LYNDON AND HELGA LAROUCHE
ON THE LAROUCHE SHOW
'This Is One of the
Great Moments In History—
And One of the Most Dangerous'
Lyndon LaRouche and Helga Zepp-LaRouche were the guests for 90 minutes on the Independence Day weekend edition of The LaRouche Show internet radio broadcast on July 3. The program was hosted by Harley Schlanger, and panelists included LaRouche Youth Movement leaders Cody Jones in Los Angeles and Michelle Lerner in Philadelphia. The audio archive of this show is also available.
Harley Schlanger: We have a very special edition of The LaRouche Show. It's July 3, 2004, and I'm Harley Schlanger. I'll be your today. The LaRouche show is on the web every Saturday, from 3-4 Eastern Time, and we will have time for questions. And let me just tell you how excited we are with this show. Tomorrow's July Fourth, it's Independence Day: The commemoration of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Our guests today are the two people who know more about the significance of that day, and its continuing implications, than anyone else living on the planet. It was July Fourth, 228 years ago, when our Founding Fathers made a decisive break, both political and philosophically, with the British Empire. The two people who are our guests today, on this special show, are Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, a statesman and economist; and his wife, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute and the chairman of the BüSo party in Germany.
We also have a youth panel with us today, Cody Jones, who's a founding member of the LaRouche Youth Movement, and is an elected Democratic Party official; he's here in Los Angeles. And we'll have Michelle Lerner from Philadelphia.
We'll also take some questions and e-mails from the audience.
But now, I want to get straight to the heart of the matter, the mobilization necessary to reverse the plunge of human civilization into a deep, and brutal dark age.
Lyn and Helga, welcome to the show.
Lyndon LaRouche: Thank you.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Hello!
Harley Schlanger: Now, Lyn, let's start with the importance of your campaign for the Democratic nomination for President. Just a little more than three weeks from now, the Democratic Party, presumably, will open a convention in Boston. And, you're not only still a candidate, but you're leading the fight among Democrats for an open convention. Why do we need an open convention?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, the first thing is, the world crisis, which is now existing—which is potentially a terminal crisis of civilization, unless we change some things—that this world crisis is, essentially, a conflict between two systems: The American System of political economy, which was the basis for the Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt reconstruction of the United States from the depths of the Depression, which had been caused by the British system; and, on the other hand, the British system, which is the system of central banking institutions, private, independent central banking institutions of Europe, and much of the rest of the world.
Now, even though the American System is not functioning, it's part of our Constitutional structure. It's a Constitution which is the longest-lasting in world history. That is, no constitution of any country has lasted since, as long as our Constitution, since that time. The British system is still the opposition.
What is crashing is the British system, and the United States system is crashing, because it is integrated, ever since 1971-72 especially, with the British system. We've now reached the point, that we have to make a change, in the United States in particular. That change has to go back to the American System, by way of using the kinds of precedents which Franklin Roosevelt set, especially over the period from 1933 to 1944. That would work for the United States.
However, we are not a lonely nation. We exist in a world, with a lot of other nations. Therefore, our relations with other states are indispensable, especially our relations with Europe. But, Europe, with its constitutional systems presently, can not take leadership, and could not save itself, because it's in a system which is doomed systemically, and can not be revived. However, if the United States takes the role of leadership, in changing our system back to the American System, by using the precedents of Roosevelt for getting out of a depression, like the Hoover Depression earlier, then, our leadership would engage Europe, and would engage other countries in the world, and we could start a rebuilding process, once again.
So, the question is: What is going to prevail? Nothing is going to come from Europe. Nothing is going to come from Asia, or anyplace else, that's going to solve this world problem. Because no other part of the world has the Constitution structure, to set the fuse off that will start a recovery. Only the United States. The United States is not functioning in that way now. As a matter of fact, we're on the edge of collapsing. Therefore, if the United States makes its change, in policy, and engages Europe and other parts of the world, in this change, the world will make it, and the United States will make it.
Now, we've come to a period, thus, in which, there's no way of fixing the existing system, either in the United States or in Europe. There's no modest reform. There's no slight change in this policy, this financial policy, tax policy, etc., budgetary policy. Nothing will work. We're now at a point, that all the existing ideas, which are presently accepted by the Democratic National Committee, for example, as well as the ideas that are associated with the Bush Administration, these ideas can not work. And no reform in the context of those ideas, would prevent the planet from going into the deepest dark age, you can imagine.
So, we're at the center. And I'm at the center. So therefore, the relationship of what Helga's trying to do in Europe, and what I'm trying to do in the United States, is crucial. If I can get this thing going in the United States, if I can induce a change in policy, even at this late date, then we are prepared, with our friends in Europe, to engage the European institutions, in joining us in making the world change. So therefore, we are at a point of history; history beyond belief; history that you measure in terms of millennia, not in terms of decades or Presidential terms. This is one of the great moments in history—and of the most dangerous.
Harley Schlanger: [audio loss] ...[Democratic National Committee Chairman] Terry McAuliffe, who's playing a role in trying to, not only lock down the convention, but keep you out. You issued a call for the firing of McAuliffe yesterday, and also the removal of Kerry's lead advisor, Bob Shrum. What is it McAuliffe thinks he's doing? What is he trying to do?
Lyndon LaRouche: I don't know, I think McAuliffe is a very inadequate personality. And sometimes a person who does bad things, does it because he is a morally and intellectually inadequate person. And everything I've seen in his performance, especially in the recent period, shows me a person who is morally and intellectually inadequate. Now, I've attacked him, and strongly. I had to. But, I never treated him seriously: That is, I never regarded him as a super-criminal or something; he's just a plain fool. But, unfortunately, if you put a fool in charge of a plane, a guy without a pilot's license, in a storm, you may have some trouble.
Harley Schlanger: I guess he indicated how big a fool he is, two days ago, when he told Matthew Ogden, one of the LaRouche Youth Movement members, that he sees no reason to remove Cheney.
Now, you've made the removal of Cheney a major point, including back when you first insisted that Cheney had to go, everyone said, "It'll never happen. You can't do it." Well, Cheney's aura of invincibility has taken quite a beating, due to your efforts. And yet, McAuliffe is saying we have to protect him.
First, I'd like to know, what is it that you knew about Cheney back then, that others either did not know, or chose to ignore? And, can he hang onto the Vice Presidency?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, first of all, what I knew is, very simply, what people didn't want to say. It was considered impolite: Cheney's a fascist. He's not a very intelligent one. He's a fascist and a thief. His whole crowd around him are the neo-cons, so-called, followers of Leo Strauss and company—these guys are dangerous, but intellectually incompetent. I know some of them personally; they're personally incompetent. And here they are, trying to run a dictatorship, and they're running a sort of a Keystone Cops version of fascism, which is vicious, in every respect. But, they're Keystone Cops, essentially, or Keystone SS Men, probably more accurately.
So, the point was, that the United States didn't have a chance of surviving, if Cheney's in it. Europe wouldn't have a chance. Therefore, the institutions were going to be put to the test: That either they would dump this Cheney, who was actually the Svengali, for Trilby Bush, essentially. Dump this guy!
You know, Bush is—people attacking Bush is a mistake. They should attack him for what his function is, for his behavior. But, they have to realize, he's a mental case! According to some reporters, observing his behavior a couple of years back, he's got Tourette's syndrome, among other things. The guy's a cripple, a mental cripple! And I don't think he even knows half of what he's doing or saying most of the time. He's just repeating his lines. And he has trust in this baboon, Cheney. He said, once, for example, earlier in his Presidency, "When Cheney speaks, that's me." So, he's nothing but a puppet, for ventriloquist, Svengali Cheney. And Cheney is nothing.
So therefore, the question was: If the United States is going to survive, it's going to have to dump Cheney. Not because Cheney is that important, otherwise, but because by putting him in a non-functioning part, in the works of the system, we assure the system is going go down. As we've seen, for example, in Iraq, where he created this mess, with his lying and so forth. So, the point was, get rid of him.
I realized, from the beginning, that the political party system, especially the Democratic Party, was morally and intellectually incapable, as a party system, of dealing with this problem. Therefore, I said, there's only one institution, in the United States, which is capable under our Constitution, of dealing with this kind of crisis: And that is the larger
institution of the Presidency. That is, people who are associated with the Presidency, because they were professionals or are professionals, military, intelligence, diplomatic, and so forth; or because they are retired, or associated with the Presidency as advisors over a period of decades; or are members of the Congressional organization, in the Senate and in the House, people who are longstanding stalwarts of those institutions. They have a sense of the Presidency. And working together, this kind
of moral leadership in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate, combined with the institutional processes within the Executive branch, these are the institutions which we can rely upon, if any, to rally the American people, and the institutions of the United States, around a solutions.
So, my policy was always: Cheney must go. If anyone says, "Cheney must not go," they're out of the equation. They're stupid, they're out of the equation. They're bunglers. They're dangerous.
Harley Schlanger: And so, the idea that McAuliffe said that "we want Cheney in there," just is another example of this bungling foolishness.
Lyndon LaRouche: It's worse than that. Because McAuliffe is an idiot. I don't know if he knows what he is. He knows he's tied to money interests, that he knows. But, I've seen no signs of actual, shall we say, qualities of intelligence that are impressive. There's nothing awesome about the mind of Terry McAuliffe! So, I don't want to blame him for a kind of diabolical genius which he doesn't have. But, there are people who control McAuliffe. And McAuliffe is the kind of guy, the jangle of money from big-money Sources, really gets his attention.
And McAuliffe is operating on the assumption, which is in, among these banking institutions, who are playing games with both the Republican and Democratic side of the equation. They're saying, "Well, whatever happens in this crisis, we're going to come out on top. It's not going to be the Democrats. It's not going to be the Republicans. It's going to be we, the international banking group, the international financial cartel, which is controlling the financing, essentially, of both parties." And McAuliffe is looking at this financial cartel.
The issue is very simple: When the system goes down, is the Constitution of the United States going to be enforced? That is, are we going to protect the people of the United States? Or, are we going to scrap the people, and turn them into cord-wood for burning, as they're doing now, in Germany! Under that kind of influence, on a Social Democratic government. Which they would do here—as they're doing in Argentina. These bankers, when their system collapses, they eat people! Especially poor people.
And therefore, as Roosevelt did, the job of the President of the United States, is to lead the institutions of the country, in defending the general welfare of our people, first. And bankers come second. These guys, the financial cartel say, "No. We come first, and the people come last!"
So, what McAuliffe is, essentially he's a stooge for this kind of financial cartel. It's the same financial cartel, which in 1931-1933—including Morgan, Harriman, du Pont, Mellon, and so forth—this cartel, together with the British who led them, put Hitler into power, in 1933. And later, some of the Brits joined some of the Americans, in saying, "We're not going to make Hitler, a German, the emperor of a world fascist system." So, we went to war against Hitler, but then, at the end of the war, we covered up for the cartel which had put the Nazis into power. And we're doing the same thing again.
This same cartel, is the cartel, which is controlling the politics, through the financial control of both the Democratic and Republican parties. And therefore, the issue is: Will the institutions of the United States, the real patriots in the Congress, the patriots of the Executive branch and the professionals, and other people—will they rally, to defend our Constitution and our nation, against these fascists? That is, the same syndicate, of international, financial cartelists, who put Hitler into power in the 1930s? Are we going to submit to them, and let them run the Democratic and Republican Party? Or are we going to take the party back? If we don't take the party back, then this United States is finished. And the world civilization is pretty much finished.
So therefore, we have to get rid of McAuliffe. Because, if we don't get rid of McAuliffe, even though he's a jerk, he's a stooge, and the problem is, what he represents is a stooge—he and that fool, Shrum.
Harley Schlanger: [audio loss, announced Helga's appearance] ... moment, and bring in Helga LaRouche, who's calling in from Germany—Helga, given these developments in the United States, the recent meltdown of Cheney, the denial of reality about the situation in Iraq and Southwest Asia, the failure of the Kerry campaign, is there an understanding in Europe of the depth of the crisis? Are we getting, from the people we're talking to, and organizing with the European organization—and, I know there was an important meeting of the European LaRouche Youth Movement this last week: Do people understand this question that Lyn just spoke about? That we're at the end of this system, and the alternatives are either the return to the FDR approach in the United States, a new monetary system as your husband has promoted and fought for—or, fascism? Is that understanding becoming clear to people?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I would say, absolutely, yes, at least among senior military in Europe. I and others had discussions recently, with such senior statesmen and military people, who look at the United States, with an absolute terror. Because, it took them quite a while to understand, that what had happened with the neo-con takeover, was not the America they used to love and be friends with, but that something completely different had taken hold of the U.S. government.
Now, people in Europe, in high positions, have told us that they are very, very worried, that if Cheney and Bush are not being brought to responsibility for what happened in Iraq in time, and that, because of the poor campaign of Kerry, that if they would be re-elected in November, that they expect, that then, the continuation of the imperial war policy would absolutely continue. And they expect, that even this year, new wars could be launched against other so-called "rogue states"; you know, which is a notion which is not really shared by Europeans in the first place, because, you know, the idea of "rogue states," who decides who's a "rogue state"? But, that the danger would be that military attacks would be launched against Syria or Iran, or North Korea, or that the China-Taiwan situation would get totally out of control. And that they would do that, all the more, because of the shame they suffered, now, in the discovery of the torture scandals in Abu Ghraib, and Guantanamo, and other such places; that it would be exactly that shame, which would cause them to launch in a flight-forward continuation of the so-called "war against terror," more wars. And, that would then lead the world into a very incalculable situation in the short term.
Otherwise, if you ask people on the street, given the fact that the depression and the austerity policy is really hitting Europe right now: If you go to the street, and you ask ten people, "What do you think about Bush? What do you think about the economy? What do you think Iraq?" Nine from ten people will tell you, that they fear that out of this depression comes war, and that they do see parallels, exactly to what happened with the depression in the '30s, and then Hitler followed. And then, people say, "Bush will bring us to World War III." So, people are in a very, very terrorized state in Europe.
Harley Schlanger: [audio loss]...We seem to have lost contact with Helga.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: No, you were not audible.
Harley Schlanger: Okay, I was saying, that, as you mentioned this question of the economy, we just had the G8 Summit, where the discussion was that everything's fine. And, yet, we just saw a drastic austerity package in Germany. What's going on with this? What are the implications of this?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Oh, this is absolutely terrible, because this is exactly what the mistakes which were made in the 1930s, by Hjalmar Schacht, the head of the central bank and later the Economics Minister of Hitler, and Brüning, who responded to the depression of the '30s, with brutal austerity policies, cutting the living standard of the population. And that, as you remember, immediately led them to the conditions which it possible for Hitler to take power.
Now, that same mistake is being repeated here. Just two, or three days ago, the "red-green" government in Berlin implemented a policy called "Hartz IV." This is a commission report name. What it basically means, is that, they have now changed the unemployment legislation in such a way, that, if somebody becomes unemployed, after one year, he will be treated in the same way like a welfare recipient, receiving 350 euros per month. So, who can live off 350 euros? But, not only that, before he receives a penny, he has to sell his car, his house, every possible pension, private pension contract he did—so it's like a complete expropriation of those people who happen to have the unfortunate destiny, to become unemployment, which obviously is not their fault.
Now, this immediately affects, from the beginning of next year, 4.5 million people, who will sink from unemployment into poverty without any cushion, and it will affect 1.5 million children. So, all these social organizations, who know that the poverty is not just something which happens in the Third World, or in the United States for that matter, but that Germany is plunging into poverty, as well—at least, a good part of its population—that this will have absolutely catastrophic social consequences, and contributes exactly to the kind of climate, which led to the catastrophe in the '30s.
Harley Schlanger: Is it the case that none of the political leaders in Germany are aware of this history that you just referenced?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, it is actually puzzling me, because, you know, I mean, they should know. They should have learned the lesson. And I think some of them do. But, you see, the problem is, what Lyn was saying earlier, that, if the United States is insisting on the wrong policy, if the international financial institutions which, you know, which have the backing of the U.S. power, of the government and the military, and so forth; if they insist, that this policy of IMF-proposed austerity is being implemented, all of Europe is going to do it! Because Europe, right now, is lacking exactly the mechanism which would enable it to do the kind of reforms which FDR did with the New Deal; and then, especially after Pearl Harbor, turning the whole economy loose, in terms of production.
At this point, you know, Europe is strangled by the so-called Stability Pact of the Maastricht Treaty, which forbids the governments to do exactly the kind of programs which would overcome this, which would be the only way how you could overcome is by full employment. By having state-induced recovery program, through state credits, exactly what FDR did to get the economy going, at this moment is impossible with the European system. So, that is why the more intelligent Europeans are looking at LaRouche as the only hope they can see, to turn the situation in the United States around from the inside. People are quite desperate.
Harley Schlanger: And I understand, Helga, that we will be running a very significant campaign in Saxony, to bring this message forward. Is that right?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Yes, because, you see, the recent European Parliament elections demonstrate, that the political party system in Europe, and in Germany in particular, is just disintegrating. There were more than 60% of the people not voting. And that in Germany, where normally, several years ago, the voting participation used to be 95%, 97%, 92%. But, that is now down to somewhere around 40%.
If you take the election result of the Social Democracy, they had, in the European Parliament election, 25% of the result of two years earlier in the Federal election; which means that in some of the eastern states, they're now around 10%! They're about to disintegrate! The Social Democracy is about to go out of business, for good.
On the other side, the Communist successor-party, the PDS, they are now the strongest party in many of the new states of the unified Germany. So, after only 14 years of unification, the traditional parties are all losing, all the parties are losing, except that you have the PDS, which is losing less (they're still losing because of the collapsing voter participation), but that shows you how absolutely dismayed the population is, what has happened since the unification.
So, we will participate in this campaign, with the idea to cause a complete turnaround, and basically, go back to the great tradition of Saxony, which after all, was the place where many good things—in terms of science, culture, came from, like the Freiberg Academy, where many of the German great thinkers and scientists came from. And Saxony can be the bridge between the east and west, and unite the Western European traditions with Eastern Europe, Russia, and Asia in general.
Harley Schlanger: Instead of trying to turn Eastern Europe into a cheap slave-labor pool.
You just heard from Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and we'll be turning to our LaRouche Youth Movement panel line in just a moment. You're listening to The LaRouche Show.... [station identification]
I'd like to open up, now, to our youth line. We have on the line Cody Jones from Los Angeles, and Cody, you have a question?
Cody Jones: Yes, I have a question for Lyn: In light of our deployment of the Children of Satan III pamphlet, and also your release yesterday "Money Is Not Economy," I was wondering if you could discuss the relationship between culture and economics; and either the effects on the identity of the individual, or the function that the identity of the individual has on culture and economics?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, that's possible. The key thing to bear in mind, which is the point of contention, the cultural contention, in the world at this time, especially in European civilization, which was, actually, the most successful aspect of civilization, culturally, from about the 15th-Century Renaissance on. Despite the many evils that have occurred in Europe, we maintained a tradition of European civilization, which is traced largely—well, by way of Egypt, of course—but, from the Classical tradition of Greece, from the Classical periods particularly of Athens, which means the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus, Thales, Solon, and Plato, as the Socratic tradition.
Now, in that, as you find clearly expressed in the work of the Pythagoreans and Plato, and also, Plato on the question of the human soul, that European civilization made a distinction—that is, Classical civilization—between man and beasts. Whereas, in most cultures, prior to modern Europe, prior to the 15th-Century Renaissance, the political culture treated most human beings as human cattle, either to be herded or to be hunted down. And the human cattle, living by the privilege of the ruling, minor group, the ruling cattle. The Renaissance changed that, by emphasizing a principle which existed beforehand, but had never been effectively established as a political principle: That is, the state must, itself, by governed, by the obligation to promote the general welfare of all of the people, including their posterity. That is, the state must exist for the development of the people. And, can not exploit the people, as farmers and so forth, exploit cattle or whatnot, or hunting wild animals, for example, you can't do that. Which most societies
do. You have that, for example, the United States' policy in Iraq, now, is treating the Iraqis as human cattle: to be hunted down, to be tortured, to be butchered, and so forth. It's the lack of the elementary qualities of humanity, which were part of our morals and culture in the United States. So, that's the key issue.
Now, what we have is an economic system, internationally, the IMF system presently, since the 1971-72 change to a so-called floating-exchange-rate monetary system. Under this system, by law, governments agree to treat most of the human race as human cattle, either to be herded as cattle—and culled, of course, when no longer wanted—or hunted down, like wild animals. That's going on. This is the change in our culture, which occurred in the U.S. and Britain, 1964-65-66, that period, which was then realized, in the new form, in the '71-'72 change to the present floating-exchange-rate monetary system, the so-called IMF system, which is evil.
The problem today is, that, with the introduction of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which I called the fairly descriptive title, the "Sexual Congress of Cultural Fascism": the purpose of that, was to destroy the recognition of those cultural factors, and values of the individual life, which had distinguished modern European civilization, from those societies which were based on the principle on treating human beings generally as either herded or hunted human cattle. We may have treated people as hunted or herded cattle, but our principle of government, as in the case of the United States, did not accept that. We had an exception, of course, in the case of slavery, in some states, under the provision of John Locke—who was a very evil person, contrary to our Founding Fathers—said, that, slaves, once they had become property, would be perpetuated as property; and therefore, defined them, as permanently, as a species of human cattle!
Now, despite that, in the success of Lincoln, in changing the institutions of government, and thus, by those changes, effecting a change in the law affecting slavery, this was changed. So therefore, many cases: You have for example, Spain, or Spain and Portugal, who introduced the capture of African slaves, and their trading them into the Americas. That was where it started was. So, Spain and Portugal were the authors of modern slavery, as the slavery in the United States, for example. But, also, in Spanish culture, as opposed to the fascist type, the Franco type, but there's a current of Spanish culture, which is very distinctly European culture, which rejects what Spain did, in terms of its practice of slavery against the Africans. Remember, the Spanish monarchy—with the exception of the King Charles [III] who supported the American Revolution—the Spanish monarchy, until late in the 19th Century, still practiced the capture and trafficking in slaves, the international trafficking in slaves.
So, despite that, European culture, especially since the Renaissance, has operated on the basis of a shame-faced recognition, of the right that human beings can not be treated as cattle, either herded or hunted.
Now, the difference between man and cattle, is situated in the fact, that man can do what no animal can do. Mankind, the individual, can discover, or re-enact the discovery, of a universal physical principle; and can use those discovered principles, either individually or in cooperation with other people, to change and improve the condition of life of human beings, and change the conditions of the planet. So, human beings have an immortal quality, through their participation, in the discovery and use of those principles of nature, by which we improve the human condition. And therefore, the human individual is sacred.
What we've gone into, now, with this Congress for Cultural Freedom monstrosity, we have said, "Technological progress is bad, scientific progress is bad. We must not offend nature. We must not try to change anything. Mankind must suffer for the convenience of the little plants and animals." We've become inhuman. We have said, when people become, "oh, the poor, let them starve to death." That kind of attitude.
Take people's jobs away, in order to ship employment and work to countries where we use slave labor, to replace American employees, and thus impoverish our people. Since 1977, the greater impoverishment of the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, is the result of this change in policy.
So, the issue here, is, essentially: How do we define a human being? We say a human being is different than an animal. We say a human being is divine, in the sense of having this quality, which the individual human being shares with the Creator, and therefore that life is sacred. Or, do we say, "No: man is just an animal, just an animal"? And treat them—say, "Well, I'm a successful animal. These guys are unsuccessful. I own them. They work for me. They die for me." And the problem is, when the bankers take over, the kind of bankers we're up against now, their attitude is, most human beings are cattle. And that's what the issue is.
And the culture, the culture of submitting to it, to say, "We have to respect these guys. We have to admire these guys, these kinds of bankers. We have to beg for their money"—and that is the issue. That is the underlying cultural issue.
Harley Schlanger: I would urge everyone who is listening today, if you have not already read it, or received it, the Children of Satan III, give us a call, and tell them you heard it on the LaRouche Show, and we'll send you a copy out. And if you can distribute more, we'll send you more. So, give us a call, at 888-347-3258.
Now, we do have a number of e-mails I want to get to in a few moments, Lyn and Helga, but I want to turn it over to a question from Michelle Lerner, from the LaRouche Youth Movement in Philadelphia. Michelle, are you there?
Michelle Lerner: Yes, hello Lyn and Helga. I have a question for the both of you, concerning some of the recent developments, that you have both written about on the European Union. At the last conference, Mr. LaRouche gave a speech, I think it was called "I Stand at the Bedside of a Doomed Empire," where he described this 240-year cycle, which is coming to an end.
My question is, what does this grouping around Robert Cooper, and I guess others around Tony Blair, and also Robert Kagan—what do they represent, in terms of this cycle, that you described as coming to an end, when looking at the activity that's coming out of the European Union, mainly a push for more globalization, against the countries of Eastern Europe?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Lyn, do you want to go first?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, essentially Cooper is a fascist. But, Cooper is the epitome of the philosophy of the Blair government in England. He's considered the mentor of Tony Blair.
But, what they both represent, they represent the British tradition of the so-called liberal imperialist tradition, which is something that developed with the loss of the British power to control the United States, at that time, with the victory of the United States in the Civil War, over the British puppet, the Confederacy.
So, this group became known as the Fabian Society, which developed a new program of subversion, as the road to preserving a new form of the British Empire. And that's simply what it does represent; that's the essence of the matter. Cooper has proposed—what?—the elimination of the nation-state! This is super-globalization. This means what it purports to mean. It means that you can reduce the people of Central and Western Europe, to virtual cattle; induce them to give up their power as a sovereign nation-state, to become merely a polyglot mass, mostly of people wandering from one place to the other, in search of work, without a permanent home—just migrating, as the migrating hordes moving into Europe, for example, during the time of the Roman Empire. Migrating from Asia. Migrating groups, going from place to place, with no permanent home.
And, by destroying the nation-states, the British Empire, as these people envisage it, by a European Union, which is a sort of, changing nations into a mass of activated slush, or something—this empire eliminates the danger that the people of Europe might rise up, and say, "We've had enough of being subjects of the British Empire."
So, it really is a fascistic system, in the extreme. It corresponds to the Nazi designs for an Allgemeine SS, as a new kind of empire. But, it's one to be dominated, according to the design of Cooper, by Anglo-Americans. And Tony Blair, as a stooge for Cooper, intellectually, is actually controlling Vice President Cheney, who is the Svengali controlling the puppet, the Trilby, George Bush. So, what we have is an international system, which is based on a legacy of the British Empire, which was first established as the British East India Company empire in 1763. That empire is trying to perpetuate itself, and they are the ones who have tended to promote, and actually created, what became known as fascism, during the late 18th Century—as "bankers' fascism" you might call it.
And this is the same crowd. And Cooper's extremely dangerous. He's stupid, in some respects. But, he's vicious. His ideas are vicious. But he represents the Fabian, liberal imperialist tradition, which is the tradition seated now in 10 Downing Street, the tradition which is controlling the minds and bodies of many in the United States government.
Harley Schlanger: Helga, do you want to add something to that?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Yeah, I just want to add this: That, when it became clear that the Bush Administration had completely abandoned international law, and any conventions like the Geneva Convention, the UN Security Council, the Peace of Westphalia-based idea of the law of the people, there was a transformation in Europe as a result of that, too. And some of these imperial elements, like Cooper, but there are also, here and there, some others. They basically said, "Okay. We can not do anything about it, right now. But we just have to wait until the United States destroys itself."
The situation is comparable that of ancient Greece, as Thucydides, the first major historian, describes it in the Peloponnesian War, when Classical Greece had conquered the Persian Empire, and had no enemy as such, they could have remained peacefully with their former war allies of the Attic Sea alliance. But, because of the influence of the Sophists, in Athens at that point, they decided to turn Greece into an empire, and subjugate the previous allies to become subjects. And then, they started the war with Sparta, and tried to expand the empire to Sicily and so forth. And so, they became morally, and logistically, materially over-extended, and collapsed. And that's how the Greater Greece collapsed, and how the Roman Empire could eventually take over.
Now, people compare that, and say: Well, at the moment when the United States had conquered the Soviet Union, or rather—I'm sorry, not conquered the Soviets—but when the Soviet Union disintegrated, the United States had no enemy; and they could have remained quite peacefully, just with their partners, and make a new world system, you know, in the tradition of John Quincy Adams, of having an alliance of sovereign nation-states, and the whole world would have been completely different.
But, at that point, obviously, the neo-cons, around Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, they decided now was the moment where the other superpower had disappeared, to turn the United States into an Anglo-American world empire. And, as a consequence now, they're over-extended, their economy is collapsing, and therefore, some of these liberal imperialists say, "Well, we'll just wait until the United States self-destructs, and then we will take over."
And this is obviously, extremely foolish, because, obviously, if some of these arrogant elements in the European Union structure are treating the peoples of Eastern Europe or Russia, in the same way like the United States has been treating the poor Mexicans in the maquiladoras as cheap labor, the difference between Russia and Mexico should be obvious: That Russia still is a very significant power. Russia at this moment, is about to reconstitute itself, because it did not really accept what was done to it, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the Yeltsin era, when the aim of the Anglo- Americans was to turn Russia into a Third World, raw-materials-producing country.
So, right now Russia looks at the European Union expansion—on May 1, as you may know Europe just added more states, and Europe is now 450 million people; but this, from the standpoint of the Russians, is not separated from NATO. Now, from a Russian standpoint, they have now F-16s flying over the Baltic countries, which is immediately close to the border of Russia. You have American troops sitting in Georgia, in the Caucasus, in Central Asia. And the feeling of being encircled by a combination of European Union and NATO really has created a security situation for Russia, which should not be taken lightly. Because, Russia may not be exactly like the Soviet Union was, as a superpower, but Russia will not capitulate to the idea of a world empire. And, at the recent maneuvers, Putin just said, like en passant, that Russia would be prepared to fight a nuclear war.
Now, that is why the world is at the edge of a potential, global nuclear asymmetric warfare. Because, if more adventures would follow, you know, against Iran, against Syria, against other countries like North Korea and so forth, I think that we are really in danger that the situation gets completely out of control
So, I think that what we are doing, the LaRouche movement, and the BÂ"?So, and our movement in Europe, we're trying to change that, to change this stupid European structure right now, which has no national bank, has no mechanism to overcome the depression; and basically say, we have to go to the ideas of Adenauer and de Gaulle, and especially de Gaulle's idea of a "Europe of the Fatherlands," which is the idea of a Europe, as an alliance of European nations but not as a supranational structure, but as an alliance of sovereign nation-states, who perfectly well can work together for a common good, not only of Europe—but, if you really think that the tremendously rich tradition of Europe almost predestines Europe to play a role today, in creating a better future for mankind as a whole: namely to use European science and technology, to help to overcome poverty in the developing countries, to create a better future for 6 billion people on this planet.
Now, obviously, this can only function together with the United States, and that is why I think that the efforts of my husband, Lyn, and what we do in Europe, are really absolutely complementary, to try to find an exit out of an otherwise pretty tragic and terrible situation.
Harley Schlanger: Absolutely. And that's why it's so good to have you two on, at the same time.
And also, what you just said on the danger of war, nuclear war, which is, of course, the Cheney doctrine, pre-emptive nuclear strike, just makes it that much more imperative, that the LaRouche movement continue the mobilization to get Cheney out of office.
Now, we have about seven minutes left on this portion of the show. I want to take an e-mail for you Lyn, from Timothy Hollingsworth, who asks the question that's on many people's minds now, about the possibility for an open convention. He asks, "What are the dynamics of the Democratic National Convention? More important" he says, "there are those who want to keep it closed. Are there others, besides yourself, who are pushing for an open convention, and what can we do to get it?"
Lyndon LaRouche: There are others pushing for an open convention, including circles around Clinton. As to whether they're as determined as I am, to make it an actuality, or whether they're making it a point of reference for the future of the Democratic Party—it's unclear. There are many reasons to do that.
But, if we don't have it, that is—. We have two problems: We have Kerry. Now, Kerry, left to himself, is not much. He's not capable, as he's shown, he's not capable of being a President of the United States, in reality, that is, what we mean by a President of the United States. But rather, he's sort of a repetition of Bush. Bush is mean-spirited; Kerry tends to be less so, of course. George is rather stupid, mentally aberrant; Kerry is, in a sense, a normal human being, good-natured, intelligent. But, both are similar, in the sense, as they stand now, of being Creatures, who could not really be the President, in a time of crisis, but are sort of placeholders, for some team of people who would give the Presidency some kind of character. In the case of Bush, it has been largely the Cheney neo-cons, and some others, who have been the dominant controllers of the virtually empty chair, occupied by George Bush.
Now, in the case Kerry, it's a similar situation. We have two things that have come out: Kerry could be replaced as the presumptive candidate. There are various ways that could occur. One is that he simply agrees to give up his position, and releases his delegates, to vote their conscience. That would have to happen on the first ballot, presumably. That could happen. The crises that are now occurring could lead to that kind of conjuncture. If it doesn't happen, you have another process: Is, to who is going to control the Kerry campaign, and presumably the Kerry Presidency? Presuming there's some relationship between the two.
Kerry can't do it. Kerry can not win the Presidency, himself. Also, he would not be competent to be President, in and of himself. But, he could be a placeholder—maybe an agreeable placeholder—for other influences, advisors, so-called, who would actually induce him to make certain decisions in a timely fashion. That's a possibility.
Those are the options that are before us, now.
Apart from that, you're dealing with a situation, which is rather typical for me, as a forecaster. I've always insisted to people, you can forecast if you know what you're doing. But, forecasting does not mean predicting. Because, there's a factor of human free will, in all social processes. Therefore, you can forecast, where a current trend of policymaking is leading, to what reality, to what juncture with reality, crucial junctures, leading.
You can also indicate what the choices will be, when that point of crisis is reached, or approached. But, you can not say exactly how institutions will respond, because free will will intervene. But, you can then go another step, and show what the result would be, of choosing any one among the several alternative courses of actions, which can be chosen at that point, in the branching of the road.
Harley Schlanger: Well, Lyn, we have about two and a half minutes. And I'd just like to follow this up, by saying, what should delegates or Democrats do, who support you, who are not LaRouche delegates, but are going to the convention? Who would like an open convention, would like to have you present? What can they do?
Lyndon LaRouche: Work with me, as a policy group. Irrespective of what their ties are to some presumptive candidacy, for President. Work with me as a policy group. And, use our joint force, to make sure these policies are forced into the floor.
The problem we have at the convention now, is the attempt of people like McAuliffe and the people who own him—or like Shrum, who's a real piece of work. These people are going to try to make a joke, a farce out of the convention. "You're gonna march in. You're gonna nominate Kerry. You're gonna pick a vice president. And you're gonna go home!"
Harley Schlanger: And then, write a concession speech.
Lyndon LaRouche: Exactly. Shrum will write the concession speech.
Harley Schlanger: He's pretty good at it.
Lyndon LaRouche: Experienced at it.
So, that's what the problem is. So therefore, what we have to do, is, we have to blow the convention open in two ways: One way, an open discussion of the Presidency, not a foregone conclusion. Because there is no foregone conclusion. Even the selection of Kerry is not a foregone conclusion, as to what kind of a Kerry you're going to get, if you nominate him. Secondly, that you've got to blow the convention open: The questions of policy, of national policy, have to be thrown on the table. Not just perfunctory, boolah-boolah, "let's take the hometown boy, and bring him to victory."
Harley Schlanger: Well, I know we've had a lot of discussions of that, with the LaRouche Youth Movement here. And, mainly, it's continuing the mobilization that we're doing. Getting out more of the pamphlets, huh?
Lyndon LaRouche: Yeah.
Harley Schlanger: With the intention of getting a million copies of the Children of Satan III pamphlet, between now and as early as possible, but definitely by the convention.... Now, we'll be going to a short break and coming right back, but I should tell you that we'll continue with Lyndon and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, on this special edition of The LaRouche Show today....
I'd like to take a couple of e-mails here. We have one that's been up here for quite a while, Lyn that's for you, from Louis in New Jersey. He asks: "Are those that generate an evil idea worse than those who implement it? If so, when you say Bertrand Russell is more evil than Hitler, well, what about Nietzsche? Is he more evil? Can people with good intentions create evil results?"
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, the question is, there are two factors. There's the evil intention, and the question of what kind of power it expresses. A man who is evil, but who is powerless, is, of course, less significant a factor in history, than one who is even less evil, but more powerful. And that's the way you have to make the distinction.
Russell was not just a person unto himself. He was a very evil Person—he was the most evil man of the 20th Century, far more evil than Hitler, if you understand the century. Many people would question that, because they don't understand history. If you understand history, that more evil came out of Bertrand Russell, than any other single figure in the last century.
Now, the issue is this: Russell was an instrument of the Fabian Society, which had developed a new approach to maintaining the British Empire, after being defeated by Abraham Lincoln, when the British puppet, the Confederacy, had been defeated by the Union forces. And when the United States continued even after the assassination of Lincoln, to reach the point of 1876 Centennial Exposition, in which the United States so awed the world, that countries such as Bismarck's Germany, Japan, and others, and of course, Russia, with Alexander II, adopted the American System of political economy, as a guiding policy for changing the character of continental Europe.
At that point the British said, we've got to destroy this, and therefore the function of Bertrand Russell, was as a rallying point for the destruction of those instruments by means of which humanity was progressing. One, science: destroy science. That was Russell's primary force. Second, use the development of nuclear weapons to create a system of terror, warfare terror, as he said, which would cause nations to give up their sovereignty to world government. What's world government? World government is simply the British Empire, with no nation-state allowed. And this was the context in which Hitler emerged. This is the context in which Mussolini emerged before then, this policy. Even before.
I mean, Russell pushed nuclear weapons during the 1940s. He was the author of the U.S. policy of perpetual nuclear warfare, under Truman. But H.G. Wells, his buddy, who had been a leading figure of the Fabian Society, going into World War I, was the first one in 1913 who proposed the use of radium weapons, even before the fission weapons had been developed, the radium fission weapons had been developed. Radium weapons, as a weapon, which would change the character of warfare, in favor of the British Empire.
So, it is the British Empire system, which is the enemy of humanity, and has been ever since it was consolidated in 1763, at the Treaty of Paris, and that empire has tried to orchestrate the affairs of the planet, more or less successfully, to prevent a system of nation-states from being consolidated on this planet. Russell was the key figure in the 20th Century, who gave us the horror which we're still suffering today. And, nuclear warfare, Hitler, and everything else, everything Hitler did, was a product, essentially, of a kind of leadership from Britain, that Russell represented.
Harley Schlanger: Okay. We have probably about 23, 24 minutes, so I just want to give a little bit, the listeners a little bit of a shape of what we're going to do. I have a question from a Democratic Party official in California. We have another e-mail; and I'd also like Cody and Michelle to, if they have another question.
So, let me start. Lyn, this is for you. This is from a Democrat you know in California, who read the Children of Satan III pamphlet. He said, it was too much information, it hurt his head, but it also gave him more respect for what you've done. He said, the creation of a paradigm shift from a productive society to a consumer society, he gets that; he understands it now. But then, he said, "But how do you reverse it?"
Lyndon LaRouche: Very simply. When people realize they have to reverse it.
Great changes, in principle, come under conditions of a certain kind of shock. For example, the discovery of a scientific principle itself, comes as a kind of shock, when somebody recognizes that some principle of nature is revolting against the opinions, about that aspect of nature which has existed up to that point. Just like Kepler's discovery of gravitation, was recognizing the implications of this backlooping, apparent backlooping, of the orbit of Mars, which led him to the discovery and definition of gravitation, as a universal physical principle. Kepler was the only one, who made the discovery. Nobody else after him did it, in the same way.
So, it's always by going to a crisis in knowledge, a crisis in discovering that what we thought worked, does not really work, because there's something else operating, we haven't taken into account, which we must discover in order to control this paradox. So, in the process of history, especially to the degree that people are not fully rational, they come to a point of being foolish, up to the point that some shocking event, some experience, hits them and suddenly they realize that everything they believed, up to that point, is in question. And that's the way we had the change back from Hoover, to Roosevelt.
I can tell you from my experience, and I was a fairly alert young sprite at that point, that the people under Coolidge and Hoover in the United States, were pretty bad people; they were disgusting. And I was young enough, and old enough, at the same time to recognize it then.
Then they got hit with the Depression. The great illusions about the Wall Street boom collapsed. And great poverty—the income of the United States, per capita and total, dropped by half under Hoover, from that point on. And you saw the change in the population. This change in the population brought about the possibility of a qualified leader, such as Franklin Roosevelt, to become nominated—over Raskob, over the objection of his own party. Not only nominated but elected and from the first hours he was inaugurated as President, began to change the world for the better.
This was a sudden change in the attitude of the American people. The Democratic Party which had been pretty much a piece of rubbish up to that point, suddenly became the hero of the people. The Democratic Party, which had been the enemy of freedom, throughout its history, since Andrew Jackson, suddenly became the hero of the people—a transformation in ideas, a transformation of the character of the party, which is centered around this crisis of the Hoover/Roosevelt transition.
We're now in the situation similar to that, where we're, as people realize that they've been lied to, that what they thought was guaranteed to them, is being taken away; that nothing was working, there's no prospect; then, if people are given the alternative, by courageous leaders at all levels of society, who say, "Let's think about a different idea," they will then consider those ideas, which they would not consider before.
It won't happen spontaneously. The opportunity will happen spontaneously, but the change will be induced by courageous thinking people, who get their friends and neighbors to think through an alternative policy.
Harley Schlanger: You're listening to The LaRouche Show.... [station id, announces July 15 webcast].
Helga, there's an e-mail from Matthew Davis in Wichita, Kansas. I think I can address this to you. This was in response to what you said earlier on the question of fiscal austerity, and the policies being implemented in Europe, in Germany in particular. He writes that, "For some time now, we have heard that the problems of Germany and other European economies is high wages, cradle-to-grave welfare benefits, etc., which, of course, is a line of the neo-cons. Could you say a bit more about how fiscal austerity is the problem, and not the solution?"
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, it is very obvious that Germany was able to have a very high living standard basically because of two factors. Germany, like Japan, has no raw materials to speak of, but since the Bismarck industrial reforms, Germany had an absolute high level of income, high level of productivity, and that was entirely the result of first, very strong emphasis on science and technology. German products used to be avant garde in the world—even in the post-war period when the occupying powers tried to make the label "Made in Germany" as a negative mark— because of the German economic miracle, in very few years, Germany was on a top level on a world standard.
Science and technology was one point. The high productivity of the labor power workforce and industrial capacities, and the fact that Germany used to export up to 40% of this product.
So, if these two requirements are fulfilled in the German economy, then there is absolutely no problem. As a matter of fact, the problem really started because of the globalization, the free-market economy model, which increasingly did outsourcing, destruction of highly paid jobs in Germany, to the advantage of going to so-called slave-labor countries, mainly in the East, but also Latin America, Colombia, Mexico, China, whatnot, and that has basically destroyed the middle-level industry in Germany. As a matter of fact, right now, you have a complete collapse, of the very backbone of German industry. For example, if you look at a world map, there are very few countries that have a high density of machine tool production. Germany used to be one of the key countries in that, and alone in the month of June, domestic machine-tool product orders collapsed by 22%. I mean, that's gigantic.
So, the problem is not high wages. As a matter of fact the high wages were an investment in the skills of the next generation, because if you want to have a skilled worker, or you want to have an engineer, or a good scientist, you have to have a certain income, so that the family can invest in the future of their children, and everything which goes with that. So, also the fact that the social welfare system of Germany used to be really on a world top level, was no problem, because it had a large component of preventive medical care, which still is the cheapest. The problem, why Germany today has such gigantic problems, is because we have de facto officially almost 5 million unemployed, but in reality it's more like 8 million unemployed, and that is the big cost factor: Because unemployment costs a lot of money, because you have to maintain the unemployed and their families, and they don't produce anything.
This is why it is so vicious that now, these people, who have become targets of the world economic collapse, are really singled out; it's almost like a totally unfair and unjust targetting of those who are the victims of the system of globalization.
So, basically, our program is to go back to productive, fully employment, to have an FDR kind of state generation of credits for well-defined infrastructure projects, R&D, and other areas of common good, and basically which create real capital assets, so that these state credits are then not inflationary.
In Germany, it will come down to the question: Either we will repeat history, and go from Schacht to Brüning to Hitler—a new Hitler is not in sight, but under conditions of general collapse and breakdown, these things tend to happen, unfortunately very quickly; or, we learn the lesson, and go in the direction of FDR and the German economist, Dr. Wilhelm Lautenbach, who in 1931 made a similar proposal like what FDR implemented in the United States.
That is the way out. It is not high wages, it is not benefits, it's no full employment—unemployment.
Harley Schlanger: Okay. I would also recommend, there was an article written by Lyndon LaRouche recently in EIR, it's probably available on the www.larouchepub.com website, on the "Insanity of Fiscal Austerity," which goes at this question again, both from the scientific, economic, and also cultural side.
We have a little more than 13 minutes left. Cody you have another question?
Cody Jones: Yeah, I have a question, that Lyn and Helga could both possibly address: But, in trying to evoke, in the United States, the patriotic tradition here, or in Germany, the Classical tradition there, you run into a problem, which I found the other day. We were looking at this painting by Rembrandt, Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer. Now, if someone doesn't know who Homer is, they don't know who Aristotle is, the power of the metaphor that Rembrandt is developing, is reduced. So, how do we, in a least-action kind of way—and this is just an example of the problem in general—so, how do we in a least-action kind of way, increase our power, whenever it seems to have been reduced by the fact that the audience to whom we're trying to communicate these ideas, have lost the necessary knowledge to be able to communicate these ideas?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: You want to go first?
Lyndon LaRouche: Whatever you think, Helga.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I just had a very pleasant experience with that question, because I was asked to give a presentation on youth culture at the recent youth seminar we had in Germany for a week. And I first went through the whole Frankfurt School, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, then the youth-drug policy, to eventually end up with examples from the present youth music, ranging from hip-hop, to heavy metal, to pop. And I spared my audience to give them more examples, but I chose some of the most horrible ones I could find: Pink, Snoop Doggy Dog, and some really Satanic, heavy-metal group.
And I contrasted that with, first "Ave Maria" by Marian Anderson, and there are people who still looked, you know "Okay, okay." But, then I ended it with a very beautiful master class of Sylvia Lee, who just died, but who will be immortal forever; when she was coaching Kathleen Battle. And, in about 10-15 minutes, the audience could really see, what is the cognitive power, and how a great artist like Sylvia Lee can completely focus on the development of the beautiful voice of a great singer, and how the singer trusts the coach; and how from a preliminary, very beautiful representation of the "Jauchzet" from J.S. Bach [Christmas Cantata], by interacting, the singer became absolutely brilliant, absolutely fantastic in a very short period of time.
So, I asked one person, who used to be actually a real expert on modern music, and he was completely, really shocked. Because, he said, "I tried to reduce the impulses I felt, whenever I heard the youth music. But then, what really convinced me, when I saw how, in a very short period of time, such an interaction between a great musician and a great singer can create such beauty."
And, another girl, who, actually, you know, when I played the examples of the hip-hop and Snoop Dog, started to rock herself, like dancing around. She really liked it, and she defended it. But, she was so overwhelmed, by especially the example of Sylvia Lee, seeing actually that she is being deprived of such unbelievably powerful beauty, that I really thought that even the most hardened cases of people who believe in the present popular culture, they could see by the contrast, what they're actually losing.
And then, another person came and said, "Oh, now you destroyed Pink for me! I can't—! I thought she was such an attractive woman!" I said, "What do you mean? She's not attractive. She's fat, and she behaves like a whore!"
So, there was a complete turmoil, but, you know, I think people got a kick out of it.
Harley Schlanger: Lyn, do you want to add anything?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, she's got it.
Harley Schlanger: Yeah, I think so. Helga, ruining Pink for someone is a good deed.
Lyndon LaRouche: I think that people in California are perfectly capable of understanding that point.
Harley Schlanger: Right. Michelle, do you have one more question?
Michelle Lerner: Yes, I have a question about method, in fact. Because, I'll put it this way: Organizing in D.C., in particular, we've definitely created somewhat of a legacy with the Children of Satan pamphlet. And the first two specifically went after the mind-set of the neo-conservatives, of Dick Cheney, where these guys got their thinking from, so people could, in a certain way, put it outside of themselves, in looking at the issue as something else. But this pamphlet is something completely different, in the sense that, they now have to reflect upon how this current entered into the culture in the first place.
So, my question is, what was it, that allowed you to determine that now is the appropriate time to go after that? Really, the question of why is that the appropriate time to use that as a flank right now?
Lyndon LaRouche: Well, first of all, because I think in terms of ideas. You know, people think in terms of conversations; I think in terms of ideas. Now, ideas may be mediated by conversations, but they have an existence which is independent of the vocal act of conversation. They're the ideas that people radiate, from the experience of, for example, conversation.
That was apparent to me—remember, the first issue of "Beast-Man," Beast-Man I, we circulated about a million copies or more. And then, Beast-Man II was a little less, but in the same order of magnitude. In the same period of time, we had influenced institutions of government and around government to build up a clear image of what this Iraq issue was. Our attack on the Beast-Man symbol, clicked, in terms of what the experience of the United States was, looking at the Iraq War issue, its inception and so forth.
So, a point came, somebody asked a question: Well these terrible things happened to us. We made these stupid decisions to allow these kinds of people to run our government. How did our parents, and our grandparents, and we, become so stupid, we let this happen? So, Beast-Man III was the logical answer.
Of course, I knew it very well. But, it just was obvious to me, that, in the flow of ideas, which are radiating around us, and the intersection of these ideas, with the experience that people were having of the Iraq War and so forth, that the time had come—people would now ask the question: You've proven your case. Cheney is on the ropes, you put him on the ropes with this campaign. Now, explain to us, how we got here. Now, if we're going to solve the problem, we have to know how it happened. How did we become so stupid, that we would let this happen to us?
And, Beast-Man III gives you the answer, essential answer. It gives you an insight into the inside, of the American personality.
Harley Schlanger: And, I think, based on the responses we've been getting, in distributing it, it's having quite an impact, because, it's not something you can just look at and then put down, but people are really studying it.
We have just a few minutes left, and I really want to thank both Lyn and Helga for joining us. And I know we have a fairly large audience listening today, and I know we have a lot of e-mail questions that we're not going to get to. These will be forwarded to Lyn, and he may answer some of them, but I'd like to thank all the listeners for participating today, and also Cody and Michelle.
Now, remember, we have, on July 15, the webcast: Once again, it will be Lyndon LaRouche on an international webcast, leading into the Democratic Convention.
Lyn, I'd just like to ask one final question: Your understanding of the institution of the Presidency has changed the history of the United States. It's something that still a lot of people don't understand, the role of former military, intelligence, people who can be brought in—and, in fact, people may or may not know, that you are part of that institution. So, I wonder if you could just comment on this question, one more time.
Lyndon LaRouche: One example of this, is what happened as a result of several things, in the middle of the 1970s, we ran across the involvement of James R. Schlesinger in the revival, for the second time, of the Committee on the Present Danger. This is the organization which was pushing for nuclear war, then, as Truman and company had, back in the 1940s and early 1950s.
So, I made an issue of that, in a Presidential campaign in 1976, and put the image of the nuclear explosions, from Hiroshima and so forth, on national television, on an NBC broadcast—actually two broadcasts, one a shorter one, and the other a half-hour broadcast. And that caused quite a bit of consternation.
In that period, I was working on these questions, and in 1977, began to get into the question of certain technologies which could defeat a ballistic missile attack. That is, they're not technology you could pull off the drawing board and defeat one tomorrow. But, they were the kind of things which, down the line, could eliminate the decisive role of thermonuclear ballistic missile attack, as a nuclear attack, in warfare.
And then, in 1979, as part of my campaign for the Democratic nomination, I featured this policy. Then, in January of 1980, a bunch of us, as Presidential candidates, both Democrats and Republicans were arrayed at Concord, New Hampshire Highway Motor Inn (which no longer exists), but it had a large accommodation there, and we had some thousands of people gathered in the auditorium, with most of the Presidential candidates of that season lined up. We were lined up in alphabetical order, so Reagan was at the end of the line, and I was next to him; all the others came earlier in the alphabet.
So we began to chat. And as a result of that chatting, and some follow-up on that, when Reagan had been elected, I was among those invited by the Republican National Committee crowd, the Reagan crowd, to come to Washington, to discuss what I thought, during this transition period, of what the next Presidency should do. And I had a series of discussion of that, and several things happened. First of all, I had presented my proposal for what became known as the SDI. I was already working to try to build up support for that internationally. Then, I had a Soviet walk-in, from the military intelligence in the United Nations, who walked up to one of our people and asked what I thought about the Reagan Administration, and they would like to find out more about what the Reagan Administration was like. They thought they didn't really understand it.
So, I passed on a report, into the people I knew in the Reagan Administration, and it got into the intelligence community there, the higher levels of the intelligence community; and the answer was, would I follow this up, and get into a back-channel discussion with the Soviet Union, on what alternatives for policy might be, between the Reagan Administration and the Soviet Union? I said: Well, I don't see any point in my doing it, in a general way, because others would be better qualified. But, however, if they wanted to undertake the tentative proposal, of what became known as SDI, I would be very happy to work on it, and I think it would be useful.
So, that was the arrangement. So, between February of 1982 and February of 1983, I was engaged in a series of back-channel discussions with the Soviet government, at the same time I was campaigning in Europe—France, Italy, Germany, and so forth, and building up a lot of support, for this idea of alternative to ballistic missile attack. And, the Soviets turned it down.
But, what happened, at that point, in February of '83, when the Soviet interlocutor told me that Moscow had said, that my proposals were militarily competent, and they agreed with that; but, they couldn't accept the idea of the United States and the Soviet Union entering into a partnership, of the type I had talked about, with other nations, to build up this system, which could eliminate this danger of a thermonuclear confrontation. And therefore, they were going ahead, with themselves, with their own independent proposal in this direction. I said, don't do it. Because, if you do that, the Soviet Union will collapse economically within about five years. It collapsed in a little more than six, from that point on.
In that process, since I had made certain promises to the government about secrecy and so forth, at that point, I was actually functioning as a part of the institution of the Presidency, and, in a sense, have ever since. So, that was the way it worked. That association, and others, in my dealing with problems of that type, put me right into the institution of the Presidency, as one of those many people who may never actually have served, as employees of the government, or as elected officials, but who are nonetheless, a functioning part of that group of people, which helps make the Presidency, as an institution, tick.
As you've seen, with the mobilization to deal with these problems posed by Cheney, the neo-cons, and so forth, that that has been done largely by the Presidency as such, these kinds of institutions, and with the cooperation of people who are associated with the Congress in key positions of the Congress. And this is the assembly of patriots—whether in office, out of Office—who work together, with a dedication, to making our government, our Constitutional system, function effectively, by doing things for our country, and by trying to advise it. And also, that means cautioning it, against doing foolish things. And also making friends for us, in other parts of the world.
Harley Schlanger: Well, Lyn, I think I can speak for everyone who has listened to you and Helga today, by saying that probably people would be much happier, if you were able to do that from inside the White House, than simply as part of this institution of the Presidency.
Lyndon LaRouche: [laughing] So would I!
Harley Schlanger: So, we're going to have to make that happen. And, we do have, as you said, we have up to the Democratic Convention, the opportunity to build that mobilization. And I would encourage people to have your friends who didn't listen to this dialogue today, to pick it up from the www.larouchepub.com website, on The LaRouche Show. It will be archived.
Lyn and Helga, thank you very much for joining us today. And we'll be back next week, next Saturday, for another edition of The LaRouche Show. So, thank you very much.
