look at what reform I'm going to make, as I've declared before, in the first hour I'm in the White House.
Number one, D.C. General Hospital is reopened as a public hospital, full-service public hospital. And this of course affects all portions of D.C., but affects especially the poor around Washington, D.C. People are being killed, by the shutting down of D.C. General Hospital.
Fine, You have the same kind of problem in other parts of the country. Now, what is a reasonable health-care policy?
First of all, a Hill-Burton policy, which we had until 1973, in the post-war period. We also had functioning veterans' hospitals, until we began to cut them down, in the 1970s. So that you had veterans' hospital extension services, and so forth, around the country. Also you had the veterans' care through the public health service, which would acknowledge the fact that you were a veteran, and therefore, if there wasn't a veterans' hospital there, you could get the service through the public health service.
Now, what we're going to do is this: We're going to go back to Hill-Burton. It's going to be a job, because we've destroyed many of the health facilities we had. They've been destroyed by the HMO system. It's going to be put back.
It's very simple. You take a few pages of legislation, which I could submit to the Congress, and if we had won the election, which means we will have won the House of Representatives, if the President will carry the majority of the House of Representatives on his coattails. He will also carry a great number of the people of the third of the Senate being re-elected at that same time. He also, if he acts quickly, will have an authority in the first days in office—and it has to start right from the first hour of the first day—which establishes his relationship to the American people, as a President. My particular act is that: the health-care question. Because the people of America do not trust their government, largely because of health-care questions. You can't trust your government, if you can't trust it with your life.
So, therefore, ... we go back to a system where we're committed to provide full health care, as Hill-Burton did. What we've got to do, is we've got to put the doctors back to work. A lot of them have been put out of work, by malpractice insurance charges. That has to be controlled. We can't put the doctors out of business! We've put many out of business, with malpractice insurance—they couldn't afford to practice. Or they quit areas of practice which are essential, because they're considered high risk, and they couldn't afford the insurance rates.
All right, so we have to put them back to work. But we're going to have to have a system under which a person falls down in the street, or needs care—and it used to be that in New York City, they would say, "Call a cop!" And then the police would, quick, call the ambulance, the guy would be taken to the nearest emergency center, trauma center I guess they call them today, and the person would be treated, in an emergency center, or what we call a trauma center. Then the person, once they've been treated, will require post-emergency care, or at least after-trauma observation. So, you put them into a bed someplace, a hospital bed. You may then transfer them to a hospital, from this temporary place.
Now, about that time, somebody would have walked in, and said, "Who's going to pay for all this?" If the person had the means, didn't have insurance, they would pay for it, up to a certain point, where it became one of these catastrophe cases. Or, they might have Blue Cross or Blue Shield, or some other kind of insurance, that would cover it. Then, you might get down to the bottom of the line, this person has no means, to pay for much of anything of the care, or provide the medication, for the person in need. What do you do? You provide it, anyway.
Therefore, you don't need an elaborate health-care scheme. Tell Hillary Clinton to get out of the way, we know how to provide health care. We don't need a dictionary, to define a law on health care. The point is, those who need treatment, shall be cared for. The public health shall be defended. Those who can afford to pay, should pay part, if they can afford to pay. We'll build up our hospitals, our public hospitals, our private hospitals, voluntary hospitals. We'll build up our clinics. We'll build up our medical practice. We will allow the physician to decide, and nobody else, what care the patient requires.
If the patient does not like what one doctor recommends, the patient will have a right to go to another physician, to get a comparative second opinion. Or even a third. This person is going to be treated, and treated properly.
Now, instead of trying to figure out who is going to pay how much, on what fee, and such, let's cut it out. Let's say that there are contributory and other kinds of health-care plans which may work. Okay, fine. But in the case it doesn't work, they're still going to be cared for. And it's cheaper to do it that way, by eliminating all of that needless paperwork, and computerwork, by a bunch of idiots, where accountants are practicing medicine, rather than physicians.
It's cheaper! It was cheaper before.
Democracy and Capitalism
Now, on the question of democracy, and the question of capitalism. Well, it's very simple. You have two aspects of the national economy. Most people don't know either one. But I'll explain the two of them.
Number one, is we have all of the territory, and all of the people. That is, there's no "private" involved in that—all of the territory, and all of the people, regardless. So, therefore, the first thing we have to be concerned with, is the infrastructure. The infrastructure of transportation, mass transportation, water management, power generation and distribution, education, general health care, and so forth. These are things that are required, which no particular private interest is responsible for. Who's responsible? The government. Who's the government? The government is the national government; the government is the state government; the government is the municipal government, or the equivalent, or the county government.
So, each, in a division of labor, which is traditional for our system of government, will take its traditional area of responsibility, for these kinds of things. Basic economic infrastructure. Such as education, local health care, sanitation, things of that sort, which traditionally belong to the local community; which are supported, the local communities are supported and assisted by the states.
The states are supported and assisted by the Federal government, which is the only agency which has a real power, legally, to create credit. So, if we need to create credit, we will create it with the Federal government, under Federal control. We will supply the credit through private banks, or through the local state governments, or the local government, to where it's needed. Therefore, you will develop a national infrastructure, which determines the structure within which production and other things occur.
Then we will make laws which encourage useful forms of investment. Now, investment means, not money, though it does involve money; but it does not mean money as such. Investment is physical, For example, China is building a large water system, including the Three Gorges Dam, and other things. These are investments, physical investments, which have a physical capital life-cycle of 25 to 50 years. In other words, you're investing for something that you will use up, or have to replace, over the course of 25 to 50 years. National rail systems are of the same character. Power systems, power generation and distribution systems, are systems of a generation, or two generations. So, therefore, you invest for one or two generations.
Now, you can divide some of this between government investment, and private investment. If it's private investment, you either have Federal laws; if it involves states, then you have a cooperation between the Federal government and the state governments. We used to create public utilities, under Roosevelt. You have public utilities, say, a power station. A public utility was created for that area; it was regulated. People could invest their savings in these public utilities, with relative impunity. People who could not afford to take big risk, could invest at a low yield, but secure savings for their old age, or contingencies, or whatever, they could invest in these things. We created these facilities. We recycled savings, encouraged people to save, and so forth. Thank regulation. We want low interest rates, we want a basic interest rate of 1 to 2%, throughout the nation. That way people can invest. We want investment tax credits, for people who invest in creating useful industries, we want them to get a benefit of investing in making that business, rather than taking it out and spending it all at once, on things like drugs, or whatnot—fast women, or whatever.
So, that sort of thing. You have two aspects. You have the relationship between the Federal, state, and local governments, as one integral unit, that are responsible for the total territory of the land. And then you have the private sector.
Now, why do you want the private sector?
The private sector is characteristic of human beings, as opposed to monkeys. See, in monkeys, you don't want a private sector. That's where the Soviet system made a big mistake. You want the individual entrepreneur, who uses his or her mind, to make innovations which are useful for humanity. Like the machine-tool engineer, or tradesman, who goes into a machine-tool shop, and develops a machine-tool business of usefulness, using his ingenuity, and that of his associates, in that firm. You want people working in those firms, who are contributing their ingenuity, their personal ingenuity, to making things better, designing things better.
So, therefore, we encourage the private sector, of individual entrepreneurial type, and similar activity, as much as possible. That's where the creativity will tend to come from. From universities, and from this part of the private sector.
So, we have a division of labor between the public sector, which involves about 50% of the total economy of any well-managed economy, the state sector—. If you want to privatize the entire economy, you're an idiot, as George Bush does.
What you want is a private sector which, unlike the present incumbent President of the United States, is able to think....
Policy for Iraq
Q: ... I'm precinct delegate for the 14th Congressional District. I have really a couple questions I'd like to ask, Of a positive nature.
As the next elected President, of the people, by the people, and for the people, what would you do to stop the situation currently in Iraq, from turning into another Vietnam? I myself am a Vietnam veteran, 91st Airborne Division. And how soon would it be, before you would actually send our troops home? That's the first question.
The second question is: As President, what would you do to stop the flow of our jobs currently being subcontracted to other countries, such as in the area of telecommunications, and other industries, thereby creating massive unemployment in our cities right here? What would you do to curb that? Those are my two questions.
LaRouche: On the question of Iraq, of course, I'm for the immediate withdrawal of the U.S. forces from Iraq. There are several reasons for this.
First of all, U.S. troops in Iraq are now absolutely useless, because of the crimes that have been committed by our government; that we have lost all credibility in the situation. So I wouldn't want a single American in that area, at this time.
Therefore, we have to do something about replacing them. Now, before Paul Bremer went in there, you had this crowd of neo-cons around Cheney. At that time, the previous occupying force, the general who was in charge of it earlier, had proposed to employ the Iraqi army as an engineering force for the self-reconstruction of Iraq's economy. That was, to hire them and pay them to function as an engineering force. This is about a couple million people—who would then do the work of rebuilding the Iraqi economy, or the principal amount of work. They got rid of them, dumped them. We could have come out clean; they dumped them. And when they dumped them, and put Bremer in with the other mandate, a bunch of corrupt swine, who took that thing over—wanted to steal, that's all they wanted to do—we created a situation which has now led to asymmetric warfare in Iraq.
You have over 2 million people in Iraq, who are trained as experienced, trained soldiers. They know how to fight all kinds of wars, of so-called conventional war, including irregular warfare. What you're seeing in Iraq now, is asymmetric warfare, precisely analogous to what happened in Vietnam. It's a form of warfare which will increase, with each step of folly by the United States government.
So, nothing being proposed now is going to work. Okay, if I'm President, first of all, I could get by with it because I would be trusted by the Arab world. I'm the only American political figure running for President, who would be trusted by the Arab world, who would respect my word as trustworthy, one way or the other. No other political figure of the United States, as a candidate, would be trusted. Period.
So, I could do things. Now, what I would do, and what I would have done now, I go to our friends in Europe, in particular, and our friends in the Arab world, around Iraq, especially Egypt, Syria, and so forth, and I would propose that, through the United Nations Security Council, we establish the arrangements under which Iraq was restored as a nation, rebuilt as a nation. Chiefly with Iraqi labor, and whatever facilities are required to assist that. This would be taken over by people who are not the United States, because I don't think we should be there. Our very presence there, is going to incite reaction, from the hatred we have incurred by the way we've handled the situation since 1991.
My job is to get us out of there. Now, how do you get them out of there?
My withdrawal plan is very simple: Can we get them all out overnight? Physically? No. You have to move them. How do you move them? What you do is, your policy says you're going to withdraw your troops into certain areas of concentration for withdrawal. So you pick these territories, and your little hedgehogs, and you begin to fly the troops out. And the other forces or whoever come in to assist the Iraqis, will replace them. So, effectively, on the day the orders are given, they will be effectively on the way out. The order will be believed, and it will be as rapidly as possible. They will withdraw to positions which are predetermined, as places of concentration. And they will be removed, as units. And the other nations will take over responsibility.
By getting clear of this situation, getting out of the mess we created, we will then free us to deal with other problems, in other parts of the world. If I do it, it will simply increase the confidence of the other parts of the world in my Presidency. And the benefits we will get from that, will be tremendous. We're going back to be respected and loved again as a nation.
End the Export of Jobs
[On the job question], no, this is not going to happen in this country. We're not going to export jobs. What we're going to do, is we're going to go back to a protectionist system, of the type we had before deregulation, before 1971. We are going to protect our jobs. That does not mean we're going to fight trade wars with other countries. It means that if somebody is going to invest in the United States, in a manufacturing facility we need, or something else we need, and this person has to make a capital investment, or employ people at a certain wage level to get that job done properly, that job is going to be protected, by trade policy. It's going to be protected by U.S. financial policy, by credit policy, bearing on the banking system. The United States government will obviously have to create a fund. The fund will be loaned through a bank, or the banking system. This will be earmarked funds of the type that Kennedy was talking about, in terms of this investment tax credit. In other words, a manufacturer who's credible, the banker thinks is credible, ... we think is credible, wants to invest in a certain kind of development, we will encourage that. We will put up some of the funds, through U.S. credit, that this man can borrow, to have them get started in this new venture. We will surround that with protection on wage rates. We will raise the minimum wage rate in the United States. Because we have to have a minimum wage rate at which people can live!
It's that simple. We will make that possible by protectionist policies, which protect the level of wages paid in the United States. It will be a reverse of what Wal-Mart has done. We're also going to have to say: Look at our requirements, for example, in infrastructure, which will be our big driver in this area. We need an energy investment, a so-called energy investment, we need, over the next 25 years, we need trillions of dollars invested in production and distribution of power. We need a comparable amount, in large-scale water management. We have the western United States, which has never been developed, in terms of water management. We have North Dakota, which used to be able to grow a crop once in seven years, not one lean year, but six lean years, and when the rain came, the farmers could make a profit. The rest of the time they would tend to go bankrupt.
So we would develop this part of the country, which is particularly beyond the 20 inch rainfall line, toward the coastal range, and the so-called Great American Desert and its boundaries, and develop it as an area for new cities, new development, done in cooperation with Canada, if they would agree, and with Mexico. We'll develop the United States in this way. And we develop our school system, our hospitals, our health care systems. We develop the essential infrastructure of the United States. Transportation.
High-Speed Transport
Oh, for example, let's take Detroit. Detroit's interesting.
I was just in St. Louis. Now, St. Louis has had a Detroit-style catastrophe, probably worse than that. They've lost the aircraft industry, which used to be centered around there: McDonnell Douglas, and so forth. It used to be a hub center, for air transport, It's dying.
Now, it has in that area, the potential of that kind of manufacturing. Well, the United States has lost its rail system. I intend to give it back its general trunk rail system. Now, when we built the transcontinental system, which unified this nation, as one nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific, we started from St. Louis, and we built a rail system, or a complex of rail systems, out of the St. Louis hub, which used to be a hub for the wagon trains, before then. So we built that.
Now, we're going to have to build a high-speed transport system, for freight and passengers, from a hub located in St. Louis, to the West Coast. It'll go through the North, middle, and South, as we always did before. But this time, it'll be magnetic levitation—not necessarily the one that's used in Germany, but the best magnetic levitation system we can devise, based on the experience of other countries. We develop the United States.
We would use St. Louis as an assembly point for the development of this system.
Now, let's go to Detroit—what do you do here? We have an automobile industry which has outlived its usefulness in its present form. So, therefore, now we have to take the production capability of Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, and use that productive potential before we lose it all together, in devising a new variety of product required. Well, what can Detroit do? Detroit, the area, used to have engineering facilities, machine-tool capabilities. It was not the automobile manufacturers that were essential to the industry; it was the machine-tool vendors who supplied the components of the system. This is the area where a lot of the jobs have gone out. We now get imported assemblies from poor countries, for automobiles, rather than making the components ourselves.
You used to be able to go to a store, and buy a part, a replacement part, for an automobile. You can't do that any more. You have to buy the whole blasted assembly. Because the manufacturer doesn't know what's inside it. All he knows is what the assembly does, in terms of setting up the standards. Maybe three companies overseas, have some idea of what's inside that assembly. We don't have it. Or at least it's not reliable.
So, therefore, we have to rebuild that, and we have to orient our production capacity to national priorities, the way we went for the aircraft industry before, the automobile industry before then, and the railroads. So, now we need a national transport system, which will do all kinds of things. We have too many people using superhighways as parking lots, every day. Family life is being wasted on parking lots called superhighways. We have all these crazy toll systems. More toll systems all the time—it's taking the toll of our population.
So, what we need is, we need rapid transit system, as a way of reintegrating or reconstructing, our economy. We need a way that people can walk out the front door, walk a short distance, get to some kind of light rail, or some other system, and get to their destination without having to go through a traffic jam. So, therefore we have a great need in this country, for developing a new national transportation grid, which integrates high-speed freight, and passenger traffic, which integrates it in terms of local communities, high-speed transit systems, to get people off the parking lots, highways, in order to make it possible for people to live in a community, and have efficient access to their schools, to the place they work, and so forth. We need that.
So, therefore, this area must be rebuilt. It must be rebuilt based on its existing capabilities, redesigned and applied to a new mission. And the mission is a national transportation system.
Automobiles were a transportation system; we also have other kinds of transportation systems. We're going to do it. And by this kind of method, we can address the problem.
The Passion for Discovery
Q: ... I'm been actually wrestling with this idea of love, as a conceptual object, and expressing it as a rational emotion, and how this can be developed in Classical composition. I was wondering if you can comment.
LaRouche: Well, it's a question of passion, as I've dealt this in this article I've written, which should be published fairly soon. People think of passion as animal passion. And Romanticism, in terms of art, is based on that: A fellow trying to beat his brains out, with a drum, for example, with a drumbeat, is an example of passion. It's not art; it's something else—it's a drug. As a matter of fact, it does have drug-like effects on the brain. So, it's not good for your mind, among other things. This constant drumbeat.
But great art, as great science, evokes a special kind of passion, the passion of discovery. A child who is elated by making a valid discovery of a problem. A little child, suddenly elated by making a discovery. Repeating it over and over again, because this act of discovery was such a pleasure to that child. That is an act of love!
Now, when your relationship with other people has that same characteristic, it's a characteristic of love. When you have a sense of possessing somebody else, that's a relationship between a bull and a cow. And that's not love. Contrary to what some people believe in Washington.
So, in any case, the cultivation of the art of loving, lies in the development of the personality, and never losing the beauty of seeing a young child make a discovery. And where the discovery brings tears of joy to the parents, in witnessing that child making that discovery. And what happens in our society, is that quality is lost along the way. And therefore, people don't have it any more. The people who have been married for a long time, who have not become Baby Boomers yet, and therefore tend to stay married—you know marriage is the anteroom of boredom for the Baby Boomer; you don't change the baby, you change your spouse. But, in actual loving with older people, older couples, comes with this sense of joys that they share, and the joys are the same quality of passion that you have where parents have tears of joy in seeing a child make an actual discovery, as a child.
But what we miss in society, is we often lose a sense of what passion is, good passion is, healthy passion is. And passion is a sense of lovingness, toward mankind, toward solving problems, toward seeing children develop, seeing the poor get out of poverty, seeing a beautiful community emerge from a slum—these are acts of love. And this is what is important.
And people should not search for some other kind of love. They should concentrate on searching for that kind of love, and if you have to wait to find it, it's well worth the wait.
