Dialogue With LaRouche
This is a transcript of the question-ana-answer dialogue which followed Lyndon LaRouche's opening remarks at his webcast on Oct. 10, 2007. Video of the webcast.
Debra Freeman: Thank you, Lyn. As we normally do during these webcasts, I have a series of questions that have come in while Lyn was speaking, via the Internet.... I'm going to alternate. We do have a lot of institutional questions that have come in, and as always I will give them priority; but I will try to get to your questions as well.
Now, Lyn, we have a lot of questions that have come in, very specifically on the question of the HBPA [Homeowners and Bank Protection Act]. And I've put together five basic questions about the measure itself, that are kind of a compilation of what people have asked.
How the Housing Bill Will Work
The first one comes from someone in Pennsylvania, who says that he has been trying to get his Congressional Representative to endorse the bill, but that the Representative's staff told him that the member of Congress believes that the bill is full of unworkable proposals. And not only would he not endorse it, but he was systematically contacting those state legislators who have endorsed it, and asking them to rescind their endorsements. So, our supporter here has some questions that were given to him by the Congressional office, and these are similar to questions that we've gotten from other Congressional offices as well.
I'll ask you them, one at a time....
The first one is: "Mr. LaRouche, if you stop all foreclosures, how would you prevent some people from simply ceasing to pay their monthly mortgages? Or even just cutting back some months if their money is tight? If banks can't foreclose, how does one force people to continue to pay their home mortgages at all? The entire population could just skate home-free on their payments."
LaRouche: What a swindle! What a phony question!
Look: The provision is—as I made very clear, and even an idiot in the Congress can understand it—the way you do it is, once a property is in a state of threatened foreclosure, you come into negotiation, and it's a negotiation conducted under law. What's the law? I specified it very clearly. Didn't the idiot listen to what I said? He wants to criticize what I say, before the idiot knows what he's talking about?
I said, we will, instead of paying the scheduled mortgage as scheduled, there will be an agreement, an arrangement, under which the person who is the occupant of the property, will pay something per month, in the form, as if of rent; until such time as a resolution of the debt can be made. The object is to keep the people in their houses. And if you take them out of their houses, and if you take the extent of the evictions which are about to occur if this does not happen, you're going to have the United States going into a sinkhole of Congress!
Anybody who opposes this, should be considered as tantamount to a criminal mind.
Freeman: I figured that was a good warmup.
Another Congressional office says, "Mr. LaRouche, your bill says that banks must be under protection until home prices come down to fair prices. But wouldn't that leave people with mortgage amounts that are way higher, than the price of the underlying asset—i.e., their home—leaving them with huge negative equity?
"Or, are you calling for the mortgage amounts, as well, to be somehow slashed, to match home prices? If so, how would this work, and how could it be legally enforced?
"And if it were done, wouldn't it be a kind of expropriation against the banks and other lending companies?"
LaRouche: Well, if we don't do it, the banks are going to disappear, so how can you expropriate the banks if you're going to cause them to disappear?
What is going to happen is precisely that: You're going to take the amount of the overpricing—the overpricing through a national swindle, a mortgage price swindle—and we're going to come to a legal proceeding; under the Congress, under Federal law, we're going to decide what's a swindle and what's not a swindle. And any amount of the excess value of the mortgage that is a swindle, will be slashed! Under law.
But, what we'll have, as a result of that, on the other side—which you won't have any other way—in that way, we will keep the local bank in existence. What we're going to do, essentially, is take all this paper, which is highly inflationary, it's speculative, it's gambling money! It's gambling house money! We're going to see to it that what should be paid, to keep the economy going, will be paid, or will be covered by protection.
We're going to rebuild the economy. This means that we are engaging an obligation to increase employment—not of bank clerks, and certainly not of stockbrokers. We have an excess of stockbrokers—as a matter of fact that error is being corrected right now, by the market itself, eh? You're going to find, stockbrokers are going to be paving the streets—with their bodies. We don't need them! We don't need these guys!
The time when you had a rational economy went out about the time of the assassination of John Kennedy. We've been a screwball economy ever since then. Look at the records. We had a lot of filth going on in the economy around Truman and beyond. I wrote about this, back in the 1950s; I warned about the '57 recession, which was a deep one. I was right! I was right then, and I'm right now—and they were wrong then.
But we still kept the economy going, and Jack Kennedy kept the thing going. And then they killed him! And then some idiot terrified Johnson into going into a crazy war, by fraud, by lies! The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Big Lie! We got into a long war, like a Peloponnesian War, starting with Indo-China. We got into a long war in '64, we continued it through '72; we resumed it, again, at the end of the 1970s, in the form of the war in Afghanistan. We launch more and more wars. We used 9/11 to launch wars, permanent wars! And we've destroyed our society.
The point is, we have to realize that wealth is created not by people signing paper. Wealth is created as physical wealth, by physical production, by conditions of life, or physical conditions of life—health, and so forth—and that's real wealth.
We have gone to a point: Look, we are a swindle economy! We don't pay our debts! What do you think we owe the world, in terms of financial debt? We don't produce our own food; we steal it from other countries. We take it from them at the lowest possible prices, then we don't pay for what we bought! That's the present system. Have you looked at the accounts recently? The United States is one of the biggest swindlers in the world. It's only a smaller swindler, compared to the British. But it's a swindler; we're swindling the world.
What I'm proposing to do, is to go back to a productive society, where we produce wealth, physical wealth, in the forms of care, in the forms of education, that sort of thing, which increase the power of mankind, physically, per square kilometer and per capita. And we used to do that.
So, we simply say: "Well, we're in a depression. Now, if you're in a depression, you're a bankrupt. And the United States is bankrupt. The whole system is bankrupt. Why are we bankrupt? Because we mismanaged, we're incompetent."
Now, what do you do with a bankrupt? He has to take the heat. He lost, he was a fool, he didn't manage competently, he swindled. He's a failure, and this failure is now coming around and telling us how to run the economy? This idiot?
No. The point is, we must have solid banks. We must give them the chance to come back on their feet as solid banks of the type we used to have. We must have solid businesses, we must have solid farms, solid communities. We must give them a period of time to get back on their feet, to recover from what we did, since the death of Jack Kennedy, to destroy them. They have a right to do that; they're human beings. Society is based on the welfare of human beings, the principle of the General Welfare, no other consideration.
We're not a money economy! We're not a loan shark economy—or we shouldn't be. And therefore, we'll freeze the thing; we'll keep the banks functioning because we need that, because the people need them. We'll keep the people in the homes, because we need that. We'll slash the part they were overcharged in buying these homes in the first place. We'll slash the charges against the banks. We'll protect the banks, too. We'll give the society the chance to get back on its feet.
And otherwise, if you don't do that, if you object to these measures, you're going to send society to Hell, and you'll be to blame for that.
'We Have to Protect the People'
Freeman: Another question from the Banking Committee on the House side: "Mr. LaRouche, your proposal would essentially wipe out what could be as much as trillions of dollars of assets of both banks and mortgage-backed securities. Now, a lot of pension funds are invested in mortgage-backed securities, and it would seem to me that this would be not only a disaster for the banks themselves, but also for pension funds.
"However, I do see that you are calling for some form of protection for the banks that would be orchestrated through this new Federal agency that you've proposed. Specifically, what form of protection are you talking about? Do you mean that the government would then bail out these banks, if they were in trouble?"
LaRouche: Well, the government would do two things: The government will, first of all, ensure that the bank continues to function, because the greatest calamity to be avoided, is the idea that the banks start collapsing, and don't function. Try to imagine functioning in an economy in which your local banks don't function, in which the savings bank and the other things you depend upon don't function. Think about that: Are you willing to take a measure which will deny relief for those threatened institutions? Do you want to take that on your conscience? Don't talk to me about swindles.
Now, on the question of pensions: If a guy has a gambling debt, my view is, "tough luck, buddy." You gambled! And much of this so-called wealth, which people call "assets," was arrived at through gambling. You have states which have engaged in gambling. Now, gambling is actually immoral. So we'll call this a "sin tax."
No, the point is, a pension—a human being went to work for a firm. They were engaged in a Federal, or private, or state pension fund. That was part of their wages. Therefore, you owe them that! Now, you come along and say, "Now, we're going to cut this fund out, we're going to cut this fund out." Well, who's going to eat it? Not the person, the pensioner. I mean, you may have a limit on pensions: If somebody came out with a golden parachute, or a diamond-studded golden parachute, from some corporation recently, they've got nothing coming to them.
But the average person does have. And, more than that, it's in the interest of society, that this person have that right! Our society has to be based on humanity, on social stability, on the welfare of future generations. You know, you're all going to die! What are you, monkeys—you just die, and another breed of monkeys come along? Or is there some purpose in this whole organization we call human society?
We all die: Doesn't our living probably have a purpose? Is it not a purpose which is expressed in what happens in the next generations that come? Do we not have a policy? We don't throw people out on the elephants' graveyard, simply because they become retired. Don't we recognize that we have an obligation to society's future to take care of these things? We contracted them; we owe it! What kind of skunks are we that we say, "Aww—You gotta take this guy, this 'investor'" (probably a swindler, Las Vegas type, hmm?) "A gambling casino operator, we gotta take care of...." Oh? What about injustice?"
What about injustice to people? What about, did the people of this country actually have a say, in the mismanagement of this economy? Who managed this economy in the recent decades? What are you going to do, charge the members of the Parliament or members of Congress for mismanagement? Are you going to go back and take all the people who were running the state government as elected officials and charge them? It was their will that did this.
Or, are you going to say: We have a moral responsibility, to have an orderly development of society. And we have to do that which is just. And what we're doing, is justice—it's for human beings; it is justice for the presently living human beings, for the sake of the future generations.
And what I see now, as I saw recently in the shutting down of the auto industry: The people who did that, they didn't have to do that. They did it. Who did it? These big speculators, these swindlers. Who did it? These guys who took the golden parachutes. The hedge funds. First of all, you go through the thing. The first guy to go, is the hedge fund. Hedge funds get nothing. And if they've got something, we take it from them. No, it was a swindle. I mean, everyone pays their dues.
But we have to protect the people. And we have to protect the future generations. We have to protect our nation. Some people say, "no." I say, "They're immoral." And they probably will go to Hell.
Look to the State-Level Leadership
Freeman: This question is from a senior Congressional staffer whom you know rather well. She says, "Lyn, please explain why you think that none of the legislative efforts by Congress so far address the home mortgage crisis in any way. I understand that you may believe that they are just interim, or stopgap measures, but surely they're a step in the right direction. However, you seem to be saying that these actions are actually making things worse. Please explain how and why that is so."
LaRouche: Every time a bank in the United States contributes to bail out Northern Rock in London, what are you doing? You are throwing assets of U.S. institutions, which are now in jeopardy—your banks, are now being put in jeopardy—to bail out worthless investments! What? Ten cents on the dollar! The guys who are taking over Northern Rock are paying 10 cents on the dollar, or the equivalent. We are supposed to bail them out on the basis of 100%. We're being robbed! Why should we be throwing good money after bad? Why should we be robbed? These institutions are bankrupt: Let them be put through bankruptcy! You don't want to take care of the householder, you want to throw the householder out in the street? Well, we'll throw you out in the street! The householder is more important to us than you are!
This is false morality! The morality of the cash nexus. And I see this.
The problem with these guys in the Congress, is they're cowardly. They're gutless. And the people know it!
Look: I'm dealing right now with two political levels. One, I'm dealing with the Federal level, typified by the Congressional level. The Congressional level, hmm? They're about the moral level of Cheney; that's their performance. That's what the people think! The American people consider the members of the Congress as being as low, in worth, as Dick Cheney. And that's a change that has occurred within the past year. And it's a change which has come about, precisely because of the arguments I'm hearing now, on these objections to this reform!
Whereas, get down to the state level. Now, you also get a generational problem here. You have three adult generations to consider: One, 18 to 35, in two sections, 18 to 25, and 18 to 35. Then you have a slightly younger generation of 35 to about 50, and they're the in-between, the iffy generation.
Then you get the level of 50 years of age, to 65: Baby Boomers—generally born between 1945 and 1958. Sixty-eighters. Remember them? Pot? The generation that went to pot? Pot luck. Right? The guys who were on the streets in '68, what did they do? They tore their clothes off, grew new sexual organs, all these kinds of things; took all kinds of drugs, burned down buildings, burned down schools—all these good things: They're now the stolid citizens who call themselves the members of the Senate and other institutions!
So, what you're seeing here is a contempt expressed against the members of Congress, generally, including the Democrats! Nancy Pelosi has no admirers among stalwart citizens in that area. They're submitting to her. And they look at Congress with contempt.
Now, look what we're getting: The government of the United States, the quality of leadership fit to govern the United States, is found on the lower level! Where? Well, you find it in state legislatures. We've got about 70% of the population of the United States involved in, represented by legislative bodies. They are not all in session, of course, unfortunately. But people in those bodies have taken a stand on these issues. These guys are willing to take a stand on an issue, where the Federal government, the members of Congress are not! They represent the lower age-group, and the lower income-bracket influence, than the Federal level. But they represent the majority of the people. Because the Congress represents, typifies about 18% of the people! This [the state bodies] represent 50-60% of the people—in the same states! State by state.
The problem here, is, someone says, "But you can't do anything about it! Reid won't let you do anything about it, in the Senate. Pelosi won't let you do anything about it in the House." Who are these two clowns? The majority of people, the majority of elected people in the United States, on the state level, will tend to support this policy which I've laid out. The upper group, in the Senate or the Congress, won't, not because they're evil, but because they're stinking cowards! And they're intimidated. They're afraid.
You look at what happened at the recent meetings of the Democratic Presidential party leadership: a bunch of clowns! These people are acting like clowns. They're not necessarily clowns, but they're terrified! They're afraid to be caught breathing!
And, you see, the reason why Hillary Clinton is so popular is because she has guts. She's often wrong, and usually wrong. But she has guts! And you have all these guys who are running for President, or the Presidential nomination, and they have no spine—and no brain, either!
Freeman: We still have lots of institutional questions, and a lot of questions from the states. But I'm going to just mix it up a little bit, and take a question now from the audience gathered here. Joe Elkins: Do you want to come to the mike and ask your question?
Q: Hello Mr. LaRouche. I've been doing a lot of organizing on the Hill lately, and I had a question that had been posed to me from two Senate offices. They both represent an enormous number of foreclosed constituents, and they've had this as essentially their only question to me during meetings. Their question is: "Who are you meeting with on the Banking Committee? And what are they saying? We aren't on the Committee; we can't introduce it. But maybe we could do an amendment."
LaRouche: Well—I'm setting fire to the tail of some creatures these days. And I'm going to get more and more rough. It has to be done: We're trying to save the nation, and these gutless wonders, they disgust me.
Don't be intimidated by this crap. We have, we know, on the state level, in the Democratic Party and outside—we have support from those who are recognized representatives: whether they're in government or in leading institutions like trade unions and so forth, people who have been elected representatives of institutions on the state level. And cumulatively, on a national level, we know the majority of the people—as against what we're getting in the Congress—agree with us! We're right! And they're wrong, and they're cowards. And that's what the problem is.
And the way to deal with this, is, don't say, "How do we do this, if these guys, won't... ?" Well, we can always lynch 'em! And you know, that may be said in jest, but it's a very nice jest to make.
What Is Congress Afraid Of?
Freeman: Lyn, the next question comes from a Democratic consultant here in Washington. He says, "Lyn, by my estimate, based on the polls that we've been taking, it would appear that we're virtually guaranteed"—(when he says "we," he means the Democrats)—"we're virtually guaranteed of a Presidential win in 2008. However, on the Congressional level, what we're seeing is a phenomenon unlike anything I've ever seen in all the years that I've been in politics. It's not about party, it's about incumbency: The general mood across the nation, without limit, is to kick the bums out. And it really is across the board, regardless of demographics. Citizens hate the old hands in Congress, and they hate the freshmen, too, because they feel that they elected the freshmen with a mandate, and that the freshmen haven't delivered on it, and haven't even tried.
"Now, it isn't as if this is secret knowledge. Members of Congress are as aware of this, as I am. I know that, because I share these polls with them. Now, you say that they're cowards. But my question to you, is: Cowards about what? Afraid of what? What they're doing now, is going to virtually guarantee their exit from office, and frankly, even though I don't have a very high opinion of a lot of them, I am concerned about the idea of a complete turnover in Congressional leadership."
LaRouche: Well you've got to think a little bit more, about warfare, as I know this gentleman does. He's inclined to warfare.
Now, we're in a war. And the tide of war is turning against the enemy. Because you've got a lot of people out there—do you have any idea of what the level of foreclosure is, that's about to descend on this population during the coming 30 days? To say nothing of the coming 60 days: Do you have any idea, of what the level of foreclosure is going to be? And similar kinds of catastrophes?
For example: Take the case of Loudoun County. You've got a fascist crew out there running for sheriff, on the Republican ticket. It's Blackwater! The candidacy for the sheriff, in Loudoun County, today, the Republican candidacy, is Blackwater! And what that represents. These guys represent real fascists. I mean not something you can label "fascism" or "fascist-like": This is like Pinochet and similar types. And remember, this is minor in the U.S.—Blackwater is minor, compared to the British operation! This is the Revolution in Military Affairs! This is the dirty-stick end of it. These are the guys who go out and kill, not because they have a target, but because they need to kill. Remember, look at these stories that keep coming in, you see what the pattern is: They're not killing by over-enthusiasm. They're going out to kill, to create an effect. Just like the Nazis did, exactly the same thing. And these guys are Nazis! I know who they are. I know their pedigree: They are Nazis.
So, you're in this kind of situation, and the target of these Nazis is Hispanics. You have a lot of people who come from Mexico and similar places, who've been working in the construction industry in the greater Loudoun County and adjoining areas. Now, this group, this campaign is intended to create a lynch mob business about burning out Hispanics. It's a real Nazi-style, Ku Klux Klan-style operation.
This is what the American people are faced with, not just the Blackwater case. We're faced with this kind of world! Look at the lack of resistance. Look at what is known about what's been going on in Southwest Asia: Where is the guts to stop it?! Yes, you have some people who are doing something about it, but in general, in the Congress, there are no guts! The same way they deferred to the Bank of England, they defer also to this thing. They say they're opposed to it, but they're afraid to be caught opposing it, when it comes down to concretes.
So, that's our situation: that we have people who are cowards. They won't fight. You have people on a lower level of influence, but more of them, on the state levels, who want to do something, but they're told that they don't have the authority to do anything! They say, "Well, we represent a Banking Committee—you can't do anything!" Right?
Well, you can do something: You can get resolutions; you can get out there, and say, these guys ought to be thrown out! That's what you can do. You've got a couple guys on a Banking Committee, you know the fate of the nation depends upon a banking reform—and you're not willing to demand that of your fellow member of your party? The party organization? What do you do? You say, "He won't do it—he should be thrown out of the party!" Say that a couple of times, and see what happens.
What you're going to see, though, is when this heat builds up, over the next 30 days; the heat is going to build up rapidly, to the point that you're going to have a social explosion. And people who are now saying, "Oh, ya can't do it! You can't do it! You can't do it!" are going to say, "We're going to do it!"
A Winning Policy Against the British Empire
Freeman: Before I move on to this pile of questions from state legislators and labor leaders, we do have some international questions that I'd like to entertain. This is a question from Yuri Tsarik, who represents the World Development Network in Minsk, Belarus. And he says:
"Dear Mr. LaRouche: The recent events in Myanmar and Pakistan, which earlier, as we know, were included in the so-called development triangle, China-Burma-Pakistan, and the situation around Iran, concern me. To what extent do you think that it is all directed against China? And is there, in the White House, any other vision of a U.S. policy toward growing and developing China, outside of the destructive crash course that Cheney & Co. seem to represent?"
LaRouche: Well, there's no simplistic way of looking at this thing. In Myanmar, you have a China-backed government, not really "China-backed," but China sympathizes; China says, this is a good thing to have in place. So, therefore, you have a Buddhist organization which organizes an attempted insurrection. And you get a reaction.
In Pakistan: Pakistan is being chopped into pieces. It's being chopped into pieces essentially by the British Empire. All this stuff is done by the British Empire. The Americans are a bunch of idiots in this category. They don't do much of anything any more. Back in the World War II period, people of my generation, we did do things. We were for freedom of peoples from colonial governments and things like that. We did do things; I did things.
But that's not there any more. The British run it.
Who controls the Buddhist operation in Myanmar? The British! Who controls much of the Islamic operations in Pakistan and so forth? The British! Look at the history of this thing; look at the British East India Company, which established power with private armies, in 1763, when the British Empire was created, as a system of private armies and private bankers. Then take the case of Al-Afghani, and take the case of the Sykes-Picot Treaty, and realize that the whole region has been run by the British Empire. The Muslim Brotherhood is a British intelligence operation, with various branches. They run this. Who do you think runs most of this stuff in Africa: It's run by the British! Since 1898, in the operation there.
That is what you have today, in this part of the world! In Asia, especially throughout South Asia, the operations are essentially British intelligence operations. I'm very familiar with these kinds of operations. Our work in this area, in intelligence, focusses on this stuff. This is it! During World War II, the intelligence organizations of the U.S. were divided between patriotic and British operations. Allen Dulles was with the Brits. Some of our friends were on the other side. I was on the other side, in my own way, on the American side.
And so, when you're looking at this kind of problem, you have to look at it from a positive standpoint, not from the standpoint of the negatives. The whole of Asia is a mess right now, politically.
You have a very interesting development in Korea, very promising.
China has so far not indicated willingness to take a significant position, or a necessary position on anything. They're dealing with their own problems. They are doing what they're doing. But on this general problem, as I see it, they're not really much proactive.
Russia has a proactive approach, of its own type. There are other tendencies in Russia, which I think also have a good sense on this thing. But that's the nature of the situation.
What you have is the British Empire, in its present form—the way I mean British Empire—is engaged in a general destabilization of most of the world. Look what is happening: like Northern Rock. Why the hell is a United States asset being put in jeopardy to bail out a bankrupt British bank? Why are the resources of Goldman Sachs and company being mobilized to bail out Northern Rock, which is to bail out the Bank of England? Why are we bailing out the bankrupt Bank of England? Is England worth saving? Since how long?
No. So, one should not look at this from that standpoint. What you have to look at is this: The question is, what are the positive actions, which I say, I do from the United States. My point is to say, "What should be the policy of the United States? What should be the policy of the United States toward, in particular, Russia?" Well, I made it very clear: If the United States got off its bum, and had some sense, it would go to Putin and say, "Okay, we want cooperation. We want cooperation with China. We want cooperation with India. India's a mess, but we want cooperation, nonetheless."
On that basis, we would have enough power, a concert of power, to introduce a general reform of the world monetary-financial system. We could force it. Because with that kind of power, other countries, like Germany, would be among the first to join; Italy would tend to be among the first to join. With that kind of power, whole parts of the world would immediately tend to join, because people like to be in the shadow of power. And if you represent power, and you come up with a proposal which they like, they're more likely to tend to go with you on that one.
And that's the way I think we have to approach this. Yes, the whole world is being destabilized by the British Empire—although I prefer we call it the Brutish Empire—it's being destabilized. Therefore, rather than trying to react, or detect and react to specific forms of destabilization of the planet, in this problem, my thing is, let's go for a counter-operation, let's take a positive course of action, to bring powers together around common interests, and to use that sense of common interest to get an overwhelming shift in a new direction.
Since the present world monetary-financial system is a total disgrace, anyone with any brains knows this system can not last. If you've got a combination of power that can dictate the establishment of a new international monetary-financial system, a credit system; if you can do that, you have the ability to walk into any nation, and get a favorable hearing for a change in policy. That simple.
So, negatives, being against something, is sometimes necessary. But being against something is not the way to create policy. You create policy by what you're for, not by what you're against. If you're against something, what are you for? What are you willing to do for? And that will give you the ability to deal with what you have to deal against. And the problem of trying to find, who's the bad guy, knock him out one by one—no, that doesn't work. You have to have a winning policy, which can bring nations together in a common interest, and use that common interest as the wedge to deal with the impediments.
A Conspiracy of Folly
Freeman: Okay, we had a question that had been submitted by the Economic Daily of China, but I believe that you did just answer it, in your response to this last question.
The next question comes from Würzburg, Germany, from the Department of Monetary Policy at the University of Würzburg: "Mr. LaRouche, I have a question concerning your latest press release, 'A Conspiracy of Folly.' There you describe the fact that many Goldman Sachs officials are appointed to key financial posts in the Western world, and you call this phenomenon a 'conspiracy of folly.' My question is this: whether you really believe that these people are dumb and without any real insight into the current problems in the international financial markets and the banking system, as well as the possible impact of these problems on the whole economic activity. Or, let me suggest something else: Isn't it imaginable that these people would like to govern a controlled crash? A crash that might boost their power, in a post-crash world, and that this crash would, in turn, destroy the vestige of the current free world, namely, that part of the world which is currently not under their control?
"It seems to me that these people could benefit from a crash in many ways, hedging against inflation by buying real assets like gold and silver, on the eve of a controlled crash, etc. If this would be true, the conflict with this group of people would come to its maximum in this onrushing crisis. I would appreciate it, if you would answer this question, because it has been on my mind."
LaRouche: Well, essentially your observation about the nature of this apparent alliance, is true. It's fair. But then you have to say, "What are the implications of it?"
First of all, the first irony of this thing is, that it won't work. That it is a conspiracy in folly. It's like a guy who says, "I'm going to take control of the ship." "How're you going to do it?" "I'm going to bore a hole in the bottom. I'll drown all the other people."
What you have, actually, is—I know these people. I'm an old hand at this thing. And their instinct is, their "way of life." Their way of life is not something which is an independent, individual decision by their part. They have cronies. They have associations, groups, ways they meet. Like this whole Goldman Sachs crowd. They're associated with each other at many points in the past, many points of intersection over a period of time.
And therefore, when somebody comes up with "this here deal," they will tend to go with it, because it's their group and people they know, and they say, "We can win, we can win." But they also, at the same time, do not understand the world system. The intrinsic thing here is not merely that they're greedy—they're probably greedy—but as you suggest correctly, the impulse of agglomeration is agglomeration for power. It's an instinct for power: Grab power. The problem is, they're incompetent, and anything they try, as shown now, will result in the worst possible calamity.
Now also, the other side, as the Cayman Islands suggests: Anybody who goes into the mouth of this kind of deal, may be eaten by the caymans. And the British are behind this thing in the Cayman Islands. So, what you have is, everybody's being played. It's the Great Game; everybody is playing. Now, if you look at the history of the British Empire, and look at the mentality of the British Empire, it's the Great Game. It is not a simple linear game.
For example, the British Empire organized World War I. There's no guilty party for organizing World War I except the British Empire, including some characters in New York, who are Teddy Roosevelt's crowd who were for it. So they organized the British Empire—why? Because there was a wave of development of economies based on the American model—as typified by the post-Civil War model, Lincoln, and so forth—in Asia. You had the transcontinental railway system in the United States emulated in Russia by the Trans-Siberian [Railway]. You had the various railway systems developed in Germany and other countries, including the Berlin-to-Baghdad system. This integration of the interior territory of large parts of Eurasia, was considered a threat to the British Empire, which is based on maritime power.
So, therefore, the British Empire organized the war, just as they organized the Seven Years' War earlier, before 1763, in order to get the nations of Eurasia to destroy themselves mutually in a war. And the British threw millions of their own soldiers into the conflagration to do it. You have to see this kind of mentality. They do not choose up sides, fair teams, one team against the other, that sort of thing. That's not the way they play. The British method is to betray your ally; to set your ally up for destruction. And you ally with them for the purpose of influencing them to do precisely that. That's what you're seeing now. The Bank of England, or the Bunk of England, is the center of organizing this great swindle centered around the Northern Rock. It's a great swindle; it's typical of swindles being run in the United States. I know these guys. They do this. This is the way they think. They think like caymans.
Harry Reid Ready for Retirement
Freeman: We have now a series of questions from the people who are on the front lines of this fight—some of the state legislators and labor leaders who are fighting for the HBPA. The first question comes from Sen. Joe Neal, from Las Vegas, Nevada, which has the highest rate of foreclosures in the United States. He says: "Lyn, I've been informed that my Senator, Harry Reid, has said that the Senate is not going to take any action relative to the hedge funds during this session. In your judgment as an economic forecaster of conditions that are distressing our nation, can you address the question of just what such a postponement or lack of action on the hedge funds during this session of Congress will mean, in terms of the impact on our nation?"
LaRouche: I think it means that Harry Reid is ready for retirement. Now what these guys are doing—look, Harry Reid is Harry Reid. He has his own prejudices; he's pro-Truman, which is not to his credit, but essentially he in the twilight of his career in the Senate. And he is ready to throw up his hands and say: "OK, I'm about ready to quit. What do you want me to do?" to the bosses. And I saw him turn—remember, I was involved with him all through 2005, into the beginning of 2006. I saw him turn in 2006, and he was reached. He went exactly the opposite way on every kind of issue, and it was really a very—with an emotional turn against me on this thing—very clear, clear signal: "No, no, no, no, no." And he sold out everything.
Pelosi? Well, Pelosi's a limp fish, similar type, limp fish. She's a nothing, but she's the head of the institution, and she's a snippet, an angry, a nasty little snippet; a worn-out housewife. And she comes from a family with a certain reputation, where they were known to have their hands in the public till, but never too much involved in the public interest.
So, this is the kind of thing you get: not someone who is naturally malicious, who's made some big deal. But when big power came up to them, like the Mormons in that region, and told Harry Reid, "No Harry," he said "OK." And he took his licking, and he's been taking it ever since. I would say he's a man who decided to quit, but go out with a nice pension.
Freeman: In Speaker Pelosi's defense, I think you have to hold her surgeon partially responsible, because when you wind those threads too tight, I imagine that it's extremely uncomfortable. And while I don't have any direct knowledge of that, I do have some training in the health field, and I know that chronic pain can really produce incredible bitchiness, and that could actually be one of the problems that she has. So, I would give Speaker Pelosi something of an allowance in this regard. Maybe she should take painkillers.
Baby Boomers vs. the Standard of Truth
The next question comes from Rep. Juanita Walton of St. Louis, and actually before I ask the question, I really do want to point out that although the response overall to the mobilization of the HBPA has really been tremendous, it is also the case that Representative Walton from Missouri, and Rep. Harold James from the state of Pennsylvania, really have spearheaded this fight, and have acted with tremendous courage and real resolution in support of their constituents, without any regard for anything else, and I personally have tremendous admiration for the two of them, and I really think they deserve a round of applause. I think some of their supporters are here today.
Lyn, Representative Walton says: "Mr. LaRouche, I have two questions on the same topic. As you know, I have been following the foreclosure crisis very closely. It is also the case that my husband is a bankruptcy attorney, and he has been warning folks that they have entered into mortgages that are going to vastly increase their monthly payments. That has been borne out, and in some cases, people's payments have doubled. Yet, they go ahead anyway, thinking somehow that they will never be the ones to lose their home.
"What I don't understand is, why it is that average people have gone so crazy as to do this? Also, why are our leaders nationally, putting their heads in the sand, knowing what is happening? This is outright robbery, and they are refusing to do anything to halt the crisis. This is not just about citizens being robbed, though in many cases you could argue that they walked into it, but it is really the Congress sitting by and doing absolutely nothing to halt the process from continuing, let alone doing something to alleviate the effects of it. I have put a resolution into the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, in the hopes of addressing precisely this. But we need Congress to act, and I'm wondering if you have any suggestions as to what more we can do."
LaRouche: The problem here is a sociological problem in large degree—which is where the advantage of my age comes to the fore. You have to understand what has happened to this society and its morals since the 1930s and since the death of Franklin Roosevelt. You have to look at what is identified today as the pacesetters of ethics, morality, achievement, and so forth in society. What's the image of the successful person? Who defines that? What group defines that successful person?
Essentially, it's the same nuts who were screaming and screaming on the streets of Manhattan and elsewhere in 1968, who had come from families of the middle class, white-collar oriented, born between 1945 and 1958. This was a phenomenon in Europe as well as in the United States. This generation now represents people between 50 and 65 years of age. This generation has come, since 1968, to dominate the cultural trends and social outlook of the population of the United States, and also Europe. The Baby-Boomer syndrome—environmentalism, anti-nuclear power, anti-technology, anti-modern science in any sense—is completely irrational. And they're oriented that the authority lies not with truth, but with opinion.
In other words, in a healthy society, the idea, the principle is, as the Pope said recently in one of his addresses, that the standard of truth is truth. That is, truthfulness on an individual basis, and if you're a minority and you're right, you're right. That's truth. The sophist says, it's prevailing sentiment, the most popular sentiment. For example, the Hollywood standard—popular. Why is she considered beautiful? She's popular. Why is so-and-so intelligent? He's considered popular. Why are they considered a good candidate? Because they're popular. Popular stereotypes become the standard of behavior, and people are intimidated, because in place of a sense of right and wrong, they now go by established popularized stereotypes. If you're going against popular opinion, you're wrong. If you're not keeping up with the Joneses, you should be bankrupt, etc., etc. So, that's what the problem is.
Now, the only way you can deal with that, is not with the idea of success. There is no magic recipe where infallible success is within your reach. But, what are you going to do with your life? Which side are you going to be on? Which side are you going to come out on? Are you going to come out on the side of the pigs, or on the side of the people—which? If you say, "The pigs are more popular, therefore, I've got to be a pig. I want a popular image, therefore, I'll go with the pigs." The problem you have with people in our society who have a poorly developed moral sense—that is, a real moral sense, a scientific sense of a moral sense—give way to popularity of this type, this Baby-Boomer type. That's what dominates the whole slogan of the Congress—"Go along to get along!"—that's the substitute for morality. So, the idea of what's right, what's wrong, what's truthful, what's not truthful, what will lead to a good result, what will not lead to a good result, means nothing. Are you popular? Are you popular? And you have to think about how the Baby Boomers function, how the '68ers function, as I saw them function.
I'll tell you, after I saw their functioning—at Columbia University and elsewhere—at those campuses in the late Spring of 1968, I wrote this paper on the role of social control in fascism. Because what I saw in the New Left, was the same thing we knew from the early 1930s, when there was a big trolley car strike in Berlin, and the members of the Communist Party and Nazi Party were swapping memberships back and forth regularly over this period. That's called "popularity."
And I saw that in the New Left. It's the same thing as those Germans who, as activists—Communist and Nazi—were swapping spit in the early 1930s in the Berlin trolley car strike. And that's what I saw on the campuses in 1968 in the late Spring, and Summer, and beyond 1968. It is that ideology. Look at the ages, and look at the background, look at the cultural outlook of the members of the Congress between the ages of 50 and 65, and that's where the problem lies. There is only one remedy for that, and the remedy is truth, upholding truth. And the remedy is possible in a time when sophistry is shattered, as now. In a time where "but you've got to pay the mortgage or the whole system will come down"—No!
When you decide that that is what you hate, that is false! Then you say you question popular morality, and that's when you come back to truth, and that's our only chance, Juanita. Take the issue, the hard issue; keep fighting for the hard issues, win or lose. Because if you don't fight for the right issues, win or lose, you lose your personal character; you lose your judgment. The time will come, as it has in history in the past, when the right issue has enough legs to carry truth. And I think we are in such a time now.
Machine-Tool Capacity in Michigan
Freeman: The next question comes from Rep. Lee Gonzales in Michigan.... Representative Gonzales says: "Mr. LaRouche, our nation is clearly in a crisis on many levels, and this is probably mirrored nowhere more than here in the great state of Michigan. I represent Flint, which is a former center of the auto industry, but it is now increasingly becoming a ghost town. The state as a whole is experiencing the simultaneous collapse of the auto industry, of real estate. We have increasing foreclosures, we have an incredible and unprecedented rate of homelessness, and we also are experiencing a dramatic loss of state revenues. Our legislature has been in almost continuous special session to try and balance the budget, and it is clear to many of us that this is near to impossible. It is very important to us that you are pursuing this national dialogue on these crucial issues with the due diligence that you are. Please comment on the implications of the national crisis with regard to the state of Michigan. Do you think that our circumstances are special? Is it worse here than it is in other places, or is this something whose impact is being felt even in places like California?"
LaRouche: Again, let me strongly recommend that when you are dealing with issues of this type, don't look for the negatives, look for the positives. Always look for the positive. What is possible? Now, let's take the case of Michigan, and take the adjoining area of western New York state, and Ohio, an area immediately, functionally associated with the collapse of the automobile industry and so forth. What's good there, what's positive? What do you have as a weapon? Not what do you lack, but what do you have? Because you're not going to build with what you don't have, you have to build with something that you do have.
What you have in this area is, a concentration of what had been the greatest machine-tool capacity in the world, centered around the automobile industry. This was not simply the automobile industry; this was the machine-tool-driven industry, this was the science-driven industry. This built nuclear power plants; this built airplanes. It built all kinds of things, because the essence of it was production, and real production, real production based on science-driven machine-tool capabilities.
And what you had was a level of top engineers and scientists, working together with people who are design engineers, experimental design engineers, and they developed the possibility of making the machine tools and designing the products on which the nation depended. One of the products of this was the automobile—the tractor, the automobile, the locomotive were produced in this area. And in this area to this day, the people have a culture which is still the same culture. They are now being dissipated.
My view is, there is only one remedy, which is the next important thing I'm thinking about pushing, beyond this housing and banking action: to go back to 2005, go back to my proposal then in February and March of 2005. The Federal government should step in, and buy up control of those facilities which represented this part of the auto industry, with special emphasis on its machine-tool design capability. Since we don't need to produce that many automobiles—fine! I think we have too many automobiles right now. We don't need more automobiles. What we need are other things which we have not been making. We need power plants; we must have nuclear power plants. We must have thousands of them, because there's no possibility of meeting the challenge without them. We want high-temperature gas-cooled reactors. We want to be freed of oil from the BAE. We want to make hydrogen-based fuels from water, and the waste of hydrogen fuels made from water is water. Not bad, eh? It's quite a pollutant.
Then, we need the power. We need also to rebuild our water management systems, the river systems and other things. We've lost it! You can't get a safe drink of fresh water in most parts of the United States today, where you could 20 years ago, or 40 years ago—can't! Bring it back: public sanitation systems, power systems, mass transit, magnetic levitation, rail. Don't depend on jamming up highways with commuters.
Clusters of Development
Build a new society. We don't want to concentrate the whole population in a few areas of super agglomeration, as around Washington, where you have to drive through a permanent traffic jam of about 60 miles or more to get to and from work. That's insane! You have whole areas that produce nothing. All they produce is sitting places for families who live in houses, these kinds of communities. We need to disperse, go back to dispersing the population into local centers of production, agriculture, industry, as we did before.
Conquer the land! Don't concentrate everybody around Washington D.C. and New York City, and Los Angeles, and let the rest of the land go to waste. Take this land area, which we developed to make a nation: Rebuild it. Do these things, and also do the engineering for new kinds of systems that we require, and build new industries in various parts of the world. Develop areas, not to have super corporations all concentrated in one place, but to have clusters of different kinds of production skills in the same areas, where they can infiltrate, in terms of their influence on one another.
This is the kind of world we have to build, and therefore, you take this area: western New York state—what used to be Buffalo and so forth; Ohio, northern Ohio and down; Michigan. This was one of the clusters. You have also Missouri; Missouri had a tremendous aerospace capability, related capability before. It's been shut down.
So, therefore, what we need to do is look at the country as a whole as areas for clusters of development, high-technology development. Move into areas where the skills are known to exist within the population, where you have a culture of skill. The government starts a corporation, spins it off later as a private corporation, but starts it up to do something which is in the public interest. Then use these public-interest developments as stimulants to create new private industries and rebuild our economy. And, therefore, we have to look at this area I just designated, not as a slum area, but as an area that has embedded in it a structure of skills needed for certain kinds of high-technology contributions to the economy as a whole. Start from the positive. Don't start from what you don't have; start from what you do have.
Ultimate Catastrophe: A Non-Nuclear Planet
Freeman: This is a question from a think-tank located in New York. It says: "Mr. LaRouche, at the recent global initiative meeting in New York, as well as elsewhere, former President Bill Clinton has stated that he believes that developing sector nations must be permitted to pursue the development of nuclear power for peaceful uses—i.e., for the generation of electricity. Yet, here in the United States, where we clearly are well equipped to generate electricity with nuclear reactors, there seems to be a continued reluctance to embrace a pro-nuclear position, even though most people involved will tell you privately that they do support it.
"The reservation seems to be centered on the fact that people do not trust public utilities to properly maintain these plants. As you may know, there is a scandal right now that has erupted at the Peach Bottom facility in Pennsylvania, where videotapes were released showing people asleep at the switch, so to speak. But my question is, could we really move for the kind of large-scale development projects that are necessary to rebuild the United States, and to revitalize our industry, without nuclear power?
"What are your thoughts on this, and how do we address the question of the regulation of these facilities? Do you think that safety really is a factor?"
LaRouche: Well, what you've got is a piece of idiocy, which was started in part by some people back in the 19th Century—Clausius, Kelvin, and others, who came up with what was called the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which was a piece of crap. There is no such thing as a quantity of energy. You have an effect which is quantified, but there is no quantity of energy; it doesn't come in quantity units.
What we call energy as effect, is measured as an increase of what we call energy flux density. For example, mankind relied upon the Sun for heat. Now, the Sun is a very big thermonuclear fusion process, and it has a very high temperature. Not as high as some supernovas and so forth, but it's very high, and this heat is radiated from the Sun and, as heat, reaches the surface of the Earth, where it has a very low energy flux density.
Now, this low energy flux density of radiated sunlight is very useful, if you use it properly. What happens is that you have a little thing called chlorophyll, which looks like a polliwog. The molecule looks like a polliwog, and they sort of nest together, and they have—I don't want to talk about the sex life of the molecule, but anyway—whatever they do, they absorb radiation, which can be counted in calories, in the process. Now this process accumulates, and is transformed by a little magnesium molecule behavior, into a higher energy flux density, such as water and carbon dioxide, and the production of living plant life, green plant life. The effect of this is that you have plant life now using the sunlight to generate chlorophyll and to produce, generate more oxygen from carbon dioxide, and also water in the process. This creates a climate of fields and forests, and life in general, transforms the desert into a place where people can live, where man's power over nature is increased.
What these idiots propose to do is to take the sunlight directly, at a very low energy flux density—it can burn your skin, but it's a low energy flux density, not very useful—to apply it directly. What happens if you apply it directly? You get desert. If you apply it to plant life, you get fields and forests, and so forth and so on. And you also get a lowering of the average temperature of the planet, at which people live.
So, the issue here is, mankind has proceeded from relying upon simple sunlight through the burning of combustible material, to coal, to coke, to petrochemical fuels; and now we go to a much higher level, which is nuclear fission—much higher energy flux density. Not only does this mean that you're increasing the efficiency of the planet, and lowering the temperature of the planet, the comfort of the planet, but you're also creating processes, physical processes, which you can not create otherwise.
When we go to thermonuclear fusion, we take charge of a much higher level of the physical chemical processes of the planet, and thus the objective of mankind is to go constantly to higher energy flux density modes of generation of power. Because the important thing is not the number of calories; it's the energy flux density of the heat applied which determines the effect you get.
So therefore, every part of the world needs a change presently, from the present modes of power. For example, water power is not efficient. You can use it as a by-product of certain effects, but the function of water is primarily not water power. The function of water is water as such. Water is essential to living processes. That's what it's for. So use it to promote living processes. Get your power from higher things: from nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Because not only do you get more efficient power, but also you're able to produce, chemically, states of nature you can not produce otherwise.
So that's the point. Therefore, if we do not have a nuclear industry, we're going to die. We can not maintain the population of this planet. The ultimate catastrophe would be a non-nuclear planet. We need it.
As for anything else, well, I don't think there's any process on this planet that can't kill people, even the simplest kind. A rope can kill people. So therefore, let's not worry about the fact that a mismanagement of one particular form of power can kill people, or poison people, when mismanagement of any kind of power will tend to kill people anyway. Rather, the policy is, if you're going to have a nuclear fission policy, do it right! We know how to do it right, so do it right. Don't talk about how bad it would be if we did it wrong. Don't do it wrong!
And that's what we know as having science and regulation. We need at least five nuclear power plants to be built on this planet every week. That's our need.
Freeman: Did you say five a week?
LaRouche: Yes, 1 gigawatt each.
Freeman: That's a lot of work.
LaRouche: That's a lot of power.
Freeman: That's a lot of power.
LaRouche: More power than the Congress has.
Freeman: Two windmills would be more power than the Congress has.
LaRouche: I think we've got two windmills in the Congress!
Relive Great Scientific Discoveries!
Freeman: The next question is from Rep. Catherine Barrett of Cincinnati, Ohio. She says, "Mr. LaRouche, we really need to turn around the job situation in the country, and of course we see it here in Ohio. The reason this really concerns me is that the crisis in jobs is having a massive impact on our youth and on education. I see young people here in Ohio who are very, very smart; yet each day I see the spark of creativity in them stifled, and I see their hope snuffed out. The reason is obvious. We have no real opportunities for them, as far as offering them challenging employment in the future. And the way that things are going now, I foresee these young people either just giving up, or going overseas to seek employment.
"In the United States, we've been exporting jobs, and now I think we're going to be exporting our young people and our creativity. Just as many old people abandoned Europe at the beginning of the 20th Century to pursue opportunity here, I believe that our youth may very well decide to follow suit. The difference is that, at the turn of the century, people were not just pursuing a job; they were pursuing an idea. If that idea is dead in the United States, and our youth see fit to leave, I believe that that will pretty much spell the end of this nation. Do you agree, and what do you think can be done to address it?"
LaRouche: Well, first of all, give up video games, because the same mind that is destroyed by video games—and it is destroyed—can be employed to do elementary kinds of machine-tool design, experimental design, proof-of-principle experiments. And the key thing, of course, is in universities and secondary schools to have access and regular programs in which the young people would not simply scribble formulas on a wall, but would actually construct devices, which are experimental devices, test devices, that test physical principles, in short.
This, of course, went with a community, usually, in which there was a demand for a machine-tool and related kinds of skills, chemical skills and so forth, and therefore you would have a young population in the community finding out what's going on in the community, and we would naturally attract them to relive through these experiments, these historic experiments themselves, in biology, biological work, and other things—instrumentation.
Now, when you educate people in that form, they really are having access to being able to do almost anything, in principle. They're developing the capacity to do almost anything. Two things: first of all, I think we ought to have Microsoft pay a penalty for what it's doing, because I don't think its computers are going to hold up much longer the way they're going. Because what we need to do is not video games. We need to have the minds of people involved in experiencing discoveries of principle, especially physical principle, biological principle, and so forth.
Normal lives should be to provide the kinds of opportunities in which young people are encouraged to do just that. Call it a form of play! It comes out as play, but it's the basis of science, this kind of play, because: Why do you do it? Because it's there! Why do you conduct the experiment? Because it's there! Why did you try to do that? Because I thought about it and I thought I ought to test it—that kind of thinking. And then get a little more organization in it.
So the key thing in the destruction of our schools, is the key problem with youth. We are not giving them the schooling which is a science-oriented, culturally oriented kind of training. We're training them in behavior: behavioral training, behavioral conditioning, not doing experimental work. And we want people to do experimental work, to relive the great discoveries, the experiences of the past. But do it because, at the age of childhood and adolescence, you do it because it's fun!
And if you do it as fun, then suddenly you discover that fun is the secret of life, because fun is discovering principles, going through that process, and it's also social. The key thing is people who are sharing this kind of experience, this kind of fun, actually are developing in the process healthier social relations. People who are learning only how to behave in school, are not developing good social relations. They're getting bad teachers. Sharing of this experience of discovery, as the basis for the educational process, creates both the stimulation of discovery as a form of play, as a form of play which develops social relations among those who are playing, which is the foundation for the adult skills, the adult creativity.
We're Living in a Policy of Genocide—and Al Gore
Freeman: The next question comes from Leroy Baylor from WHCR Radio in, I believe, New York. He says, "Mr. LaRouche, in 2006, a decision clearly was made to let the auto industry sink. Could you please tell me how that decision was made, and who the deciders were?"
LaRouche: Well, the decision was essentially a decision to reduce the world's population to less than 1 billion people. Now, the way you do that is you destroy the kinds of practices which enable you to support a population level of 6 and 1/2 billion people. And therefore you let nature take its course.
For example, what you would do is, you invent Al Gore. Yes, Al Gore. Look what you have. This so-called carbon crap. This is a complete fraud. There is no scientific basis for any of this. It's a complete lie! There's no truth to it, but what's the effect of it? The effect is to induce people to lower the productivity of the human race, per capita and per square kilometer.
What is the effect of that? The effect of that is a collapse of population levels. We have now reached a precarious level of 6 and 1/2 billion people on this planet, approximately. What happens if you lower the standard of living? Don't measure it in terms of money, because what good is money if there's nothing to buy? Look what's happening to our food supplies because of Al Gore. Our food supply is being destroyed for these crazy fuels that don't work—Al Gore, these kinds of ideas.
What's being done with Monsanto. Monsanto did not invent life! It has no patent on life. It has no right to a royalty on life, even plant life. It didn't invent seeds. What it did is that it invented a specific kind of seed which it synthesized in a laboratory, banned the use of competing seeds, and then charged for every seed you produce. If you've got one seed which has got one strain of anything of a Monsanto brand, you're fined—by the U.S. government, by international codes.
These things are genocidal! We are living in a policy of genocide. The objective is to reduce the human population to about one-half billion people, and to do it fairly quickly. And what they're doing will work, if it's allowed to continue. So prevent it. And that's where the problem lies.
So, [what happened to] the auto industry was simply a process of destroying the machine-tool capability of the United States, and of other countries. If you realize what the auto industry is, if you look at what the technology is that's embodied in the auto industry, and you take that away from the United States, you don't have an industrial economy. You have to lower your standard of living, you have to decrease the number of people who are allowed to live.
It's genocide, and that's the problem. But see, the liberal says—pant, pant, pant—"You can't say that! You can't say that! They have their right to their ideas, don't they?" Even if it puts your grandmother up a chimney.
"They have a right to their ideas, don't they? Isn't it their opinion? Isn't it popular opinion? How dare you contradict popular opinion?" I say, I have nothing but contempt for popular opinion. What better can one expect of me?
The Problem Is Popular Opinion
Freeman: This is a question from a California Democratic Party official. He says, "Mr. LaRouche, I've watched as you've forecast that the housing bubble created by Greenspan would pop, and that it would threaten banks and non-banking financial institutions. I'm now reasonably convinced that you've been right. Yet, most Democrats, including elected officials from the state of California, are continuing to ignore the crisis, even as it has begun to devastate entire cities and suburbs here on the West Coast.
"What is it that holds them back? Is it really fear of Wall Street, as some of the members of the LaRouche Youth Movement have stated? I really don't understand how the fear of Wall Street could be so great! Is it delusion, as you have recently said, or is it just plain ignorance in economics? The thing that I don't understand is why it is that they can't see that acting in the face of this crisis is good politics. Even if they moved for no other reason, you would think that they would move out of a simple desire for self-advancement."
LaRouche: The reason why they do that, probably because you could say, in the short term, is that they're insane. The other side, again the same thing. It is popular opinion. It is Baby-Boomer ideology.
Now, we had backwardness in all parts of the population in my experience of several generations. I saw it in World War II, when training people that we were dredging out of the swamps and slums of the United States, and training them to become soldiers or reasonable facsimiles thereof. But this is more than just stupidity. It's organized stupidity. It's Baby Boomerism. You have the official form of sophistry. This is the same sophistry, in principle, so-called, which was used to induce the people of Athens to destroy their own culture in the Peloponnesian War and other things. Sophistry!
Sophistry is the substitution of so-called popular opinion, or perceived popular opinion, for truth. Therefore, you have a population of Baby Boomers. And, of course, on the West Coast, we call it Californication, the Hollywood mentality, in which this is very strong. You see it even in the characteristic of California speech, California up-talk. You rise on the prolonged last syll-AB-le, which means that no one can understand what you're saying, and you don't know what you are saying, so you're both on common ground as a result.
That's the problem; the problem is popular opinion. Think about how many people: for example, you have among teen-agers, you have two things, two kinds of popular opinion. Popular opinion by girls, and popular opinion by boys. Popular boys, popular girls, unpopular boys, unpopular girls. What is the greatest fear of the classroom or the playground? Being unpopular. Fear of being unpopular!
This dominates society, and that's what the problem is. People are afraid of expressing unpopular views, or of being seen or considered to have unpopular views. They say, "No one agrees with you!" Right? "No one will agree with you! None of my friends will agree with anything you say!" What's that? Sophistry. Fraud. Perversion. Moral decadence. Degeneration. That's what's wrong. That's why we call it Californication.
Roosevelt's Standard Was Truth
Freeman: We have a lot of questions about Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and I'm going to try to put them together, so that they can all be taken at once. This starts out by saying: "Dear Mr. LaRouche: FDR was responsible for some of the most dramatic structural shifts of emphasis of administration in this nation's history. Under FDR, administrative centralization came much closer to being achieved than many Presidents before him even dreamed of. It was this administrative centralization that laid the foundation for the executive Presidency, and finally, to the kind of 'King George' that we have today as a President.
"So then, how do we address this? Was FDR in fact the most beneficial to our republic in the past century, or did he lay the basis for problems that he had no way of anticipating? One of the reasons that I ask this, is that you continually refer to yourself as acting in the tradition of FDR, and many people make precisely the same criticism of you that they make of FDR. Please address this."
LaRouche: Well, the first question of policy is truth. Truth, not opinion. When opinion, especially popular opinion, is introduced as an antidote to truth, that's where you have a problem. Now, remember, to understand the root of this, the birth of civilization from a terrible society called feudalism, and from empires before that, was in the Renaissance, with the development of the idea of truth, as at the Council of Florence, which ended religious oppression, systemically. Then, that was introduced again by the Spanish and others of the old Venetian types, and there was a fight for the prevalence of popular opinion, which was called The Inquisition.
And then there was a modification of this process in the fight against the nation-state, by what was called Liberalism. Now, Liberalism is the same thing as known in ancient Greece as sophistry. Liberalism is the same thing known as lying, as a policy. Liberalism denies the existence of principles in the universe, and says that only official opinion, or popular opinion, as a substitute for reason, must determine the policy of society.
Now, the U.S. Constitution is anti-Liberal, and the criticism reported here in this question, is a Liberal attack on truth, the principle of truth. For example, the kinds of practices—what did Roosevelt overthrow? He overthrew the tradition of Woodrow Wilson, a liar, a degenerate, and a founder of the modern form of the Ku Klux Klan. Democracy? Democracy, anyone? Ku Klux Klan? The President of the United States was the founder of the modern Ku Klux Klan, officially, while an incumbent in the White House? That's your definition of truth, definition of popular opinion? Not popular with me.
The entire 1920s, the policy of the U.S. government under Coolidge was a lie! We bought into—for example, the Treaty of Versailles was a big lie. The war on Europe, which actually started in 1894-95, with the war against China by Japan (which was organized by the British), led through a series of wars into the Treaty of Versailles. The war was organized by the British monarchy, and no one but the British monarchy. It was organized to destroy the ability of continental Europe to develop modern nation-states. That was the purpose.
World War II was a continuation of that purpose. At the Versailles Treaty Organization, Secretary of State Lansing rose to say that Germany was the sole author of World War I. No! Britain was the sole author of World War I, and Woodrow Wilson was a great admirer of Britain, and a lunatic and a fascist on top of it. What you had with the Mellons in the 1920s, under Coolidge and Hoover, was bestiality.
Roosevelt changed that. Roosevelt's standard was truth. Roosevelt's standard was the general welfare of the population, the development of the population, the right of the world to be free from colonialism and similar kinds of afflictions. These were principles which were in the Constitution, were the intent of the formation of the United States. Roosevelt did nothing but that.
These guys, today, who attack Franklin Roosevelt on this this kind of issue, are defending lies, defending falsehoods, the same as this kind of thing. Contrary to this kind of criticism, the standard of law is truth, not popular opinion. Roosevelt defended the common man, and I saw the common man who needed defending at that time. I was entering adolescence at the point that Roosevelt was elected. I saw what was going on in the streets of the United States, in the areas that I knew directly. I saw the process over the 1930s, I saw the changes. I lived through it. I lived through the War.
I know what Roosevelt was, and the criticism that you make of Roosevelt in this question is completely false, and without basis. And, on this question: The answer is, what is truth? The truth is that Roosevelt was not an oppressor and those who attacked him were. And if you don't believe it, see the result.
No Candidate Is Qualified Now to Be President
Freeman: We have time for two more questions. But first, I'd like to call people's attention to the LaRouche PAC website, where the HBPA is printed in full, and where the specific state form of the HBPA is available. It is currently being considered in a number of states. If it is not yet being considered in your state, I would really encourage you to talk to your state rep, and make sure that it is actually brought under consideration in your state.
I believe that now the resolution actually has a number in the states of Pennsylvania, Alabama, New Hampshire, Michigan, Illinois, and maybe Missouri—I'm not sure. I know it's before the NBCSL [National Black Caucus of State Legislators]. It is in Tennessee, and I believe there is also an intention to see it introduced, if it's not already in—it just may not have a number yet—in both Ohio and New Jersey.
If your state is not among those states, you should see to it, that your state is among those states. And if your state is among the states I mentioned, you should actually work to make sure that your state representative has co-sponsored the legislation, and that you support him or her, if he has. Because, obviously, time is really running short.
Now, to take these last couple of questions: Lyn, the first one is the inevitable question about the Presidential campaign, and I have a whole stack of them. What it boils down to is this: One says, "On the Democratic Presidential candidates, on the one hand, we have Hillary Clinton, who's the obvious front-runner, who often says the wrong thing, but who for a variety of reasons might be induced to actually do the right thing.
"The other one who stands out is Dennis Kucinich, who may be a very odd fellow, but who has nevertheless come out in support of impeaching Cheney, of ending the shredding of our Constitution, of ending the Iraq occupation immediately. On the positive side, he wants to provide single-payer universal health insurance, free state college tuition. And although he seems to get very little notice in the media, he obviously is one Democrat who clearly is concerned with the general welfare of the majority of the American people.
"Both these two candidates have certain things that speak in their favor. Both of them also have very obvious problems. My question to you is what do you intend to do? Will you make a statement soon endorsing either Mr. Kucinich or Mrs. Clinton, or will you be making an announcement of your own?"
LaRouche: No, I'm going to do essentially what I did today. I often will defend Hillary, as I did on a recent account, because what she did was right and what those who attacked her did was absurd. That's simply fact. That's not an endorsement. That's simply an intervention in the process.
In my view, there is not a single candidate running who is qualified to be President of the United States. Period. That has not changed. There has been no sudden Damascus Road conversions of any of these characters coming along on this question. Hillary is not qualified. Dennis is not qualified.
Dennis does useful things. Fine. Give him credit for it. You don't have to marry the guy! If he does something right, give him credit for it. You don't have to marry him! Hillary does something right, give her credit for it. When she's attacked and it's wrong, defend her on that basis, but don't go into this business about popularity contests. We need a President of the United States, and we haven't got one in sight. We're going to have to do something about that, and I think you're going to have to look at the process that's coming out.
First of all, the conception of what a President should be, among all the candidates, is wrong. That's where the problem begins. The conception of what a Presidential candidate should be at this time is what's missing. A Presidential candidate should be in the image, essentially, of Franklin Roosevelt, and should say so. They could add a few other predicates to that, from an earlier period, as a standard of comparison, but if they're not that, they're not qualified to be President of the United States, because they can not solve the problems.
The fact that they're for this, or for that, or because they have a list of maybes and so forth, doesn't mean anything. Are they capable of doing what is necessary to save this nation, and to save civilization, from a peril which is now ongoing, and which none of these candidates are prepared to withstand? They're not even prepared to say it.
So, therefore, nobody's qualified right now. But I will say, as I do—I will say what the truth is. Hillary probably's going to be forced into, likely forced, Hillary will be President. That probably will happen. But she's not qualified. But we've had other Presidents who were not qualified, in less serious circumstances—like the recent case, for example.
But the point is to keep it that way. Keep the issue clear. Don't make this a popularity contest. It doesn't work that way. You have to think of the long time frame, the commitment to what does the United States represent, and who must represent what it represents. And never compromise that. We've had too many compromises, too many compromises on popular opinion. And someone has to tell the truth. My job is to tell the truth. She's not qualified. None of them are qualified. She's the least disqualified, among those running so far.
Time To Listen to LaRouche
Freeman: I'm going to close with this question, submitted by Carrie Kemp of Pennsylvania. She had wanted to ask the question herself, but for the sake of time and efficiency, I will ask it. She says: "Mr. LaRouche, looking back at your long life of speaking the truth, is there anything in the past that you think you should have said more? Or are you pleased?"
LaRouche: Well, generally, considering my circumstances, I'm pleased. Should I have said something more? Yes. Maybe somebody else will have to do it for me.
Freeman: As his spokesman, I'll do it for him: Lyn has been right for decades, and it is high time that some people took notice of that and started listening to him, and speaking out publicly for the fact that Lyn is right, and that the future of this nation and the future of civilization depends upon following what he has to say.
And you don't have to be his spokeswoman to say that!
Ladies and gentlemen, you have been a very fine audience. We have a great deal of work to do. Although I will say, that we are making progress, we are making strides every day. But we are also in the midst of a very serious crisis, and every day that goes by that these actions are not taken, and that Lyn is not put in a situation of having hands-on ability to guide and direct the situation, the fact is, that people suffer.
So, we've got to get things moving. We have other questions that have been submitted from different parts of the world; we have questions about Africa; we have questions that have been submitted by labor officials. I think Lyn has touched on the answers to many of those questions, but as we always do, we will pass them on to him, and he may very well choose to answer some of them in writing.
Otherwise, unless Lyn has something else that he would like to say—I'm going to bring today's proceedings to a close....
LaRouche: I'll say, thank you all, very much. Take care.
