LAROUCHE TO LITTLE ROCK MINISTERS:
'I'm Trying To Save
The Democratic Party'
LaRouche addressed members of the Christian Ministerial Alliance of Little Rock on May 10, accompanied by LaRouche Youth Movement organizers from Houston who had been campaigning in Arkansas. We excerpt two significant questions from the ministers, and LaRouche's answers.Q: The amount of money that is given now to the major parties by the large corporations, obviously has to have some influence. Is there anything we can do?
LaRouche: I think you have to get out with the people. My disappointment with the candidacies now, obviously I'm trying to save the Democratic Party, and I'm trying to get as many Republicans to come over as possible. And some leading Republicans are—would do that. But they do not find the present Democratic candidacy as being much worth jumping over for. Kerry, frankly, has become a disappointment to many people.
In a time like this, you can not do, as the parties have done so far, and the candidates, they have said nothing, publicly, of any relevance to the major issues of our time. This war in Iraq, for example, is a fraud. It was a fraud from the beginning. I knew it, all the people who were in Washington, around the world, on the inside, knew it as I knew it. It was a fraud. It was done by Cheney and others, of his group, perpetrating a fraud on the government, which induced the United States, with the complicity of the Congress, to do an illegal thing, in violation of our Constitution, to go to an unnecessary, unwarranted, unjustified war.
We're now in that mess. The person who's qualified to lead this country, and to inspire our people, and our people know it, our people—you know, what's a typical Reservist, or a typical National Guard person, you know what they are. They're weekend warriors. They're poor people, by and large. They've got a job, on weekends, as weekend warriors, to pick up some extra money, which they needed, and hope to promote the influence, and get a more favorable situation in society. They're suddenly stuck over there, without adequate equipment, in a war that doesn't mean anything, a war they don't understand. And they're dying. And when they're shot, and injured, they don't get medical care any more, because the government's saving money on medical care.
We know this. All of us who are in Washington, all of us who are in the centers of power in Washington and around the world, we know this. Why doesn't somebody simply say that, as a candidate, to the American people? If you don't tell the truth to the American people, they don't believe you. They say, "It's another politician. It's another bunch of bunk." That's what our problem is.
See, we don't think about winning the confidence of the voter. So, the voter doesn't turn out to vote, of his or her own volition, by March. The voter has to be induced to come out and vote. The voter is induced that they should not vote their conscience; they should vote the way their neighbors tell them, or their friends tell them. And they're induced to go out to vote. We have the lowest percentile of voter participations in the world. Very few—I've seen 15%, in primary campaigns, 15% of the vote turns out. The voters have no interest in the candidates. They don't believe in anything. They believe, maybe if they go along with the party, maybe they'll get something more from the politician, but they don't have a burning concern that moves them to vote.
Now, we know from the civil rights movement, we've seen the difference. We saw what happened. The have-nots, who had nothing, were the first to come out and support the efforts, King's efforts in Selma and elsewhere, the have-nots. You know how this came out. We had a movement, and the country was changed by a movement. In my view, a movement is the proper way in which politics ought to be conducted. We ought to have great understanding, so the great issues of our time, and the individual citizens participating in that discussion, should make their decision, based upon a sense of a movement to some kind of national purpose, as we've had in the past. We don't have it.
So, we have made ourselves dependent upon getting large amounts of money, to get voters out.
Now, I know it takes some money to run a campaign. But the amount of money that's being spent, on advertising, and buying votes, most of the money, is a pure waste. We don't need the money. We find ourselves dependent upon the money, because the parties say we need the money for the big advertising. But you go from area to area, and nobody's doing any real organizing around concepts and issues as such. They're organizing around, "Join the party, support the party." But they're not saying anything about the issues of our time.
My view is that if we do an effective job in addressing the people, and conveying to them what the trouble is, put it in terms they can understand, discuss with them. They don't really know much about this. They know the effects. They want to know what's going on. You don't tell them. The problem is, they're given bunk. I've watched these campaigns, I agonize over Kerry. That is, I'm determined to get the Democratic Party in, against what we've got now. And I suffer over this thing, because I see them doing nothing that should be done to mobilize the vote.
The voters in this country do not want this war. They do not want a depression. They want a way out. But there's nothing being said about it. So, the problem is not the money of the large corporations. We've turned the parties and the elections over to the large corporations, to the large financier interests, because we have not done our job.
Real Democracy?
Q: I hear what you're saying, and it seems to me, it's going to be a long process, to transform the mindset of a whole lot of people in this country, to bring about the kind of real democracy that you're talking about. My concern, and I think the concern of a whole lot of people in this country, is, in just a few months, we must make a decision about four more years, or a change. That's my, my—it consumes me. What can I do? What can we do? Those who believe that the present leadership has taken us in the wrong direction—and if it will continue to take us in the wrong direction, it will not only bring this country low, but most of the rest of the world. So, my concern is, what can we do, and that's why I've been listening for some words as to what this movement that you speak about—where is it, and what?....
LaRouche: Let's put it this way. If George Bush is re-elected, this country doesn't have a chance. Because what's behind that—and behind Cheney, and what's behind the people around him, and the people who back him, like George Shultz, and George Soros, and people like that—is a movement which is the same movement we defeated in World War II. It was called fascism then.
This fascism never took over this country; it came close. Roosevelt saved us, and Roosevelt led the United States in the impossible job of protecting the world against fascism.
However, on the day that Roosevelt died, that very day, certain rightwing forces in the United States, which had been sympathetic to Hitler before, moved in, through Harry S Truman, whom they owned; and they put us into a right-wing terror which some of us may remember. We thought we were going towards something good with Franklin Roosevelt, and then he died, and then the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and then Truman came back and everybody was terrified of J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI.
We turned, the people who fought in the war, turned into stinking cowards, my generation. Most were turned into stinking cowards, and did as they were told, and told their children not to say the wrong thing, not to be seen with the wrong people. So, we became corrupt, and these guys who had been behind Hitler, who had only gone against him in the United States and Britain because they didn't want a German, they wanted an English-speaking Hitler, Roosevelt was able to utilize that to mobilize the world to defeat Hitler....
What is happening now is, Cheney is not committed to a war in Iraq: Cheney's committed to a war around the world, with nuclear weapons! It's on the record. That's what he and his whole crowd are for. [Bush] is the Mortimer Snerd of the White House, run by Cheney. He sits on Cheney's knee, and Cheney tells him what to say. These guys are the enemy.
Now we have a chance. We have a chance to win. Do we have a guarantee to win? No. History says you never get a guarantee to win. What you have a guarantee to do, is to fight the good fight, better, and be on the right side in the good fight.
Many people have died, in fighting the good fight in history. Christ died, in fighting the good fight in history. We don't give up because people die. We give up in the fight. We conduct the fight because we know that by doing it, means we might succeed. If we don't do it, our descendants will lose, and lose much more than they have now. We fight because we have to fight. People don't like war. People don't like killing. They don't like to see their neighors shot down, they don't like to get in those kinds of conflicts, and they only do so justly, when they have no alternative but to do that.
I mean, the civil rights fight's a perfect example of that. We won something in the civil rights fight. We won something. We won something big. With a few courageous people, like Martin on the night before he was shot by J. Edgar's friends, by the right-wing; he laid down his life. And his dream? His dream lives on. It's a good dream. The dream is more real than any of the events that defeated him, because that's what we'll continue to fight for. And we do it because we have to. We don't do it because we've got a guarantee, a contract in advance.
Yes, I can do more than anybody else in fighting these guys. The fact that I'm standing alive here today, demonstrates that. They came after me to kill me, a couple of times, and I mean at a high level. It was stopped, partly because I had some friends in the government, as well as outside. So, the fact that I can stand here today, with you, means we have a chance. And all I'm saying is, let's work at it.
