LAROUCHE JUNE 21 WASHINGTON WEBCAST
Question-and-Answer Dialogue
Following LaRouche's presentation, moderator Debra Freeman took questions from the Washington, D.C. audience as well as from the Internet.
Putin's Mission
Freeman: Lyn, thank you.... The first question that we have comes from someone who currently resides in New York, and his question has to do with the current situation vis-à-vis Russia. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, there are two starkly different views of Vladimir Putin currently circulating in the United States. One views him as a world leader who is seeking a framework both for his country and for the planet during the 21st Century. The other paints him as a ruthless man, who eliminates internal opposition, via methods he learned during his days in the KGB, and who rattles a saber internationally. Could you please, as best as you can in a public forum, share your view of Mr. Putin, especially from the standpoint of your proposal for a four-nation agreement."
LaRouche: Well, Vladimir Putin is probably the most intelligent member of his own government, and he has in a sense, transformed Russia from the condition it was in under Yeltsin—which is the same thing practically as Al Gore. Yeltsin was the Al Gore of Russia in more ways than one, and quite literally, as a matter of fact. He shared in some of Al Gore's corruption; Gore was used to bring Yeltsin to power. But, Putin is a man who is caught in a situation which most people don't think about these things, certainly George W. Bush doesn't think about these things. He's caught in a position where he sees his function as existential. It's almost a religious view with him, to try to save Russia, a mission to save Russia and to make something of the shards of what had been the Soviet Union. That's his motive. I've see no malice with him. The usual charges coming from Britain are the just simply gossip repeated. He's Russian, and he reflects Russian history and Russian methods and Russian culture. And some of it you might not like, but that's not the issue. The issue is: Is Putin a prospective partner of the United States, in an effort to save the planet as a whole? The answer is, he is—that simple. And most of the stuff that's said against him is nonsense. To say that Russian culture is a rough culture to deal with, particularly with its history; absolutely. So what?
I can tell you some things about U.S. culture right now. You want to talk about tyranny and abuse; abuse of citizens and robbery, let's talk about real estate prices. Let's talk about financial conditions of our citizens; let's talk about health care, and the worsening of health care. Let's talk about the fact that the fabulously rich and super-rich are sucking the blood of the poor, and the poor are increasing greatly in numbers at all times, by the munificence that's spreading this crap by the very rich. You have a guy who's worthless, who goes out and gets a golden parachute of a billion or something like that. That's the kind of society we're living in. When people are starving to death, and people are getting multi-hundreds of millions of dollars in golden parachutes for destroying society. For destroying your medical care; for destroying your hospital; for robbing your grandparents! Yeah, sure, we got a lot of problems; the world has problems. The question is, it always starts not from what's bad; you have to say, "What's the chance of curing it?"
All right. Now, what's Putin's role? Putin represents Russian culture, and Russian culture is a Eurasian culture, as distinct from a Western European culture, or distinct from the United States.
Now remember, our immediate conflict within European civilization, is we in the United States, when we're sensible, have a strong disagreement and objection to the character of Western European and Central European culture, because we formed the United States to get away from those cultures. We formed the United States to get away from a society which is dominated by oligarchical traditions. The idea of the social equality of man, not in terms of standards of this or standards of that, but the essential worth of the individual; the intrinsic worth of the individual. It must be an equal opportunity for expression of intrinsic worth. And in Europe, you don't have that! No part of Europe do you have that. You may have some niches of that in Europe, but you don't have that as dominant culture. And you just don't have it in Russia, either. But it's different. Russian culture is Eurasian culture. Russia, since the fall of the ancient Ukraine area, has emerged as a Eurasian culture. It is not Asian; it is also European, but not entirely European. And Russians are different, in that sense, when taken as a whole, not necessarily as individuals, but as a whole. Then you look at—what you have. We have Asian culture. What do we mean by Asian culture? Well, you have India and China, for example. You have other countries, and they have an Asian tradition, which is not like a European tradition.
The challenge before the planet today, is to start from the fact that we're dealing with a planet which is organized in that way. We have European culture. We have the idea of the sovereign nation-state in the United States republic. We have it also in parts of South and Central America, as a strong tradition. In Europe, you have an oligarchical form of European culture. It's still oligarchical in character. You have Russian culture, which is Eurasian culture, and Russia dominates the area from which come the largest part of the resources upon which all of Asia will depend, and Russia has the ability to steer the development of those resources for the expanding requirements of the populations of China, etc., etc.
So therefore, our job is to take these different cultural groups within the planet as a whole, and to bring them together to a common purpose. And the common purpose is to solve the basic problem which threatens mankind right now. Now, therefore, my proposal is a practical one. Don't complain! Change what you don't like! But change it by agreement with the people you have to work with to get the change. We in the United States—what do we have from Russia? Putin, Vladimir Putin, says again and again and again: Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt. And that's what these guys don't like. They don't like the fact that he likes Franklin Roosevelt. I like Franklin Roosevelt! I have my questions about the morals of people who don't like Franklin Roosevelt. So, Roosevelt-haters are the problem we have to deal with.
Okay, now. He agrees on what? That the United States, as a European civilization, which we are, Russia which is a Eurasia civilization, must cooperate with leading nations which are Asian culture situations, in order to create a unity of the planet which includes dealing with the problems of Africa. What's wrong with that? In other words, instead of saying we're going to set up some "system," some "code," say we have a mission orientation, that the planet requires that the most powerful nations of the world unite, to sponsor a mission for humanity, for generations to come. And that's what's good about Putin. He's willing to do that. Anyone who was human, who was President of the United States—we have to get a human being in there, in the Presidential office, soon; I don't think we can wait til the next election—must adopt that mission and say, "Yes! You're right, Putin. Franklin Roosevelt! You're right."
We have to unite, with China and India, as co-sponsoring leading powers of the planet, to create a table at which the others parts of the planet can assemble, to take over the United Nations, and to reform the United Nations in such a way that we can eliminate, by agreement, some of the worst evils which are running the world today, and create a system of cooperation among perfectly sovereign nation-states, in which the dignity of the individual nation-state is guaranteed! And which also is dedicated to solve together certain common ends for future generations of all mankind.
One thing is that we need to have power, so that we have fresh water for people to drink. And without nuclear fission, we can't have that water, that power. We need to develop the raw materials of the planet in such a form that we can supply the needs of more than 6.5 billion people on this planet, and those who are coming after them. We need these kinds of things. We need the development of the intellectual power of the individual. We need educational systems and child-rearing protection, and so forth, which give us a greater quality of mankind, in all nations. These are understandable objectives. And if we take these objectives as our standard of behavior, rather than some arbitrary code, and say what contributes to this is good, and what doesn't contribute to this is not so good, and we're going to cooperate to these ends, what better is there? There is no better.
The idea of regime-change is tyranny, it's dictatorship. No. I may have quarrels with Putin on many things, but the essential thing is, we've got to bring the nations of this planet together in a system which deals with these problems. Putin is prepared to make that commitment. China, I know, will make that commitment. India, in its own way. Other nations will join. But without an initiative from the United States in that direction, it won't happen. So don't worry about Russia. Worry about the United States. Because if we had the right President in the White House right now, we would get that deal right now.
Coverup of the BAE Scandal
Freeman: ...This is a question from a Democratic member of the U.S. Senate. He says, "Mr. LaRouche. The British press coverage of the current BAE story obviously is a reflection of some kind of faction fight within British leading circles. My question to you is, what are the sides in this fight, and given that it is a faction fight, why is it not reflected in the press here? Why has it not emerged as a story in the U.S.?"
LaRouche: I think that the relevant scoundrels in the British Isles will probably do something horrible to Dick Cheney, not because they don't like what he was trying to do, but because he failed to do it. The very question is a very significant question. Here you have exposure of the fact that the long-standing ambassador from Saudi Arabia to the United States, was a key figure in taking graft to the tune of about $2 billion, among other things, principally while an ambassador. And that he was also a British agent, functioning under the mask of being something else. So, the question is why and how was the secret kept? There was no real secret about this! You see, this has been known.
Let me be very blunt without saying too much. This is the question, as I indicated today, which has been on my mind, and the mind of a great many other people, since before 9/11. As I said earlier today, this was the question in my mind when I made a public statement, a broadcast statement from here in the United States, prior to the actual inauguration of George W. Bush in 2001, that the economic situation, the pattern of the economic situation is such, that we must expect within the reasonably near future, that someone will try to do to the United States, what Hermann Göring did to make Hitler a dictator in Germany. And I saw that happen on Sept. 11, 2001. I saw it. That is not only my thought. That has been the thought of many people.
How was it done to us? It was known, for example, that most of the dead bodies that showed up, as of evidentiary significance, in the wake of 9/11, were of Saudi or related provenance. Somebody set that operation up! Now, al-Qaeda? Does that help us? No, it doesn't. Al-Qaeda was an asset. Again, he [Osama bin Laden]'s a Saudi. He was an asset of George H.W. Bush and the British, in the operations in organizing the Afghanistan War of the 1980s. Osama bin Laden is a key figure, who was recruited by these guys, out of the Saudis, to lead that operation. Al-Qaeda is a product of that operation! It's an operation which was British-American sponsored, and Saudi-sponsored. The dead bodies which were draped upon the doorsteps, as evidence in the wake of the bombing of 9/11, were largely of this provenance. And the question has been in the mind of everyone, since that time, knowing how this thing works: Wow! What's the evidence? Well, you've got ten prisoners dead. It's hard to get 'em to talk after they're dead!
So that's what the issue is here. The issue is that, therefore, do you think that there has not been a big effort to put a lid on a story as big as this has been, inside the U.S. press? Do you think that this story was not available, and its significance was not apparent—at least to some degree—to every leading press in the United States—-television, print? Why didn't they report it? It happened! And did this not involve money? Does not everyone know, that to run an operation like 9/11 was run, it takes many billions of dollars? It takes complicity of a government, or one or two governments? That this is a coup, an attempt coup d'état, in the same way that Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag in order to make Hitler a dictator? Wasn't there an effort on the evening of Sept. 11th, in the evening discussions, to ram through legislation, or ram through orders, which would establish a dictatorship in the United States, that didn't quite succeed—almost succeeded but not quite? And, have we not been run and dominated by this ever since then, by the apparatus which was put into effect on the pretext of 9/11? Don't you think that everybody who is cognizant in the United States, at every position of power, has not had these thoughts, repeatedly, persistently, over these intervening years? Do you not think that everybody who saw the evidence as it's come out now, who is in an appropriate position of power to understand how these things are done, has not had these thoughts? Do you not think that they were terrified, to death practically, of being involved in exposing this?
All right now, on the British side: On the British side, there is an angle. I don't know the answer in terms of having inside information of that type, but inside information of another type. I've been around for a long time, as some of you know. I've got about as much mileage as most people have. So therefore, I have as much experience as most people have, and I've been a target myself a number of times, and know how these things work. So, there is a crowd which I know in Britain. The same crowd which is opposed to the global warming swindle of Al Gore and company, which is the same as the Hitler program of eugenics. And these people have been the leaders inside the United Kingdom, in organizing things such as you saw on television, this Channel 4 in London, on scientific exposure of global warming as a swindle. It's a complete fraud! There is no scientific evidence which corresponds to any of this! It's all one big damn lie! And only stupid and wishful people believe it.
So, some people in London, and I know their types—and in Scotland also (the kilt was invented before toilet paper!). The Scots are a very practical people, you know. They're practical people in the sense that they are British, and they're patriotically British. But they also consider, is this a good idea, or is this a lousy idea, or is this a terrible thing to do, which we shouldn't do? Is this in the interests of our nation, such as it is? And their answer is no!
Now, it's very clear. People who oppose this BAE thing in Britain, are very clear, and it generally overlaps the same people. Against the BAE swindle, against this stuff, and against the global warming swindle. The same people! And their concern is, they think about the future. Because obviously, anybody in the United States who says global warming, blah blah blah: They're not thinking about the future of the United States. Because, if you do the things that are proposed under the global warming thing, you're going to destroy the United States. You're going to destroy the planet. You're going to cause more death than the planet has ever seen before! And you're coming up with that as a political idea? The kind of idea that can only come from people like Al Gore. It's a gory idea!
The British system is an evil system. It's an empire. But you have people who live within it, who have not abandoned all other human qualities, simply because they have the defect of being British. And they react—well, look, I've got a lot of British ancestors, you know. The greater part, apart from this French ancestry by way of Quebec, most of them come from Lancashire, from the time of the Norman conquest and things like that. One part has been in this country since about the time of the first half of the 17th Century, in New England and so on. Another part came over in the middle of the 19th Century. So, I've got hordes of ancestors, hordes of relatives of British Isles progeny. And also some Irish, too, I'll have you know! They snuck in by way of Maine.
But anyway, the point is, you have people who are human beings, who happen to be in a bad culture, as most of our ancestors of European provenance, came from bad cultures. We came here to build a good culture, but we came from bad cultures, or defective cultures, and so give the lads in Britain a chance. They're fighting on these issues for the right thing, and probably for the right reasons, and if they had not done this and made this fuss, if they had not acted with the BBC and the Guardian as they did, we would probably not have been able to break this story, even though the story was there all along. So they broke the story, we—myself, my friends—were smart enough to understand this thing, so we did our job. But we were doing our job, and no one in the Congress seemed to know a damn thing about this thing. The biggest story in recent times, the biggest scandal, and they didn't seem to know a damned thing about it. So, suddenly, with CNN three days ago, and some other things, suddenly the thing has broken.
Now, what this means is, that Cheney is in deep kimchee! First of all, because one of Cheney's functions was to be a control agent, to control the United States for London, under his wife's direction! His wife is practically a British imperial agent. He too. So now, his role has been depreciated greatly. He has failed to put the lid on the story. The story is now out. Cheney is in deep kimchee, and those who don't want to impeach Cheney are also in deep kimchee too.
Tony Blair and Dick Cheney
Freeman: Another BAE question, sort of, from someone with, I suppose, an interest in employment prospects for former heads of state. "Lyn, why is everyone trying to find a job for Tony Blair? First, there was the Sarkozy proposal to create a permanent paid position for him to run the EU. Now, an astounding proposal, reportedly initiated and guided by Vice President Dick Cheney, to make Tony Blair the special envoy to the Middle East for the U.S. government. What are they thinking? Is this some kind of attempt to buy Blair off, in light of the BAE scandal? I can not fathom why anyone, even Bush-Cheney, would propose Blair for this post, or any post in which he would speak for the United States. Perhaps you can fathom a reason. I'd like you to comment on it."
LaRouche: Well, you have to know, you've got to get the thing right. Blair does not work for Cheney. Cheney works for Blair. What's Cheney? Cheney is a human failure. A complete failure in life, and his wife, who became a British asset, if not a British agent—you see, they were out there in Wyoming, and he was the lug from the football team, sitting sullenly and admiring the campus Queeeeen, who later became his wife, and he went out and he flunked out of college, couldn't get a decent job, was a drunk, bad driver, and so forth. All these charming qualities. And so she decides that she wants this thing as something on her mantle, as sort of a trophy, the former football lug. And so, she was the one who got the leading contacts. She did her work, with a British fellow who was actually the spiritual founder of the Fabian Society, and she became an attachment, an American attachment, of the British Fabian Society. And like a certain Senator from we don't know where, but he's from Connecticut technically, she is a British asset. She played a key part in all his appointments, largely which came from London, including some of the juicy business things he got in the process, were through her. She is the boss in the family. And as I've said often, I think she locks him up outside at night, except on two occasions when she gave birth to daughters. So, she got him the connections, and he is a British asset. Typical British asset.
And the word is, of course, that former Saudi Ambassador Bandar, is also a British agent since the age of 16. So, you're dealing with an empire, the British Empire, and Blair has to go from the prime ministry. He's just worn out all the rugs to walk on there. And they have various roles. Sarkozy wants him to be the head of the European Union, as a new kind of institution which is part of the world government on the European continent. These other positions. And this is simply the faction which Blair has worked for. Blair, not Bush, not Cheney, orchestrated the war in Iraq. Blair! The Blair government. The Blair government lied. The Blair government kills, and Bush says, "Yesssir"!
So, Cheney is in trouble, because he's failed, he's failed to keep the lid on this story. And I don't think Blair's going to make it, under these circumstances, not with this scandal, because all the bridges could come down with this one. And we are not going to be idle, in the meantime.
A Global Fight: The Case of Mexico
Freeman: I'll come back to BAE questions.... This is actually a question on method, and interestingly, we have almost the same question coming from two different parts of the world, and from people who play a very different role. One is from Mexico, from somebody who sits on the council of the PRD but who identifies herself as a LaRouchista, and the other is from Glenn Isherwood, who's a leader of the LaRouche Youth Movement [LYM] in Australia.
First, the way our Mexican friend poses the question: "Before anything else, I'd like to express my appreciation for your concrete and very sharp message. My question is related to the BAE story: How does one connect this discussion of the BAE scandal, with all its implications, to the inside of a political party, like mine, the PRD, which is spending its time occupied with small local problems or with matters which in fact are only effects of a perverse international oligarchical policy?" And she references the current matter of the privatization of the pension system or their fiscal reform debate. She says, "How do we elevate the level of the fight" for these people?
Glen Isherwood says, "Lyn, thank you. My question addresses the point in your presentations that deals with our mission as human beings to change the economic conditions on a global scale. There are many people that are out there who say, "Think big," but act locally. They want to sprinkle good deeds around, and have people feel like they're changing the state of the world. What is your message to people like this, and most importantly, how do we get them to think and act bigger?"
LaRouche: The Pope and I have a problem. The same problem. You go back to 1982. Go back to the Spring into October of 1982, because there's the answer to the Mexican side of things. Remember, you had the Malvinas War. The Malvinas War was being stirred up by British interests, through the then-Secretary of Defense in Washington. I was opposing this. It was a violation of our treaty obligations, and our national policy. It was a pro-British policy, and we could not be too enthusiastic. And I got into a lot of trouble on this. But also, my position in this, in dealing with the question of Argentina, the Malvinas and so forth, and the British role at that point, took me again to Mexico, where I was not unknown at the time. And I was well known to [José] López Portillo, who had been President for some time at that point. So, during the course of my trip to Mexico, I had a meeting at Los Pinos with President López Portillo, and he asked for my opinion on the problems Mexico was having at that point. And I said to him, Well, Mr. President, they intend to destroy your country by about September of this coming year.
As a result of this conversation, which was followed by a press conference which I gave at the Presidential offices, we organized an effort, and I committed myself, to write a paper outlining a remedy for the situation, saying this is contrary to U.S. historical interests to do this to Mexico, what they were planning to do. So therefore, I wrote a paper called Operation Juárez. And Operation Juárez sort of anticipates what's been proposed recently as a new banking arrangement, in cooperation with the southern states of the hemisphere.
When the operation struck Mexico, as I knew it would come, it struck just about the time that I had published this paper, beginning of August. So, López Portillo took the actions which I endorsed for Mexico's defense of itself against this attempt to destroy the country. This continued up to the point that the country had already been destroyed, with the help of Henry Kissinger, who had been sent in by the U.S. government, as an emissary there. And López Portillo, as President of Mexico, gave an address in October at the United Nations, and this address should be heard by anyone who is a patriot anywhere within the vicinity of the Western Hemisphere today, as an example of a patriot, whose country had just been destroyed on orders, who stood up like a man as a President, to defend the honor of his country.
Now, the result of the crushing blows which were delivered against him and against me and against others, and the massive corruption that followed: No one in Mexico has had the guts so far—in a position of power—to defend the country's interests. Not because Mexicans are cowards; they do not pride themselves on being cowards, or didn't in my day, but because they saw no hope. They saw people who should have defended their country betray it again and again and again, on orders from London and orders from the North, the big fellow from the North—us.
So, the problem here is, to understand the principle of immortality, to which I referred earlier today, and that is, when we abandon the defense of principle, we lose everything. And when we ignore a hero in a position of power, who stood up like a hero to defend his nation, to speak for his nation's honor, in a period of great disgrace, don't be surprised if the smaller fry coming after him don't stand up and fight, either. And the remedy for this is, we have to say, as I do, and have done on a number of occasions, on the case of López Portillo: President López Portillo is a hero of Mexico! And if you don't defend him and his honor, you're not defending Mexico. Because without that commitment, the Mexicans have betrayed themselves, because they react with indifference to the great crime against their country and their people.
Now, if they don't fight, that's one thing. But don't, don't spit upon your heroes. When you spit upon your own nation's heroes, you spit upon yourself, and you spit upon your children's future. And therefore, the honor due to López Portillo for fighting what he did up to the last stand—and they intended to kill him you know, after that. He lived, but they intended to kill him, and they're out to kill his son, too. So that's the kind of situation.
If we say that, if we understand that, if we recognize that, then we give courage to Mexicans. But when they are induced to spit upon their own hero, how can they find the honor and the strength to fight for themselves?
To Get Results, You Have To Be Willing To Make Enemies
Freeman: Lyn, this is a question that comes from three members of the Freshman Caucus of the House of Representatives: "Mr. LaRouche, we came into Congress with a mandate to end the war in Iraq. Every effort in this direction has been blocked; in some cases, by our own leadership. The result is, that this institution"—I assume they mean the Congress—"enjoys lower voter approval than the very Administration that we were elected to stop. We have been told that, while our frustration is understandable, that it would in no way justify renegade actions against the leadership, and that indeed, such actions would only serve to strengthen the other side. Our concern is two-fold. One is the obvious question of how to get a policy implemented. Two, is the fact that, as members of the House, we serve at the pleasure of our constituents, and soon we face an election. We promised to do something that we didn't do, and as such, voters may very well boot us out, just as they did our predecessors. Do you have any advice?"
LaRouche: Well, you may know some of the ways I think. It's contemptible, isn't it? It's disgusting. It makes you want to vomit, but you're trying to find out who to vomit upon. This is what we've come to. This is the disgrace of our society. We're no longer men or women. You know, feminists came along, we said, "Okay, the women are going to take care of it; the men have been cowards." Now, we've got real men, called women. And the feminists come in, and they do the same thing the men did before them. And you're looking for the third sex. The point is, it's a lack of guts. It's a lack of intellectual integrity and intellectual guts.
You've got to realize the extent of corruption of our culture. See, I'm older; I had the advantage of seeing it at its birth. You came along later; it was already there when you came along. But, you have to see the degeneration, the moral degeneration of our culture. You have to see existentialism as corruption. You have to see what is popular culture today, as a form of corruption. Because you don't have valid choices of values. You have "go along to get along." You have adaptations to popular taste and popular opinion. You want to have some sexual fun, you have to go out and mix with the right crowd, and do the things that they like or they're going to reject you. And this shapes the character of people. They go out to be popular, popular, popular. "I want to be popular." I say: "Go out and make a good enemy today. Make yourself feel good." "Things are terrible!" "Well, why don't you have an enemy?"
Look, we know it top down, the corruption in the Congress—it's there. Look at the money! Look at the money for the Presidential candidacies. Where does it come from? And what does that money buy? The key thing here—and I didn't go into it because it's rather longish, in going through this kind of thing. I was worried about it, as you probably saw today. It's a long subject, and to get within three or four hours of this subject is not easy. I tried to do the best I could in a short time. I kept foreshortening this and foreshortening that. But, you have to, in a sense, understand the principle at stake here. The principle of creativity; the principle of commitment to the future. And you have to understand what was done to us by existentialism. We were brainwashed. When Roosevelt died, there was sudden change. I was off in Burma at the time the war ended, and I shortly came back from Burma toward India, and I was stationed outside of Calcutta, and in Calcutta during the period prior to my return to the United States, where I became involved in, actually, the Indian Revolution, as a GI. It's where my intelligence training began, in doing that. I learned how to run an intelligence operation.
So, I came back, and the United States had changed. Roosevelt had been dead—he died before I went to Burma, and people had asked me, and I said I was afraid for our country because a great man had been replaced by a very little man, and I was afraid for our country. And I was right. By the time I got back to the United States, the United States had been corrupted. We had a right-wing Congress; everything was going in the wrong direction. A reign of terror was descending, and guys who had fought on the fronts in wars, who come back as gutless wonders, were threatened by their wives. So, we didn't fight; we didn't resist. We had a virtually fascist regime stuck upon us, and we didn't fight. I fought, I couldn't help it. My instinct; I fought. I got into trouble; I fought. I enjoyed fighting, because it was good. At least I could feel clean, because I was fighting. The tougher the fight got, the cleaner I felt. Something rubbed off in the struggle, shall we say.
That's the situation that faces us, is a lack of courage, and my concern, which I expressed today, is that if you don't have a sense, you don't have a well-grounded sense of what is the difference between man and a chimpanzee, you don't have a sense of what it is to be human. If you don't have a sense of what creativity is, if you don't have a sense of what immortality is; real immortality, in terms of the individual human being, how can you be certain that you have a meaning to your life? You might drop dead tomorrow. What's the meaning of your life? Your children all desert you; they become disgusting. What's the meaning of your life?
And therefore, the lack of a proper sense of immortality, not some mystical thing, like the guy caught in the tent with one of his parishioners, and he's taken off to die, and he's not going to go to heaven, don't kid yourself. This is not the kind of immortality I'm talking about. Immortality in the sense that you have lived a life to serve an intention for humanity. You as an individual have a significant place in contributing to humanity. This is the only source of courage. If you don't believe in that, if you accept existentialist criteria, if you accept popular opinion as a substitute for reality, if you don't have a commitment to truth, if you don't have a commitment to discovering truth, to acting upon the basis of truth, you will turn rotten like the rest. And I saw a lot of my friends turn rotten, and they were your parents and grandparents.
So therefore, my message is, the only remedy is, learn the lesson. Don't accept substitutes. If you're not worthy of immortality, you're not going to get it. And if you can not find your sense of identity in what you contribute to humanity, even if you die for the purpose of doing it, you don't have the courage to cope with it; you're not a leader. We have a lot of people out there who would like to be leaders. But those people who would like to be leaders, are looking for someone who's a little bit stronger than they are. They want somebody who is a little bit stronger, who is a little bit more, who comes on stronger. Who creates an environment where they have a sense of freedom to act, or freedom to show some courage. They want to show courage, but they say, "What can we do? What can we do? What am I going to do? Stand up and scream?"
And therefore, you have to have leaders who do what I do. And, to do what I do, you have to accept the consequence of getting the kind of problems I get.
What Constitutes a Viable State?
Freeman: This is a question from a member of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Negotiations Affairs Department, concerning the conditions for viability of a nation in the Middle East. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, President Bush has called for a two-state solution in his Road Map proposal, which requires a viable state. And the question of water, which is my area of concern and work, for a nation to be viable, one of the fundamental requirements is water. The lack of water in Gaza and the West Bank, is now at a crisis stage. My question to you is: What do the American people understand as the meaning of a viable state? And what do you think about a timetable for all of this, since the Road Map called for the final date to be sometime in 2008?"
LaRouche: I would suggest that you look at the reactions from around the world, to what came up in the discussion, which is a fresh discussion of an old issue, of the Bering Strait Land-Bridge operation. The response in Russia and in Western Europe, as in from Denmark and elsewhere, is significant. When we raised this question, these kinds of projects, or you raise it among Alaskans, for whom it would mean the future opens up to them, when you raise this question, suddenly smiles come on their faces, and they say, "This is great. We want to do it." If you look at the history of the United States regarding this kind of project, you say, "We want to do it." Take the water question. All you need is nuclear fission. You can not produce large amounts of fresh water at low cost, that is a physical low cost, without resort to fission power. You have to end the agricultural policies of the United States, as they have now. We used to have a policy of agriculture which was tied into the idea of land management.
See, agriculture has two aspects. One aspect is growing food, and all the things to do with growing this food, and producing it. The other is maintaining the land area within which the food-growing occurs. For example, forestation. Well, if the area is suitable for forestation, get as many trees as possible, because a tree generally will convert up to 10% of the solar radiation it receives into biomass, and lowers the temperature accordingly. If you want to make a better climate, plant more trees, and make them grow. Of course, you have conservation methods; you build hedgerows and things like that, which help in conservation. You don't come across and say, "We're gonna grow some wheat. We're gonna grow some corn. We're going to make bio-fuel out of the corn." And you sweep across the area, and destroy the territory. You grow corn to turn into bio-fuel, which is a stupid thing to do anyway. Anyone who would do that would be call a "bio-fool."
So, therefore, you have to have a policy which we are responsible for: We are the boss of the planet. We! We didn't create this planet, but we have been assigned to run it. Therefore, we're responsible; we're responsible; we're going to see to it that the forestation occurs, the land improvement occurs. We're not going to have things like Loudoun County, [Virginia], which is a curse! We won't allow it. Because, why should you have to travel 60, 70 miles to get to work through areas which are only areas of habitation for people who are commuters to work? There is no significant economic activity in Loudoun County, except living and doing what you do when you live there. So, therefore, people are travelling distances—you now have traffic jams, because of having the old Loudoun County, which was largely an agro community, where you could grow all kinds of crops which you would think would be convenient for an area like Washington, D.C., like better qualities of meat, and better qualities of this and that sort of thing, sensible things. You don't have any productive economic activity within the county. What there used to be has been destroyed for the sake of real estate speculation, to create one big bedroom. In order to get to work, you've got to drive through the whole bedroom! Then they capture you; they get you with tolls and other things they charge on you, taxation.
Now, what happens when the real estate bubble in Loudoun County collapses, as it is in the process of doing? Now, we built up a big expense of just maintaining the county. If the county has shut down, who is going to pay the taxes to maintain the county, for the services? This extends all over this entire area. This is mass insanity. We took people, and we moved them from areas where they had been farmers or industrial workers, and so forth, performing useful lives, we moved them into these great areas of over-concentration of residential communities. Tax havens for tax gatherers. And we did it—it was stupid.
So, we didn't have a sense that the object is to develop the total territory of the nation in such a way that it becomes like a machine in which agriculture, and other things all fit together. You have people who live near places where they work, or people will find various places to work near where they live. We took people who lived in communities where they had places of opportunity to work where they lived. They could get to work within 15 minutes by commuting, approximately. Now, you have them travel great distances through great traffic jams, which are caused by this insanity, to get a job. You shut it down, and then the whole community has to move, all of the people there. It's insane!
The idea of a balanced economy, where your land management is such that you minimize the cost of travel, minimize the effort of travel. Create communities which are largely where most of the activities are local. We don't get the idea of shipping food great, vast distances across the planet. We grow food where we need it. Food grown where we need it is our food security. It may not be our total food supply; we'd like some other things thrown in too, but we need basic food security. We need agriculture to grow food in areas that we live. We need industries in areas where we live. We need scientific laboratories and educational centers in areas where we live. This crazy system is absolutely insane! What has happened to the United States in terms of land management and economic development, especially since Kennedy was assassinated, has gone worse and worse and worse. And the Baby-Boomer generation has made it worse, and what happened in 1971 made it worse, 1972 made it worse. What happened in the 1970s, and the 1980s made it worse. What's happened since has made it worse and worse and worse. And you almost want to say, "What would improve the United States?" "Go back and undo everything we did since about the time Jack Kennedy was assassinated." And you'd have something that would give you an image of what you want to think about, in terms of building a real economy.
So that's our problem. You have silly ideas, called fads. You say, "How can we adapt to this choice, this choice, this choice?" You accept the choices. Like my friend Revault d'Allonnes said, who died back in the early 1990s. He was a leading general, commanding general under de Gaulle's administration, and while he was still a colonel, at the end of the war, he was still in Germany, part of the French Occupation in Germany. And he was the only colonel in this command unit. So, they had a discussion among the members of the command, and the generals are all sitting around the table, d'Allonnes is sitting at the head of the table, they're all discussing about policy, think-tank policy, and the question is posed: What is the first thing we do if war breaks out? And none of them wanted to venture an answer to that, so the eyes sort of drifted around the ranks of several of the people assembled at the table, and there was Revault d'Allonnes, who gently raised his hand. Revault d'Allonnes was a very effective general, a very effective soldier, but he had a very gentle, humorous, light way of expressing it. It was a tough man inside a nice, soft, friendly exterior. He said, "Fire the generals."
The point is, this is often said—it is not unique to him on this occasion. Why do you say that? Because you have an army that is built up for peacetime. And the peacetime army is conditioned to sitting and running its little operations, and doing the things that make it happy, like going out and committing fornication, things like that—but away from the base. So what happens is, the army is oriented to the condition to which it is accustomed. The conditions to which it is accustomed are peacetime conditions. They don't think in terms of wartime conditions, and therefore you say, bring on a fresh group, who are all ready to go; ready to fire under the new kinds of conditions which exist. And that's the difference.
That's the problem we face here, in dealing with problems like this. You say, how can you adapt to what we're accustomed to, and make a little fix-it in what we're accustomed to, without actually changing anything in principle, like saying, "This whole thing has been a mess for 20 years, let's undo it, and fix it!" You don't think that way, and that's the problem. You don't have people who think with command sense, a sense of principle. Sometimes, you have to tear the whole thing down and rebuild. Sometimes, you have to tear down the slum and rebuild. And we're living in a cultural slum, called our present culture, and much of it we're going to have to tear down and rebuild, and go back to what we were doing earlier, or some better version of what we were doing earlier. We're going to have to back to largely self-contained communities, of finite size. A hundred thousand, 200,000 at most, 50,000 optimal. And in those communities, people should be able to live, find optional places of employment, have a system, a local system which can sustain an educational system for the people in that area, maintain medical support for people in that area, and so forth. And if you want to get someplace, you shouldn't have to go through a permanent traffic jam to get there.
Requirements for the Presidency Today
Freeman: Lyn, this is a question from a Democratic member of the Senate, who has a special interest in the campaign in 2008. He says: "Mr. LaRouche, New York City Mayor Bloomberg's exit from the Republican Party clearly positions him for an independent run for national office, partnering with someone like Joe Lieberman, or—far more likely—someone like Chuck Hagel. Given the fact that Hagel has become a virtual regular on the weekend news shows, and Bloomberg has access to virtually unlimited funds, this kind of independent effort could very well—for better or for worse—bring down the entire two-party system, particularly in the midst of the current turbulence in the United States. I'd like you to talk about this a little bit, because it is something that we have to consider going into the elections."
LaRouche: Very good. Well, we have a mess on our hands. We have a bunch of candidates—some of these candidates are decent people. They're qualified as leading figures, but they're not acting very good, shall we say, these days. The Presidential campaign, so far, is a farce, in many dimensions. First of all, we face a crisis, a global crisis as well as a national crisis, beyond belief. We have not, in recent times, experienced such a crisis. And you have candidates—a Democratic Party that says, "We're not going to impeach Cheney." It's a bunch of fools. Who can treat them seriously? Why won't they attack Cheney? Because they've got some money they want. And look at how the money is flowing into the campaigns. Where's it coming from? Big stuff: these speculators, hedge funds, and things like that. Real corruption.
The problem is, the leadership of the party is corrupt. It's organically corrupt; it's not simply somebody coming in and putting something under the door and saying, "I'm buying you." They're corrupt because the smell of money corrupts them. Especially the smell of hedge fund money. "Who can get the most money? Who's going to get the most? Most money; most money; most money!" And they don't have any policy which corresponds to the reality of the world, which the next President of the United States is going to face. Or even the present President. They are absolutely useless, in the way they are campaigning and what they represent. Even though they're not intrinsically useless people. It reminds me of Sarkozy, recently elected President of France, and the greatest phony in France. Sarkozy is a tough guy; he's gonna kill everybody. He's got more cops than exist, and he's gonna beat 'em all up. He meets with President Putin, and he gives a press conference afterwards, and the guy breaks down into a giggling session. You'd think he was drunk! He's acting like a fool; a complete fool in public. A gutless wonder! This is the kind of situation we see worldwide.
You see, the governments of Europe, from the Russian and Belarus border westward, do not function! It's not because the politicians are all stupid. They're not! But they're in a situation in which no one is supposed to function. If you adapt to the situation, you can't function. So, you have failed governments throughout Western and Central Europe, every one of them. And you see that in Sarkozy.
So the problem now is, what are we doing? We're going for early elections, early nominations. Idiocy! You're going with candidacies, which are stupid, which are only running for money, not for any issue, which have no policies relevant to the crises that face the nation now or will face the nation in the year 2009. None! You want to run for elections, you're going to run with a bunch of fools who are going to be discredited by the time the primary votes are cast, the primary selection votes, the majority of them. What is going to then happen? You're going into February and March, early March, by which you have essentially predetermined the slate of selections of candidates for the Republican and Democratic nominations. Then what happens? A wave of disgust overtakes the nation, and every guy who wants to run, as Ross Perot did, in the next election. So, what you have is, these candidates will not be principled candidates. They will be gimmick candidates. Ross Perot was probably more principled than any of these candidates would be. He was principled, in his own way.
So therefore, what you're doing is you're creating a chaotic situation. You're throwing the entire U.S. political system into a maelstrom of disgust, because no one wants to take up the issues. What's the issue? We are bankrupt! The world is bankrupt! The financial system is bankrupt! We are collapsing physically. We are running out of power. Our medical system is a disgrace, etc., etc. What are the issues? There has to be a fundamental change in policy, away from the policies which this present situation represents. Which means you have to go back essentially to say, look, everything done since the beginning of the 1970s was essentially wrong. And we're now in a situation where the cumulative effect of all the things we did, all this period, and now, what do you have? These candidates are out there, and they're trying to run on the basis of finding a profile, under which they can run a candidacy, and wondering what profile will win the election for them. And saying, "Well, if you're gonna be President, you've got to win the votes, and to win the votes, you've got to have the profile that's a winning profile, according to the polls, and according to this and according to that manipulation, and that stunt, and that stunt."
There's no address, you're not mobilizing—when you want to get the American people to change the way they behave, which is what you must do now, because the way the American people have behaved over the course of the past 25 years, is what is wrong. If you can't change that, you're not going to save anything. There's no fixup within the present system, if you continue it. Therefore, you've got to come forward with some very fundamental changes in the way we behave, back away from the way we've behaved for the past 25 years, back toward the better way we've known how to behave before. We're not going to do the same thing we did before; there were mistakes there too. But we can correct the mistakes, and bring forth a package of proposals which undo the damage we've done to ourselves for the past quarter-century. At the same time, make some changes to what we were doing earlier, to fix the problem.
A Statesman-Like Approach
I think the only solution is to have a real statesman-like approach for the Presidency. My proposal is, the President of the United States, or persons who propose to become the President of the United States, should state the intention that the President of the United States should engage with President Putin of Russia, with the President of China, and with the government of India, as a party of four powers to co-sponsor an initiative for a general international reform of the world economy, to deal with the present world bankruptcy, and to unleash a program of development as part of that program.
The person who should become the President of the United States, if the United States is to survive, must adopt the tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, and raise that banner again, and point out that our turning away from Franklin Roosevelt and his legacy is what went wrong with the United States, a long time ago. And say, we're going to have to look with the eyes of Franklin Roosevelt, at the realities of today, learn the lessons we should have learned from this comparison, and look at what modern technology provides us, and modern challenges represent.
How are we going to fix the problem? My view is, we have the key to this in this one issue, of railroads, which I've raised under other auspices.
We are now, coming out of the era of geopolitics—the era of geopolitics was the assumption that the British Empire could rule the world by its naval power, by dominating maritime traffic and maritime development. We've now come to a period of time, where with the development of magnetic levitation systems of mass transport of freight and people, if we build a mass transport system of this type across Eurasia, from the Atlantic to—where?—Ah! To Uelen, to the tip of Siberia, near Alaska. We build a tunnel system, as proposed and designed, which gives you a maglev system of connection from Uelen in Siberia, and thus to the mineral resources of Siberia as well, which then descends down to the Yukon, to the United States, through the isthmus, through rail systems in South America; it will also move across Asia, into Africa, we will have connected most of the land area of the world together, in one efficient transportation system, based on power, by nuclear fission power, largely. We can then solve the problems of the planet.
We need an "Eagle" program, in the sense of that type, a program where we say, this is the foundation of the way we're going to change the planet over the course of the next 50 years. And our policies are going to be based on our doing good for the planet, based on what we know the good is. Building around this central idea, the central theme: We're going to bring the land areas of the planet together, in a single transportation system, which will be a transportation development system which will tie sovereign nation-states together in cooperation. Something like that. The American people need something like that. They need a Franklin Roosevelt-style of vision, and to say, "Let's go forward from the mess we're in now and go do that."
And we have potential allies. China has problems. If we understand the problems of China, we can help them, not fight them. If we understand the problems of India, we can help them, not fight them. If we understand the problems and opportunities of Russia, we can help them, not fight them. We can win. We can actually beat the challenge of Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, in particular. We can do it. But we need a leadership that is committed to doing that, and engages the imagination of the American people, in particular, in the idea of going back to that kind of a mission-orientation. Going back to becoming once again a country of which you can be proud!
Democratic Leadership Has Lost Credibility
Freeman: I have a couple more questions from the Congress, and then I'm going to move to more questions from the LYM. This is also a question from a Senate office, a Democratic Senate office. "Mr. LaRouche, currently there is a proposal to allow sales of arms to Great Britain, without the normal licensing agreements. This proposal has been raised by the White House, and President Bush seems to think that he has the power to allow this, without Congressional authorization. Some members of his own party are alarmed by the implications of this. For those listening to this broadcast who may not be familiar with the implications, such a proposal, if implemented, would essentially privatize and deregulate the global arms trade. The current breaking story surrounding BAE simply expresses one aspect of why I believe this proposal, if adopted, would represent nothing short of a threat to global peace and security. I'd like your view of this, and I'd like you to comment specifically on whether it is your understanding that the President of the United States has the power to do this by virtual diktat, and what you think we in the Senate should do about it."
LaRouche: I think you should get rid of the whole bunch of these guys! I don't think these people are capable of being morally improved. I don't think they're capable of any good.
No, obviously, the war powers of the United States under the Constitution, are that, and therefore any activity of the United States which pertains to the implication of war, or weapons trafficking, must be constitutionally seen as a constitutional restriction on the war-making powers of the Presidency. The President can not do that without the consent of Congress. So, what do you do if he does it anyway? You impeach the guy, don't you? You jail him! Or tell him to grow feathers. But you don't put up with that.
Now, the problem here is, when you talk about Congressional action, or Congressional leadership of the nation, or leadership of the nation, who the hell believes you? You have lost your credibility! You have no credibility. The Democratic Party leadership presently has no credibility. Its refusal to take up the question which is demanded by the majority of the Democratic rank and file, to impeach Cheney, means that the present leadership of the Democratic Party does not have any credibility in the world, not only with the Democratic members, but with the world, because it can't do a damned good thing! It's no good! And the President can sit there and laugh at them, up and down. They can vote him out, and he will sit there: "I'm the President, you can't vote me out. I vote you out."
Therefore, how do you exert power without using a gun to do it? You exert power by engaging the support of the mass of the population, and if you turn your back on the people, the way the Democratic Party has turned its back on the Democratic rank and file, how the hell can the Democratic Party do anything? Anyone can laugh at them, even a poor silly fool like George W. Bush can laugh at them. But if you want to rule this country, you've got to be with its people. You've got to respond to them. That doesn't mean that they're going to accept everything that you do. It means they have to look at you as being potent, as meaning something. It's not being a fool, just a big-mouthed fool!
So therefore, you want to exert power? Exert power. What's your power? Your power lies in your relationship to the support of the people of the country. If you reject the people, and tell them, you want to impeach Cheney? You won't do it. You want to say, we're not going to impeach Cheney, because there's a good reason not to impeach him, that he's not guilty? They don't say that. They say, yeah, sure he's impeachable, but we're not going to do it. Therefore, the minute the Democratic Party leadership says, as Nancy Pelosi has said, we're not going to do it, Nancy Pelosi no longer has any effective power in dealing with the Presidency of the United States.
On the other hand, if the Democratic Party leadership wished to get Cheney out, and had the support of the Democratic voters, it would have the support of a lot of other voters as well, not just Democratic, but unregistered, unaligned, Republican—and the Democratic Party would very quickly have the power to run the President out, if they wished to. Then, somebody would listen to a leader of the Democratic Party. That's what the problem is. I think Nancy Pelosi should reexamine her priorities.
Sophistry Among the Baby Boomers
Freeman: Lyn, the next question is from Alan, who is a LYM organizer here in D.C. He says, "Lyn, I was recently at a Democratic event in D.C., where there was a Congressman giving a speech on the necessity of saving the infrastructure of the United States. A he mentioned the idea of a capital budget, but it was couched in a very insane idea of how history functions. An example of this was, he started off saying that the Roman Empire collapsed as a result of the roads falling apart." [laughter] It gets better. "He said that prevented the Legions from getting in and out of Rome, and that's how the Empire collapsed. Then after he was done, he fielded questions, and he responded to a question from one of our organizers about globalization, by saying that free trade in the 19th Century was what was used by the United States to destroy the British. So my question is, with this shaky understanding of history, could the Congress actually come to a competent understanding of a capital budget, and how?"
LaRouche: Again, it's the same thing. There is no understanding of much history, of anything. The problem is the Baby-Boomer generation. They don't believe in reality! You're dealing with existentialists, which is the modern form of sophistry in the extreme form. They think of popular opinion, they think of slogans, they think of catch phrases. I mean, the guy's lying; obviously lying. Talking about roads! He doesn't know what he's talking about. He knows he doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know anything about free trade, and he knows it; but someone, his advisor, says use this phrase, and he uses it. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't care! He doesn't care what the truth is.
I mean, some of you should know, there is a sense in yourself, a sense of the authority of speaking the truth. Now, sometimes you may be wrong about what you conclude, but at least your approach is the intention to be truthful, and it never is negligence. You never say something just because you want to say something. If you say something, and you stand by it, you must mean it. You may be wrong, but you can be corrected, but you have to mean it. You can't bullshit like that. But Baby Boomers do! Baby Boomers will say anything they want to say, to get you off their back. They don't care what lies, what nonsense, what fairy tales they invent, they'll tell you that, and they'll tell you a story, and his friends will say, "Yes, he's right about that!"
So, how do you cope with this? What you have to do, is, you have to go out to people. And there are some people in this country who are not Baby Boomers, you may have noticed. You have to get people to understand a sense that they are truthful. The problem with the educational system, with the whole information system now, is people don't know what the truth is. So therefore, you have to have a society for the promotion of locating the truth, and our educational systems don't do it. Our mass information systems don't do that. So how do you do that? Well, you organize around scientific method. You get to the basement of truth.
What Motivates the British?
Freeman: Okay, we can take two more questions. One is from [State] Sen. Joe Neal of Nevada, and the other is a zinger from a member of the French LYM. As Senator Neal says, "Lyn, based on this recent blockbuster story that you've released on Cheney, Prince Bandar, and the British, my question is: Given that the British have depended on us to save their butts on more than one occasion in the recent past, what exactly do they have to gain by destroying the United States?"
LaRouche: It's an ideological question. It's like a kind of pagan religious belief question. You believe something, and you say, "I understand: The world will be fine, if the world is run this way. I'm going to make sure the world behaves itself, and runs itself this way." These guys believe in liberalism. Now, what's liberalism? That's the question. The birth of modern European civilization was in the Council of Florence, and it took the form of the emergence of states such as Louis XI's France, Henry VII's England, and so forth. And there was a countermeasure from the Hapsburgs and similar kinds of people who represented the old Venetian interests. Europe dissolved into religious warfare. Religious warfare took two phases. The first phase was launched by the Hapsburgs as such, who started the religious war in 1492 with the expulsion of the Jews—that was the beginning of religious warfare, with the Inquisition—and this went through a phase. The Inquisition wasn't working out too well. So you had a new phase of the Inquisition, which was started by a Venetian by the name of Paolo Sarpi. And Paolo Sarpi went from a strict medieval code, to a code which was based on the Indifferentist Code of William of Ockham. And William of Ockham was a fantasist, who actually believed in something like gambling, and what became known as liberalism was a result of this.
Take the case of economics: You have people like Adam Smith and company. Their argument was, essentially, an argument based on that of Galileo, that there is no principle which governs truth, or lack of truth, in economics, or in finance, for example. That the universe is organized, in effect, by little green men, who are under the floorboards of reality, and they're casting dice. And what happens to you, living above the floorboards, depends upon how the vote comes out on the casting of dice. If the dice come up one way, you get this kind of a future. And that's the way people look at business. It's the way they look at economy today. It's the so-called free trade system. It's a gambling system, invented actually by Galileo, who was the first one to take up the idea of systematizing, mathematically, gambling principles. So, we are running on a gambler's society.
Now, in this, you say: Well, why do you say that? And they say, "Ohhhhh, Ahhhh! Mystery!" And if you read the writings of all the leading economists, Bernard Mandeville or Adam Smith, who's a plagiarist on this thing—read all of them; read the entire British school. They're all based on this fantasy of gambling.
Now, what came from Sarpi, Sarpi's argument was that, these principles are mysterious. There is no rational purpose at all. But Sarpi's argument was simple. Sarpi was trying to impose a dictatorship, along with the other Venetians, on the world, and he found out that, with the development of societies around cities and so forth, of modern society which had emerged from the Renaissance, that you couldn't win these wars anymore, even militarily, because cities that were organized with a high level—at least for that time—of technology, are a new form of society. And societies which were building on the basis of technological progress could not be defeated by medieval methods. So therefore, Sarpi said you have to have a different kind of approach. You can not be opposed to technological progress: You'll lose. Therefore, you have to allow some technological progress. You can't have a fixed society. But you must not allow human beings to believe that the individual human being is capable of knowing the truth. Therefore, you must mystify society, with arbitrary choice, and that's what they did. And this is called "liberalism." Liberalism means a denial of the existence of knowable truth. Therefore, you allow people to behave in a certain way, within limits. The limits are determined by an oligarchy, which says, "Well, this is allowed; this is not allowed." And therefore, there is no sense of reason in the way they behave.
So, now when you're dealing with the British system, and you're thinking about systemic liberalism as a philosophy—and think of the extent of it in the United States, think of it in the terms of Hollywood culture, think of it in terms of all the different kinds of culture that affect the people of the United States and Europe: They don't have a sense of truth. There is no sense of truth in liberalism. That's what liberalism means! Liberalism says, there is no truth. However, there are social arbiters, or institutions, peer groups, constituencies. These peer groups will decide whether something is acceptable or not. Authority will decide whether it's allowed or not allowed. What will determine that? Oh, "authority" will determine that. Not what's right or what's wrong, or what's scientifically correct, what's scientifically incorrect.
So therefore, liberalism is a system of oppression based on refusing to hear an argument based on defensible truth, against authority. Where, in our system, our Presidential system, as it's constituted, the argument was, that if we come in with an argument which is scientifically valid, as a demonstration of what is in fact true, we have the right to express that against authority!
Let's take the case of libel law. European libel law as against U.S. libel law, or what U.S. libel law used to be. If you can demonstrate that you're telling the truth, you're not libelous. However, in Europe, if you insult an important person, no matter how true it is, you've committed libel. Therefore, our system presumes, when we follow it, that we are struggling, not always to know truth perfectly, because we don't, but we're always struggling to achieve truth. We say to someone who is a suppliant, "Well, you've got a case, present your evidence." "I don't know how." "Well, we'll help you get a lawyer. Maybe he can help you present your evidence." And if a person comes in with the evidence to substantiate that what they're saying is true, the truth of what they're saying has to be accepted. Even if it's not perfectly true, if it's plausible, the fact that it's plausible has to be accepted. So, okay, we can't accept it, but go out and keep looking, if you want to keep trying, and see what you can do with this. Fine. Isn't that what we do all the time? Go out and find out. I don't agree with you, but if you think it's important, keep at it, and if you've got some evidence, tell me. That's our system.
Under the oligarchical system of Sarpi, authority decides whether your question can be admitted or not. And that's the same in economics. Laws are made, to conform to that. We have people who are stealing. They're called hedge funds. They pledge to borrow money. They don't actually get money; they pledge to borrow it. They sign a pledge to borrow it. They then come into a firm, and say, "We have this money. We have enough money. We're pledged to buy your corporation out and take you over." "Where's the money?" "Well, don't ask that, we have a pledge here." So therefore, they come in. It's not their own money. They're not buying the company with their own money; they're buying it with a form. How do they pay the bill? They loot the company! Sell off the carcass, walk off with the money, and go on and loot the next company. That's allowed! This is liberalism. And liberalism is the rejection of truth as the standard of justice. The rejection of the method of truth as the standard of justice.
So, that's what the problem is. And therefore, you have people who believe in liberalism. Where does this come from? It comes from two things. It comes from something that is morally disgusting. If you believe in oligarchy, do you believe that you should kiss the butt of somebody up there because they're an oligarch and you're not? Now, if you believe that that's an advantageous system for you, because you might get a favor, or so forth, from that, then you will act to support the continued rule of you by the oligarchy. And what you have in the case of the British system, is a deep moral corruption of the British culture, which has never been removed, since the time after Queen Anne died. Never been removed. And this is: "We like to have our butt kissed. And therefore, we want a system in which we can live that way. That's our system! We are going to defend our system, even if we are slaves within it." And therefore, you have people who do not want to be ruled by reason.
You can find it all in our society. You have people who want to be irrational. "I have a right to be irrational!" Do you know how many people are like that in society? Especially among white-collar Baby-Boomer generation people? "I am changing sex tomorrow morning!" That's the kind of society you're living in!
The point is, this is the concept of good and evil. Now, good and evil is not the simple thing that most people try to make it. But, good is the desire to be good, and the desire to be rational, and the desire to be good about it. Evil is the side, "I don't want to be constrained. If I like to do it, I want to be able to do it!" "But sonny, you're not old enough to get a girl pregnant."
Anyway, so that's the kind of society you're living in. This is an existential society you dealing with, and therefore, people who like the freedom to be irrational, even in a predatory way, the right to be a predator, like a society which offers the chance. How many people do you know, who are demoralized in recent decades, who turn from despair to gambling? In how many states is gambling legalized, institutional gambling legalized? How many states are running state gambling lotteries? How many states and communities are relying on gambling as a source of revenue? How many Indian tribes are being looted by this swindle, which is voted up by state after state? What is gambling? Where is the rationality in gambling? Where's the reason in basing a society on gambling? What kind of a mind is it of a legislator, a governor, a senator to encourage legalized gambling? Promoting insanity called gambling. Immorality called gambling. What is the state of mind of the society in which this occurs? What is the state of mind of the layer?
Take up here in West Virginia, Clarksburg. There's a small racetrack. They have a couple of old nags running around. Nobody goes out to watch the horse, to speak of. Most of them are sitting down there with one-armed bandits and similar kinds of things, for nickels and dimes and so forth, and gambling their life away. All over this country, people have gone into despair, and gone into this mass gambling industry. It indicates a society which has this moral weakness in it. And people sometimes like to defend it; they're patriots of an immoral society, and that's what the case of the British system is.
Einstein on Russell
Freeman: This will be the last question that we have time for. For people who submitted questions that were not asked, I will give them to Lyn, and he will answer some of them in time. I think some of your questions, though, were already implicitly answered.
Lyn, this is a question from Elise, who is a member of the French LYM in Britanny. And she wanted to make clear that this was Britanny in France, not Great Britain. She says: "Hi Lyn. I've just read Einstein's How I See the World, in which he defends both the idea of human creativity, and also Bertrand Russell's idea of a world state. He makes a rather aggressive apology of Bertrand Russell, and there stands the epistemological limit of a great man. One who you, yourself, have quoted in your writing and your speeches. How do explain this? Why does he have this limit? And also, what are your limits?"
LaRouche: I have not come to the point that I accept any limits. The only limit I accept is responsibility: that whatever you do, you have to be responsible for it. Responsible inside yourself, first of all, not just with external things. But no; there is no good in Russell. Russell is probably the most evil man of the 20th Century. Satan blushes when Russell's name is mentioned. Here's a man who hated creativity. Nothing Russell ever did expressed creativity. So, how can he be for creativity when he's against it? Russell hated it. Russell is, among other things, a liar, so that helps to understand how he did what he did. He's one of these congenital liars. And he is probably the most evil man, more evil than Hitler, in the 20th Century. Now, his famous work is the Principia Mathematica, which is a complete fraud. The work was exposed as a fraud, in a minor degree, in one aspect, in 1930-31. But it is shown that it doesn't work. The error that he makes there is the same error that some of our young people have dealt with in the question of the equant, in the question of astronomy. The proposition that you have closure in that kind of system. It's completely insane. The modern information theory is based on this, that of Bertrand Russell. Norbert Wiener was a student and protégé of Bertrand Russell. John von Neumann, who probably was an idiot-savant, essentially, was a protégé. Both of them were thrown out of Göttingen University for fraud; that's their achievement in life.
And we have a society now, which is brainwashed into accepting information theory. There's no such thing as information theory; it doesn't exist. You have idiots out in California, in large, well-paid corporations, who are talking about maintaining synthetic intelligence, or synthetic brains, by digital methods. Impossible! Creativity always involves something which is always outside an existing set of assumptions. There is never closure; there is never a closed system in which creativity can occur. Creativity always occurs as a violation of a closed system, on the condition that the violation is lawful.
And so, don't worry about Russell. Russell was a beast, he was a Nazi, or worse than a Nazi. He was the man who was the author of nuclear warfare. He was the one who promoted the policy of preventive nuclear warfare against the Soviet Union back in 1946; actually in 1945, but publicly in 1946. And he never apologized for it, he always defended it. His aim was world government, world tyranny, world dictatorship. He and his friend H.G. Wells were of the same tenor. But every degenerate, every worst case of degeneracy in all British culture, is summarized and compacted as an expression in the work of Bertrand Russell. There's no damn good in that man, dead or alive.
Freeman: Well, I think that that brings today's seminar to a close. I'd like to encourage those of you who have not already done so, to subscribe to EIR Online, where you will get the very latest on some of the developing stories and some of the developing issues that Mr. LaRouche has gone through today. I would also encourage you to pick up the latest issue of EIR, and also this hand-out which goes through some of the details of the BAE story, which you will not read in the U.S. press. We also do have available now a pamphlet that goes through the content of some of the proposals and presentations that Mr. LaRouche gave during his recent visit to Moscow. This is an extremely valuable tool for people in the United States, and I'd encourage you to grab it. I also would really encourage you to make contributions, so we can make sure that Mr. LaRouche's presentation today is widely distributed, both in the United States and internationally, beyond simply the growing exposure that we get from the website.
Other than that, I would really ask all of you here to join me in thanking Lyn for a remarkable presentation.
