This post-webcast dialogue appears in the May 8, 2009 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Dialogue with LaRouche

This is a transcript of the discuscussion period following Lyndon LaRouche's keynote address at his April 28, 2009 webcast. PDF version of the webcast address, plus the dialogue.

Harley Schlanger: I'd like to start with the satellite broadcast of this webcast that we have, in New York City.

Debra Freeman: I'm going to start with a question that comes from our friends out on the West Coast, and the question is as follows:

Mr. LaRouche, as you probably remember from the last webcast, some of us, who are working on policy for the administration were extremely frustrated, because we felt that the administration was directing itself toward fiscal bailouts and really not toward addressing the fundamental problems in the economy. But we decided to hang in there, because of assurances, number one, by the administration, that they would get around to the questions of economic infrastructure and related things. But also because we felt that it was necessary, that a portfolio of policies be in place.

However, the problem that we are faced with now—and this has become really apparent with some of our reviews over the course of the last several weeks in particular—is this: The ongoing attempt, and it looks like an accelerating attempt, by the administration here, but also by the governments of Europe, to maintain what is essentially a bankrupt system, is right now, or at least it seems from what we are reviewing, seems to not be working. But in fact, the bailout itself, seems to be accelerating the collapse. And we say this, because what we are looking at, is, on the one hand, an increase of the bailout policy, and on the other hand, accelerating rates of unemployment, of shutdown of productive capacity, and other related aspects of the economy. So that, it would seem that it's not a question of the administration saying, 'Well, we're going to deal with this fiscal problem here, and then we'll get around to dealing with the economy.' It seems that their insistence on the bailout policy is actually creating a worse condition.

Is this just coincidental, or does one feed the other, in your view? And we're asking this, particularly, in reference to your Triple Curve Function?

LaRouche: Well, you've got to look at the behavioral economists and behavioral psychologists. What they're doing, is saying, "We're going to solve this problem by management. So give us time." In other words, "what we're going to do, is brainwash the population, and give us time to brainwash the population into accepting the kinds of conditions that we intend to create." At the same time, they're trying to save the afterbirth and kill the baby. That's the effect of doing that.

But you have to see the element of malice, and when you think of the essential immorality of Larry Summers—this guy has a track record: The man is utterly immoral. He's a predator. He belongs in the Adolf Hitler category, or similar categories. And the behavioral economists are the same thing: These people are evil. Nothing will come from them but evil. And they're saying, "Give Satan a chance."

That's exactly it: There is no sincerity of commitment to the benefit of humanity, in these policies! The President of the United States is as if in the hand of Satan at this time. And we have to think about freeing him from the grip of Satan. That's what it amounts to.

Satan may not be here, but Larry Summers is a good approximation.

Roosevelt Opposed Keynes

Freeman: The next question is really something of a follow-up to the first one, from the same questioner. He says:

One of the things that we have recognized, in terms of looking at how to proceed, is that, we in the United States, have governing institutions that essentially allow unlimited lending power, a Federal government that can borrow and spend at will, and also a dollar as a global reserve currency. With that said, obviously, American institutions, although they're not without flaws (and certainly we have made mistakes), do, in fact, serve us well. However, in looking at how to proceed, one of the things that we have recognized is that the rest of the world, in particular, Europe, lacks the mechanisms to take actions, as we can in America. The question of whether they have the inclination to do that, is a separate issue.

But one of the things that we have been forced to grapple with, and the reason why we are grappling with it, is that we are told that the question of fiscal bailout is not a decision made simply with the interest of U.S. institutions, but that it is being demanded of us, internationally, and that therefore, if there's going to be any cooperation internationally, the bailout has to proceed, because the rest of the world doesn't have the mechanisms that we have. However, what we have argued here, is that the rest of the world might not cooperate in the same mechanisms of economic recovery that we can employ here in the U.S., but that if we started here, even if in the very first phase, credit, debt, and exchange-rate crises arise, that that in itself could be motivation for a restructuring of the global system, and that we should simply be prepared to deal with that. Certainly you've addressed it in your Four Power agreement.

But I guess, what I'm really asking is, if you agree that it's true that the mechanisms we have here to effect economic recovery simply don't exist in the rest of the world?

LaRouche: Well, that's irrelevant.

We have to recover. Our going down the tubes is not going to help the rest of the world. And the rest of the world is pretty much incompetent. And adapting our policies to the rest of the world, is just like an agreement to commit joint suicide.

The policies of Europe, for example: Every nation in Europe, Western and Central Europe in particular, is clinically insane! Their policies are clinically insane! We don't adapt to the polices of a madman, or a pack of madmen!

We have a system that works, and they don't! So we should give them the benefit of enforcing our system. We should go back to what Franklin Roosevelt intended, still on April 12th of 1945, and forget what Truman did on the 13th of April, 1945: Roosevelt opposed Keynes! Up to the moment of his death! On the following morning, Truman brought Keynes in. And also, rejected the idea of eliminating colonialism. Roosevelt was anti-colonialist. Truman, under British influence, was pro-colonialist! I know: I know what happened on the 13th of April, I know what the effect was in various parts of the world!

The first thing that was done: The United States under Truman, kissed the ass of the British Empire, by turning the Japanese troops loose in Indo-China where they'd been captured by U.S. influence—the OSS and Ho Chi Minh—and we recaptured, for colonialism, Indo-China! With the effects which ultimately came out of that. That was done with the consent of Truman.

The postponement of the liberation of India, was done to kiss the butt of the British. What was done in Indonesia, was to kiss the butt of the British. Truman was not an honest person: Truman belonged to a group of fascist sympathizers, who were also in the Congress, in the Republican Party and also in the Democratic Party, when Roosevelt was elected. The American Enterprise Institute is a typification of that kind of fascist tendency which existed then, and exists today. Wall Street is controlled by organizations with the same policies as the pro-Hitler and pro-Mussolini organizations of Wall Street back in the 1920s and 1930s.

And we are submitting to a policy imposed upon us by Truman, which is to kiss the butt of the British Empire. Truman was part of a group, whose policy was to assimilate the United States back into the British Empire! And that's what you're getting here.

All we have to do, and I specified this on the 25th of July 2007, and supplemented that up through September, as to what we have to do. That is what we had to do!

Go Back to the Constitution

Now: What I also specified—Russia. Russia's crazy now, but so what? It's driven crazy by these policies. It has gone into the trap, the bear trap, of the British Empire. China is confused. India is somewhat confused, less so, but somewhat confused. Continental Europe, Western and Central continental Europe?—there is no sovereignty in Western and Central continental Europe: None!

So you want to adapt to their system? Bunk! They should change their system.

Our responsibility to the planet is to change and save the United States, according to its Constitution, and the economic policies which would have been agreed to by Franklin Roosevelt. Take that as a standard, which corresponds to our historical standard. That's the way we make policy! We do not make policy with the consent of the British Empire.

And the President should not have embraced the Queen. That was a terrible mistake: We have to check with the disease control people on that one, and see if we have to take remedial measures to protect him. He may have gotten some fatal infection from that.

No: We have a policy. We're right! The rest of the world has been wrong. The United States was created to free the people of this country, and hopefully the world, from the kind of system that existed in Europe, then; and the kind of system which still dominates Europe, today. Our policy on Russia, and China, and India is obvious: These are largely Asian nations, or Eurasian nations in the case of Russia, which have different interests, but they're compatible interests in terms of common features, mutually common features. If we agree, to put this thing through bankruptcy, shut down everything that has been done under Bush, and now, under the present President, since July of 2007—we shut that down. We go back to our Constitution, and say, "Sorry, buddies, you made a mistake. Our Constitution says, we don't do this, so we're going to cancel it. Call the game off for rain, or something; we're going to cancel this one."

We're going to go back to what we have to do, because what we're doing now, is insane. And the other authority you have on this, is the fact, that if there's an attempt to continue the present policies, the United States and other nations will soon cease to exist. I'm talking about the very short term. We're on the brink of something which is modelled by Germany, Weimar Germany, up to 1923: We have been going into a collapse of the economy, the physical economy, losing up to 700,000 jobs at a crack. We are now in the collapse phase, as Germany was, under the Weimar conditions. Then, in the Spring, and Summer, and Autumn of 1923, the very collapse of the German economy, physically, resulted, with the monetization of the crisis, in the hyperinflation. We are now in a global system, we have now reached the takeoff point of hyperinflation! There is no solution for this system. Anybody who supports this system, is implicitly a criminal.

We have to put the world into bankruptcy reorganization and eliminate the present system. And we have to base that on the fact it's our dollars that are out there, that are floating out as the credit system; it's our nation we have to defend, and we defend our nation. And we extend the hand of cooperation, with an international credit system, consistent with our Constitution, with other nations, to assist them, through cooperation, in coming out of this mess alive.

If we create this kind of agreement, with Russia, China, and India—and other countries would automatically join in—I mean, for example, Japan would join in immediately; Korea would join in immediately; other countries would join in. Iran would join in, immediately! Khamenei would join! If Khamenei decides the wind is blowing in this direction, we're going to pull this off, he will put his foot on the side of pushing that kind of reform, and joining it, and cooperating with it. He may do it on his terms, but so what? That's the way life goes. Just do it.

So, no, there's no excuse for our condoning in any way, such a deal with European nations, and other nations. We should simply shut the whole damned thing down: Shut it down! It's bankrupt! We'll create a new system. Want to make me President? I'll do it tomorrow morning.

Prince Philip's Swinish WWF

Schlanger: In addition to the group that's viewing this in New York City, there are a number of other events, where the webcast is being shown: In the Universidad de America in Bogotá, Colombia; in the Universidad Bolivariana in El Alto de la Paz, Bolivia; and in Venezuela, at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, in Caracas.

Now, there's no showing of the webcast in Mexico City right now. They were all cancelled because of the swine flu problem. And so, Lyn, the next question—there are several people who asked this question, and so I'll put this together:

People have been following what you've warned about in terms of depopulation, and the collapse of living standards leading to the potential spread of epidemics and pandemic disease. Would you say that this is what we're seeing now, possibly with the swine flu? Or is this just an attempt to change the subject?

LaRouche: Well, it has many features to it, some of which are uncertain, but are big question marks which we have to answer. We don't have the full answers for it.

Here you have a policy, which is coming from the British monarchy, and from Prince Philip, whose policy has been to reduce the world's population to less than 2 billion people. That's the World Wildlife Fund policy; that's the green policy. Therefore, the green policy is to reduce the world's population. How do you reduce the world's population in large amounts so rapidly? Famine and epidemic disease. Lack of sanitation, famine, and epidemic disease.

Now, what you're getting is, you get the economic preconditions; the physical economic preconditions, for a global or a quasi-global pandemic conditions exist. They exist for reasons of the economic policy, which the United States is still defending, under this President, today! So, the guilt for this, is shared by the current U.S. government, because they bought into blame, because they did nothing to resist it!

When you take a population, like the world population now, you take the conditions of life in Mexico which were imposed by the United States and Britain, back in 1983—'82-'83, on López Portillo: That everything that's happened to promote these conditions in Mexico today, is a result of a continuation of what was done to President López Portillo of Mexico, and his Mexico, in 1982! There's the genesis of the conditions for genocide.

You look at the conditions today; they're much worse. The spread of the drug epidemic is also a factor, and the problem is, that, given these factors, the natural effect of these kinds of conditions we're creating economically, by current economic policy, creates the potential for a real global pandemic. Do not say that "Maybe it's only this." We don't say that. We say we have all the ignition material here for a global pandemic. Now, do we say it's going to be a global pandemic? No. Do we say it has the potential for becoming a global pandemic? Yes. Therefore, we act to prevent it from being a global pandemic. We assume the worst, and hope for the best; but we have to work for the best, not just hope for it.

So, there also is another aspect to this, which some people will bring up, for which there is presently no proof known to me. That is, from my experience with certain sections of the British government and the U.S. government from the past, there are people in powerful positions who would like to help Prince Philip out, as in the way LSD was synthesized by the British, who have used chemical, physical chemical capabilities, biological capabilities, to help disease in the laboratory, by synthesizing types of viral and other diseases, or combinations of them, which will interact to reduce the world's population—which is the policy of the environmentalists. It's mass murder! And mass murder as Bertrand Russell prescribed, and as Prince Philip has prescribed with his World Wildlife Fund.

Their intention is to bring this about, and whether this is a by-product of their intention to be filthy on economic policy or social policy, or whether they're adding a little something to make it really happen, I don't know. But I'm going to operate on the assumption that, knowing them, since a crime has been committed in the neighborhood—there is evidence of the crime—I'm going to assume they're doing it deliberately. And I'm going to act to defend the world's population on the assumption that they might be doing this deliberately. Even if I don't know they're doing it deliberately, I know they're doing it deliberately because their intention is that, of that nature. Their intention is to reduce the world population through a greenie policy, through an environmentalist policy advocated by Al Gore and Prince Philip, the British monarchy. Their intention is genocide, and they have the capability at their fingertips of the kinds of scientific technology capable of producing such genocide.

So, I'm going to act, since we're in a war against them. I don't know whether they're doing it or not, but I know they're determined to do it. It's like in wartime, so-called secret weapons, as in World War II. You're out to win a war. You have the capability of producing certain kinds of weapons, against the adversary or the target. You have the capability of doing it. If you're sufficiently evil and sufficiently eager, you will attempt to do it. And if you attempt to do it and you have the capability, you might succeed.

So, I think you have to treat this swine flu thing with that point of view. Don't panic! Don't panic! Do what ever you should do, and do it now; but keep your mind open, you might have a real something there that you have to deal with. You might have a synthetic disease, or a combination of diseases of a certain form, which will have a combined effect, because of the history of the populations, which will take certain selective effects. The tendency will be, in general, to go at susceptibilities of different kinds of populations, and use a weapon of that type against a population which is tailored for the type that's tailored for that population. But it could be more general.

And the swine flu threat is such, that what we're getting as these effects now—you mobilize for the contingency that the fire is going to spread. You don't wait until the fire spreads. You know there's a danger it could spread, and you mobilize now, to defend humanity against that danger. If it turns out to be it wasn't that bad; fine. But you wouldn't want to be in the position where you underestimated the threat, the consequences of which you wouldn't want to be responsible for. So I say, we mobilize! We mobilize rationally; we assume the possibility for the worst, and we fight it! We fight it because we should have a firefighting capability against this kind of thing anyway.

Why the U.S. Does Not Have Debtors' Prisons

Freeman: The next question is on banking policy and how to address it. And this comes from someone who is here with us in New York, but who also frequently works out of Washington, D.C., and generally represents policies related to the institution of the Presidency. And he says, that, in looking at the Obama Administration's approach to dealing with our current fiscal crisis, there are some aspects of it that really are—which I could only describe as perverse. The fact is, that what is implicit and perhaps explicit in the Geithner plan is that it allows guaranteeing bad assets at rates above their market value, and by so doing, it simply transfers the problem to those who hold the assets.

He says it would enable those individuals to convert those assets sooner or later to cash, and therefore, it preserves the wealth of the people who hold these assets that are valued above their market value. But at the same time, it fails to prevent the collapse of wealth of just about everybody else.

Now, what the questioner is getting at, is, as an interim step toward what is inevitable restructuring, would it not be better, rather than allowing the Geithner plan to proceed, to actually fix the value of those bad assets, not at rates that would float, but by essentially saying, "We will value these bad assets at some reasonable percentage, whether that be 15 cents on the dollar; 20 cents on the dollar; 25 cents on the dollar." The questioner says that if we do that, the fact is that many of the banks involved are still going to be declared insolvent, but then we can get around to the restructuring with some kind of rational basis. Do you think that this is workable? Or do you think it's just completely unnecessary, that there's no point in even attempting to do this at all?

LaRouche: No, I think it's plausible, but you have to define what you mean by it in the terms of law, because you're now getting into the area of a matter of Constitutional law, and it's extremely important to us that we preserve the intention of the U.S. Constitution in any proposal we make at this point. So, we have to think about Constitutional law in this.

Now, one of the features of the U.S. Constitution that our considerations take into account, pertains to the question of bankruptcy, the law of bankruptcy. You used to have in England what were called "debtors' prisons." You still have, under German bankruptcy law, a debtors' prison provision, which is strange to us in the United States, because we're so used to ordinary bankruptcy. But a person who goes honestly bankrupt can be imprisoned in Germany for being bankrupt. And that's the debtors' prison law which has never been removed from German law.

Now, what we in the United States were formally against, in particular, was indentured servitude and our slavery—this idea. So our law of bankruptcy is to provide both the obligation and the opportunity for bankruptcy in a bankrupt situation. In other words, we reorganize in bankruptcy in the public interest, and in the interest of the freedom and human rights of individuals. We used to pronounce debtors' prisons to be immoral, which is not the case in Germany, for example. Debtors' imprisonment is an immoral act, and that law should be dealt with accordingly.

So therefore, yes, in this case, we go up to these guys and say, "Well, you guys are bankrupt. All you guys who are with this crap that you're trying to pass off, should be put into bankruptcy." The banks involved, the financial institutions, should be put into bankruptcy. At that point, when approaching this question of bankruptcy, we go back to Glass-Steagall, and [the repeal of] Glass-Steagall was rammed through by Larry Summers. And at that point, already under Greenspan, there were things in that direction, which were driving us into bankruptcy.

So, therefore, we go back to Glass-Steagall. We take those aspects of the banking system which have to be put through bankruptcy, and we put them through bankruptcy reorganization in accord with a Glass-Steagall standard. And we go at this historically. We go from the time of the repeal of Glass-Steagall, under Larry Summers' scheming. We go back to that point and take that as a point of reference. Now we say, "You got a lot of bankruptcies here." Now, we're going to look at the question of settling the bankruptcy at that point.

In other words, as you do with your computer: You go back and you reset to an earlier time, before you got things screwed up. We're going to reset the computer back to the time, 1999, when this bum began running loose while President Clinton was in trouble. And we say, okay, at that point we use a Glass-Steagall standard to determine what kind of transactions do qualify for bankruptcy protection. Now, we'll take what has been piled on since then in the role of phony values—"Sorry, buddy."

All right, now, how do we handle that? There are two ways to handle it. One way which is what I proposed back in 2007: freeze it and sort it out later. The alternative is, as indicated in the question: Okay, buddy, the United States government is going to use its big fist, and it's going to tell you bums, you'll settle for 15 cents on the dollar. In other words, take all your trash, and we'll put all this crap, we'll put it in a bucket, and we'll say "Okay, we'll give you 15 cents on the dollar for that, but not today. We'll agree to cover 15 cents on the dollar on that, and you can name that as an asset for the future in your accounting." Yes, we can do that. Some people might say 20% and so forth, but I say 15%. We'll fight about that, but that's the alternative.

The intention is to take the valid material, which meets Glass-Steagall standards of banking. Those kinds of things should receive full bankruptcy protection, maybe with some write-downs, because some of these mortgages were excessive; there were swindles already. But then we take the crap, everything that doesn't correspond to Glass-Steagall standards, and we say, "We lump this stuff, this crap, in one lump. We'll buy it from you for 15 cents on the dollar, but not today. We'll agree to pay eventually 15 cents on the dollar. We'll sign that; you'll get that, that's going to be a value you'll get at some point. Now, take your money, and walk." That's it.

And that's the only sensible thing I can think of doing at this point. That's the alternative; either say we're going to freeze that until we can sort it out, or if they really want to get nasty, we'll say: "Okay, you want a definite price? Okay, we'll give you one. 15 cents on the dollar."

The People Are Suffering

Schlanger: There's a related question that was asked by a number of local elected officials that we spoke with at last weekend's California State Democratic Convention, officials who have been backing the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, which you introduced back in August 2007. They are basically saying that many city and state governments have already passed resolutions supporting your Homeowners and Bank Protection Act, yet it seems that Speaker Pelosi won't allow the Congress to take this up, and foreclosures are now increasing again. More than 1.5 million families have already lost their homes due to forcible seizures. So, how can we reach the institution of the Presidency to get the HBPA enacted, since local governments can't do it, and it doesn't appear that Congress has the knowledge or the guts to do it?

LaRouche: Well, I think that citizens who are being destroyed by this process should act to let the President know, and Pelosi know, that this has to be done. And if she wants to object, tell her: "Well, let's go in and get another facelift there. Then you won't be able to speak, and that will permit us to do this." But that's the way it has to be done. We have to do it.

Look, the people are suffering; they're suffering as a result of bad policy. This bad policy is flagrant, and a flagrant bad policy borders on crime. And if they don't do something like this now, they're going to be called to account for committing a crime, because they knew what was going to happen. It happened! They're criminals! They knew what was going to happen, and they did it, and the effects were injustice and injury to people. They go to jail!

FDR: State Power Over Finance

Freeman: This question is from an FDR historian, who is based out of Princeton. And, I'm putting together several questions here, because he's submitted a great deal for discussion. But his major point is the following: He says,

The Great Depression resulted from a collapse of the banking system and of asset values. We refer to that as the 'Great Crash.' The difference, however, was that the Roosevelt Administration, in understanding that that was at the heart of the Depression, approached it slightly differently. With the Pecora Commission, it became clear that what was at the heart of the problem was a culture of corruption, speculation, and self-dealing on Wall Street.

So, when FDR embarked on his policies, when he permitted banks that had been closed down to be reopened, they were reopened under very specific conditions, and the American people understood that the banks that were re-opened could be relied upon. You've already referred to the Glass-Steagall Act. There also was the question of the creation of the SEC, and a variety of other measures. But, my essential point is, that what Roosevelt's actions constituted above all else, was a comprehensive assertion of state power over finance. And essentially, his New Deal represented a fundamental break with the previous role of the banks.

In the Hoover Administration, which preceded FDR, you had a model that was followed which was much more of a British model. It was centered on the question of a financial policy designed to reassure the markets, and to essentially allow the banks to continue in their previous culture. The fact that that policy failed, it seems to me, is one of the first lessons of the Great Depression: That stuffing banks with money does not solve your economic problems, and in fact, it does not even solve a credit freeze.

But what I would really like you to comment on, is your view as to this whole question of the assertion of state power, because it's my argument that this also was implicit in what FDR's concept was, although it was not exactly what was adopted, when he designed the Bretton Woods system.

LaRouche: Well, this goes into a question of history, so I'm glad I'm getting a question from an historian. We have to go deeply into history on this one, because the question of principle can only be understood by looking at history.

We had a development in Europe, coming out of the New Dark Age of the 14th Century, in which there was a launching of a new conception of the state. It was not entirely new, because Dante Alighieri, with his De Monarchia, had made a similar kind of proposal earlier, and was killed for that. On the question of language, where Dante defended the Italian language, which is the natural language of the Italian people—before Latin. Latin was a synthetic language imposed by a bunch of invaders, who went up the Tiber and raped some people, and made a population by rape, the Sabine women. So, this issue has an historical basis.

Now, when the Dark Age struck, in the 14th Century collapse of the banking system at that time, which was actually an extension of the Venetian monetary system, at that point, you had a Dark Age, where the population of Europe collapsed, conditions were horrible; mass death and so forth. But, out of this came what became known at the Renaissance, the 15th Century Renaissance. And this took the form of the great Renaissance in Florence, which established a form of nation-state which corresponded to Dante Alighieri's De Monarchia, but was more advanced. It was the Concordantia Catholica of our dear friend, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa.

And it was the same Cusa who, a few years later, laid the basis for the establishment of modern physical science, with his De Docta Ignorantia. His work had been preceded somewhat by the work of Filippo Brunelleschi, the famous fellow who discovered the principle of the catenary, as a method of construction of the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore. So, you had a scientific development.

Now, out of Cusa's work, out of his De Monarchia and his proposal in De Docta Ignorantia, you had the emergence of the first modern nation-state in Europe, around Louis XI. And then he was succeeded by an admirer of his, Henry VII, who established the second sovereign nation-state, in England, at that time, whose benefit was overturned by his son, Henry VIII, or Henry the Hateable. So, this corresponded with a plunge in Europe, from 1492 on, with the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, into a period of religious war and genocide which continued until 1648.

Now, this went through several phases of evolution. And in 1648, you had the first effort to restore a civilized order in Europe, with the Westphalian principle. The outcome of this was through Cardinal Mazarin, who was also an author of the Treaty of Westphalia, and with his associates in France, who established France as new form of science-driven nation-state, which the British, and interests represented by the British, sought to destroy at that time. It was always actually the Dutch first, and then the British.

So, as a result of this, during the 17th Century, during the period of renewed religious warfare under the influence of Paolo Sarpi, continuing the religious warfare that the Hapsburgs had started earlier, there was a new phase of war involving the Hapsburgs, called the Thirty Years War. During this period, there was the first significant colonization in New England, what became known as New England, by the Plymouth brethren, and then, by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which established a system which is based on the influence of Columbus's intention in crossing the Atlantic waters to find, across the ocean, a place of refuge, in which the best of European civilization could be resuscitated free of the corruption inherent in Europe.

So, our foundations actually are traced in terms of law from the compact of the Plymouth brethren and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which later suffered corruption, later in that same century.

But, American law was established at that time—the components of law, as opposed to European law. The conception that Europe was a place of corruption. There was a great culture in Europe, but it was corrupted. It was corrupted by the continuation of oligarchical influences. Therefore, our law has always been anti-oligarchical. And I can speak with authority, because my ancestors came over on the Mayflower, one of them at least. So, we were there; this is us! This is our law. It's anti-oligarchical law.

Now, the European systems, even though there were efforts to start republics in Europe—the British destroyed the possibility of a French Republic at that time, by the French Revolution, by the efforts of the British, who orchestrated that whole operation, and similar things, again and again and again. Europe, to this day, has not freed itself from the corruption, the oligarchical corruption which was left over from that period.

The American Revolution

So, in the case of the United States, we have a conception of law, of natural law, which is different from any other part of the world as such, though there have been many imitations of U.S. law and experience, and some of them more or less good in various parts of the world. That is, the American Revolution was an inspiration to the world as a whole, of the possibility of taking the best of European civilization's culture, transporting it to a new part of the world, and making that available to the world as a whole, that precedent. Everything that's good that has happened in Europe since that time, has been a product of the influence of this struggle inside North America; the American Revolution.

And so, our conception is based on that; and we have to look at this question in that way, as I referred to the question of the debtors' prison issue before. Our system of law is predicated on our history, when viewed from this standpoint. We represent in the United States the heir of the very best product of European civilization, a European civilization freed in our constitutional view of matters, from the evils inherent in the oligarchical traditions of Europe. We don't have fondi; we don't have an oligarchy.

But in this process, we never really rid ourselves of the influence of our opponents. The British East India Company's influence among us. An influence which we associate to the present day with Wall Street. With the British East India Company influence, with Wall Street, and with outright traitors inside our country. This problem exists.

So that on these questions, we go to our tradition, which is what we're defending, in the sense of the tradition of those who came here, as into Massachusetts, to establish the idea of the best of European culture, of science, of artistic culture, and the achievements of Europe and freedom from the legacy of the Dark Age. We represent that. Therefore, we insist on that, as a defense of civilization. Our principles are not just our principles; they're not the peculiarity of the United States. The United States was created by this peculiarity, of the intention of Nicholas of Cusa, for example, who was the one who said, at that time, that the corruption spreading in Europe meant that we had to defend the best of European civilization, by going across the oceans to other parts of the planet and building up an area where we could defend the best of European civilization.

Christopher Columbus, about 1480, when he became acquainted with this policy of Nicholas of Cusa, dedicated his life to that policy. And in 1492, he was able to cross the ocean—as he knew he could—to a place he knew existed, because he consulted people on that matter. And his arrival here was the intention to create a place of refuge, to find the people in the Americas and join with them in creating a refuge, bringing the best advantages of European culture into the Americas, South and Central and North America.

And, in the process, with all the fights on this issue, the United States emerged as the paragon, which was the concentration of this fight against the British Empire, and the corruption that is inherent in the British Empire, through the present day. We have a system which is based on a credit system, under which we are sovereign. We don't have a funny system. We have a credit system according to our Constitution.

And what happened, of course, in the process, is, the British are still out to get us. Not only did they give us all the wars we had, but they also gave us the assassination of President McKinley. And the assassination of President McKinley brought a traitor into the Presidency, called Theodore Roosevelt, a distant cousin of Franklin Roosevelt. And Theodore Roosevelt brought us, with the British, a new kind of monetary system, introduced as the Federal Reserve System. And we had a guy who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Woodrow Wilson, who was another British scum and traitor, who was also of the legacy of the Confederacy, a British-created organization. And therefore, we had in New York and elsewhere, and in Boston, a center, a cesspool of British-style financier interests.

On the one hand, our policy was a credit, not a monetary policy. Whereas the British created a system, a monetary policy in which monetary power was superior to and independent of state power. A protectionist system like the Roosevelt system, was a protectionist system against monetary power, for domestic as well as foreign purposes. No private interest must be higher than the state, must be higher than the sovereign state. All financial interests must be subordinated to the authority of the state protection of the economy. And that's the issue here: We have to eliminate all traces of the evil which brought us to this point, especially under Alan Greenspan. And what was done was treasonous. It was treasonous in 1971. It was treasonous under poor Jimmy Carter. It was treason. The Trilateral Commission was an organization of treason, of British treason, foreign treason, foreign power. Alan Greenspan was a treasonous creature, as well as a despicable one, in general.

So these things we are fighting against represent an attack on everything that this United States represents, from its origins, especially from its European origins, from the origins of its founding in the 16th-17th Century. Therefore, our law is clear, and when we look at this law from the standpoint of history, its historical authority, it is what the world wants; it is what the world aspired to for so long—to have the freedom that we have in the Untied States. People didn't come here originally to settle this United States as refugees from Europe. They came here, like Columbus, to bring the best of European culture to a safe distance from European corruption.

And that's our law. If we understand the intent of our law—after all, what is law without intent? Law without intent is chaos. Law must be moral. A morality which is based on the conception of the nature of mankind, as a creative creature, unlike any animal on this planet. The sacredness of human beings, and the culture which corresponds to the sacredness of the creative powers unique to the human being, the promotion of those powers and their proliferation. This is our morality, and our law, as defined by our Federal Constitution, especially the preamble to the Federal Constitution, represents that. This is the highest law; this is the only law we consider respectable on this planet. That every people have a right to the same rights we claimed in our Declaration of Independence, and which we claimed as legal protection in the founding of our Constitution.

That's our law. The law lies in its intent, its moral intent, its purpose for humanity. And to the extent that we are committed to the purpose, we are committed to that principle on behalf of all humanity. We care as much for other people as we do for ourselves. Because we know that protecting other people according to this principle is the only security we have, and because we love human beings rather than baboons. Anybody who doesn't agree with me should marry a baboon, and find out what they're getting.

Empire: The Monster We Must Destroy

Freeman: Lyn, you've made our historian here very happy. What he says is,

You know, Mr. LaRouche, people here get frustrated with me because the point that I make over and over again is that the U.S. economy, from its inception, was based on a credit system as opposed to a European-style system. And I also have documented for people here, time and time again, that FDR's intention for Bretton Woods was a fixed-exchange-rate credit system, not a monetary system.

Now, in fact, the Bretton Woods agreement, as it came into being, was itself not that, but was, in fact, a monetary system and became, pretty much, an unregulated monetary system after 1971. But it is my argument that the only way for us to proceed right now, is essentially, to apply the standard that Roosevelt had first intended, which is to adopt essentially a fixed exchange-rate credit system. But, for the benefit of my colleagues gathered here, who seem to be incapable of comprehending the difference once we get down to brass tacks, could you define for them clearly the difference between a fixed-exchange-rate credit system and a monetary system?

LaRouche: The credit on which a currency must be based is the interest and will of the sovereign nation. Now, people may compromise with other nations as sovereigns, to come up with a common system among sovereigns, but no third party can be introduced in between them. No third party can intrude on the sovereignty of any member or members of that association, or that association as a whole. A floating-exchange-rate system, an international monetary system, is a Satanic invention. It is a basis of empires.

The British Empire, in case of point: You look at these Brits, they're fat, sloppy, and dumb. Their dietary habits stink, their conditions of life stink, their opinions stink, in general. There are a few exceptions here and there, who say, "Well, you know, we're in this boat, you know, and some of the other passengers aren't exactly nice"—but the Brits are an imperial system and they're a parasitic nation, essentially. They suck the blood out of the rest of the world. Dracula was a story written by a Brit, remember. That's not coincidental.

So, they don't have a moral sense, the Brits. All they are, is a simple attachment to an international Venetian monetary system. That is, the monetary system is controlled by a Venetian principle, of an international agreement among bankers and similar kinds of financiers. They run the world, and they say, we have to have a free-trade system. You know, it's like an open marriage, a free-trade system. You don't know who the baby's father is. You can track the mother, but you can't track the father so easily. That's the British system, it's a free-trade system.

And therefore, the free-trade organization, the monetarists, control the world. That's the nature of the British Empire. The British Empire is an Anglo-Dutch-Saudi system. In 1973, it became also Saudi, because the Saudis actually ran the swindle, together with the Dutch and British, which created the new floating-exchange-rate system of the post-war system. And so, the Saudis actually became an integral part of the British Empire. Not merely member-subjects, but they actually became an integral part of the worst features of the British Empire. Some of the greatest crimes ever committed were committed by, essentially, the former ambassador to the United States from Saudi Arabia, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who became a British agent at the age of 16. And this crowd in Saudi Arabia, which has enemies inside Saudi Arabia, of course, naturally, this crowd is an integral part of the British Empire.

So you have an international system, which is above government, which demands—on a free-trade principle—that their system be higher in rank than government. That governments must submit to free-trade agreements. That is the name of Satan. That is the enemy. That is the Empire. It's not the British people, who are made stupid by living under such conditions, and they also have some filthy habits, as well as being stupid. But they are not the problem. It's not they or the Dutch that are the problem. It's this particular phenomenon. The Empire! This is the ancient concept of empire. The empire reposes in an individual who's selected by a committee, who is given the policy of making law. Nobody else can make law. Others can have statutes and agreements and policies, but they can't make law, in the sense of constitutional law. Only the caprice of the emperor can define law. And today that Emperor is the international financial-monetary system.

That is the monster we must destroy, and there is no solution to any of the problems the world faces today, unless we destroy that empire. And we can destroy the empire very simply. Make me President, I'll do it for you easily. I can explain it to another guy who's qualified to be President. I have the knowledge. I am willing to share that with anybody who is a qualified President of the United States. I'm getting old, I don't want to be running the Presidency myself. I know how to do it better than anyone else does, but that's not what I want to do now.

What we do, essentially, is, the United States conducts a treaty agreement with Russia, with China, with India. Why? Because you have two frontiers of the development of civilization today. One is in Asia, and Russia is a Eurasian nation. The other one is Africa. The first thing in Africa, you kick the British entirely out of Africa. Just kick them out. They're British: "Get out of here! Get the hell out of there! You don't belong here! You're a bunch of parasites; you're mass murderers; you've committed every crime imaginable. And we're going to free you, you Africans, you're going to be free, and kick the Brits out." Let's kick the Brits out, and let them have to live with themselves, and that will be punishment enough for them.

In that approach, we simply take the fact that we create a credit system. What do we do? How does the United States make a treaty, and how does it utter money, legally, under our Constitution? You utter money by a vote of the Congress, primarily, the House of Representatives. It's a Presidential action, authorized by the consent of the Congress. Now, you do the same kind of thing you do for an international treaty. The United States explores a treaty agreement with other nations. The President endorses that. That is presented to the Congress, including the House of Representatives. The Congress must now approve that treaty before it can become law, before it can take effect. Money is uttered by the United States, legally, in the same way. When both are the form of credit. A treaty agreement is credit. It may not be monetary credit as such, but it's credit. A monetary agreement, financial agreement, is also credit.

We agree that the United States will create a debt. The debt will be used as a capital debt either to utter money for circulation in the United States, or for investment in some project, which the United States is going to fund, the Federal government's going to fund. We also do the same thing with friends abroad, with whom we have treaty agreements.

So, what I'm proposing is a general treaty agreement, made individually and collectively, between the United States, Russia, China, and India, and other countries, with emphasis upon our major targets, economic targets, which are Asia and Africa. Russia is a Eurasian nation whose territory and skills are crucial for the development of the mineral resources of northern Asia, mineral resources which China would know, but China wouldn't be able to develop. China does not have the technology and knowledge and experience to do that. Russians do. They know how to operate in tundra area, and a lot of this is in tundra area.

But, we need those raw materials developed in order to develop China, and other countries. So therefore, we have a treaty agreement. Now, China also, now recognizes that it's benefitting from this. We make a treaty agreement with China, and the Russians join into a treaty agreement with China, and with India, and also Japan will readily come in immediately. Korea will come in immediately. Nations of Southeast Asia will tend to join immediately. They want this.

So therefore, we now say we're going to make a treaty agreement with a 50- and a 100-year duration, because we know that what we're going to invest in has a 50- to 100-year cycle. Some of it is 25 years, some less. Now, we're going to give these countries credit from the United States, for their development in certain projects, certain categories of projects, like mass transportation systems, water development systems, all the things that are necessary to develop a population and build up the physical capital investment, to enable that country to have a future.

In the meantime, the credit system will allow them to continue to live decently. They have protection against foreclosure, guaranteed by the United States and other nations. And therefore we say, China, you need this! Russia, you need this, and you have to do this for these other nations. India, you have to do this.

Credit for Development

For example, one measure. If we're going to have a war, a general war, it'll be a thermonuclear war, so if you want a war, you're going to get a thermonuclear war. So don't worry about it! Because if they're foolish enough to have a war, you're going to have a thermonuclear war. If you don't intend to have a thermonuclear war, what are you going to do with all that plutonium, stored in weapons? Well, it has a very useful function. If you free it from this larder of plutonium, you're going to charge up nuclear uranium and thorium reactors. You're going to charge them up all over the planet. You're going to create this system of power, which enables you to use technologies of production which totally exist today.

The key one, the most important one, the most urgent one, is water. Fresh drinkable water for every people. Extremely important. Power in general, as a by-product of that. Well, it's going to be used for basic infrastructure.

Look at the map of Africa. Take a helicopter study of what the African terrain looks like. What do you see? How many roads do you see? How many railroads do you see? Look at the towns, look at where people live. What are the conditions of life in Africa? They're horrible! Totally undeveloped. What does Africa need? Does it need wise-guys coming in? No, it doesn't need wise-guys. It needs transportation systems, especially railways. It needs power systems, especially nuclear, which are being developed there. It needs various systems of infrastructure which are necessary to build up an economy in Africa, by the Africans. Get the British out, and it'll begin to happen immediately.

So, when we come into this kind of treaty agreement, a credit system, we extend it globally. Credit for Africa. We agree that Africa requires a mass transportation system, a railway—magnetic levitation. We agree they require water systems, with the aid of nuclear power. We agree that they require this. Okay, we and a group of nations are going to extend credit to them, to assist them in supplying themselves with these kinds of systems. If we give them the infrastructure, and access to technology, they will do the rest for themselves. And it's better that they do it for themselves, because then it's theirs! And we want the private section of the economies of nations to be theirs, not ours. So we make credit agreements with them. Again, 50 years, a hundred years. We give this planet a hundred years to work its way out of the current mess. We emphasize scientific progress, technology, high energy flux-density, these kinds of things.

These are all things we can do. There are things we were on the verge of doing in the 1960s, before we shut down the space program. You know, in the early 1970s, we were getting a 10-cent return on every penny we spent on the space program. That is, the technologies we were getting from investment in the space program, were giving us a payback in technologies which were worth 10 cents for every cent we invested. If we return to that kind of policy, we have a multiplier capability, and if we extend, we share those technologies with the people in Africa, the people in China, in India, and so forth, for their development of their own economies, then we're going to have the kind of nation our great-grandchldren will want to live in.

And that will be our mission in living today. It's what we're giving to the future of humanity. And it will work. You abandon selfishness, and think in terms of what does your life mean: Are you an animal? Is your personal physical pleasure everything to you? Or do you think of yourself as an immortal being, whose life is of significance for the future of humanity? Like the father, or grandfather used to take his grandchild out in the old days, and show them what he had participated in building, in some great project, like a great dam or some system. He'll tell his grandson, "I built this. I was part of building this." And that was his greatest pride in existence, in producing a generation of grandchildren to whom he could say that. And to inspire them to do likewise after him.

And that should be our policy. That's the meaning of a credit system. We have to be separate nations, as I said, because we're different cultures, and because the children have to develop their culture, their language culture, their traditions. But they have to develop to equality in equivalence of ability, and that should be our mission. Nations working to a common purpose. No more Tower of Babel. That sort of thing.

The problem is, as you see, when you think about this: We in the present generations have come to a time when governments and institutions have lost morality, true morality. When they talk about morality, you laugh with a sick laugh. These guys are talking about morality! The President is talking about morality, when he's doing what he's doing right now, since he went to London? That's not morality. Morality is the relationship of human beings to the future of the human race, through the medium of their nation, and cooperation among such nations. And that's the principle involved here. Nothing else is really that important.

What Is Immortality?

Schlanger: We have a question from a student of international law at Kazak State University in Almaty, Kazakstan. And he's obviously someone who's studied your writings on FDR, and how FDR led the U.S. from the Great Depression in the first half of the 20th Century. He asks:

In view of the overwhelming popularity of Franklin Roosevelt and his consistent criticism of the private banking cabal, what hindered Roosevelt from taking back the power of money printing from the bankers, to where it belonged, which is the U.S. government? Why did he not abolish the Federal Reserve?

LaRouche: You know, why doesn't the general win the war all at once? Really, that's it. Not to be cryptic about it, but that's the way it is.

You have to think about human beings in terms of your immortality. Now, don't talk to most preachers about immortality. They don't know what it is. It's a rumor they spread to people who don't understand it, nor do they, and they've never been there; they'd never come back. They have no reports of immortality from the dead. But we have evidence of the immortality of the dead, from the living, in the terms of people who have made a contribution which is more than just an act, but who have contributed to the advancement of the ability of humanity to exist. Who have made peace when there was war. Who built construction and prosperity where there is poverty and destruction. Those are the evidences of immortality, because they involve the transmission of successive development of ideas and commitment, across successive generations.

It's a continuing process. There's no point at which a human being who thinks, is dead completely. Their body is dead, but they're not dead, because the ideas which other people are reliving, from them, as if they had the same ideas themselves, those relived ideas are living on as a continuing dialogue in development in generations to come.

Everything we've accomplished, has always referred to antecedents, human antecedents of accomplishment. To understand what the United States is, you have to understand the mind of Christopher Columbus in 1480 A.D., when he decided to commit himself to crossing the ocean for the mission specified by Nicholas of Cusa, earlier.

That's immortality. It's a commitment to the future of mankind, which is made actual through our reliving of the experience of discovery made by predecessors. So the process of discovery, as in physical science or as in great Classical art, is not something that just happens, like a dropping of a pigeon. What it is, is a process of development of an idea, a creative idea, across successive generations, and the dead live in those who come after them in this way. You cannot understand any discovery unless you relive it, and it's somebody else's discovery that you are reliving inside yourself.

What's wrong with education today, public education and university education above all: You go to school, today you get this lesson. At the end of the lesson, you get this test. You pass or you didn't pass. What a bunch of junk is that? Nobody ever becomes a scientist in that way. They become an idiot who babbles what they've been able to memorize, but they don't know what they're talking about. And when you see some of our politicians, you recognize the effect of that. They talk a lot, but they don't say anything, because they don't have any ideas.

Ideas are always, in a sense, participation. For example, my own studies pertained to things that happened thousands of years ago. My understanding of history is re-living in my own mind the ideas that were developing in people up to thousands of years ago. Otherwise, they wouldn't be ideas. That's the difference between an opinion and an idea. The President has an opinion, this President, but he has very few ideas. He says words; that's his opinion. He backs up his words; that's his opinion. Where are the ideas? The ideas involve the antecedents and the consequences of the action which those ideas pertain to. That's our problem.

And so, this is the nature of the thing.

Our function in life is not to worry about merely what we accomplish physically in our lifetime. Our function in life is as FDR saw his own function in this respect, as President: to set into motion the process which is necessary as an idea to bring about a future benefit for mankind. The problem with Roosevelt's achievements is not in what he accomplished or didn't accomplish. He accomplished a great deal. He set the ideas in place, on which it is possible still today, by studying his state of mind, to proceed on what he intended to accomplish, if in a different form from then, but now. It's by re-living his intention as an idea, that we're able to accomplish what he intended, or had intended. And therefore, what Roosevelt accomplished, is making possible the consequences which I am proposing we establish, now.

The development of Kazakstan will depend, to some degree, on the continuation of those ideas in the environment in which Kazakstan lives today. It's those ideas which will inform the creative powers of the mind of the best young people in Kazakstan, in making their contribution to building what has not yet been built before.

The General Welfare: Social Security and Medicare

Freeman: This question comes from the Stanford group, and they say:

Mr. LaRouche, we participated in a seminar about two weeks ago with Professor Galbraith, and we came up with some proposals that we'd like to run by you. Some of them we all agree on, but there's one body of policy that is causing some controversy. As a group, we agree that there's really no alternative to putting the banks into receivership and restructuring them, and that really, from our standpoint, is a no-brainer. At the same time, what we've proposed is that while this is happening, that we establish what is essentially a publicly run bank to provide credit to businesses that is sufficient to keep them running through the crisis, and this institution obviously would be modelled on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. Again, our memorandum of understanding is straightforward on these points, and we'd be happy to share it with you.

Also, on the question of the long-term economic reconstruction: Again, we were pretty much in agreement among ourselves, and I think that the proposals that we've come up with in our memorandum are things that you would more or less agree with.

The point of controversy, however, came up when we began to address what we absolutely must address, which is the immediate emergency that the current slump is creating for our citizens. And, Professor Galbraith made some proposals, and some of us had some proposals, but this really is a point of great controversy, and we'd appreciate your comment on it. Professor Galbraith emphasized that one of the things that disturbed him, was the re-occurrence of the emphasis on the idea that Social Security and Medicare were causing problems. And he said that he thinks that the current preoccupation that's coming out of Washington with these two programs is extremely dangerous to the prospect for economic recovery, and we agree with him. But the proposals that we're playing with—many of them came from Dr. Galbraith, some of them came from others—but we just don't see any way around it. And we'd like you to comment on whether you think this is valid, whether you think it's inflationary, etc.

First of all, given the situation that the elderly in this nation face, and they really do face a very difficult situation because they're being hit on a number of different fronts. Their home values and their stock values have declined radically. Whatever interest they were collecting on cash holdings, similarly, have declined. Therefore, the only viable solution that we were able to come up with, is that Social Security benefits should be increased, not cut. We also thought that, while overall health-care policy was being debated, that an emergency lowering of Medicare eligibility should be implemented, in which the age of eligibility would be brought down to 55.

We also thought, and this obviously was a source of enormous controversy, but we thought that the payroll tax at least on lower-income people, should be placed on holiday. And particularly, in light of the fact, that President Obama's 90-day moratorium on foreclosures has now expired, we thought that measures to mitigate foreclosures, to keep people in their homes had to be taken immediately, and that the freeze should be extended.

And then finally, we recommended that fiscal assistance to states and municipalities be made open-ended, so that we could put an end to job cuts in what are essentially vital public sections.

Now, this has caused nothing short of hysteria from our bosses in Washington, and even from some people who we work with. But we don't see any alternative to taking these measures. And since this Administration says it wants to take an FDR approach to the current crisis, it is also our assertion that this is how FDR would have dealt with it. Obviously, these measures are costly, but they are necessary. And it's our argument that however costly they may be, they probably are not nearly as costly as the amount of money the government is prepared to spend to bail out the banks. And, the difference here is that this actually could provide relief, whereas the bank bailout probably won't provide any, not even in the medium-term.

But, we'd really like your comments on this, because again, it's a problem we have to deal with, and we want to deal with it responsibly.

LaRouche: Well, I think everything you first said you've proposed, which is considered controversial by some people, is valid. The problem here, I think, is, something has to be added to this. The measures are correct, but the question is, there are certain consequences of these measures which also have to be taken into account.

In general, first look at one aspect of this—the pensions and senior citizens. I don't feel like a senior citizen, but I see a lot of people in my age group or younger, who are considered senior citizens. And I see the plight that they go through. I'm just too stubborn to be a senior citizen. My stubborn youthfulness is hated in me by my enemies; I'm hated more for that reason than for anything else. I'm still alive—"What are you doing alive? We thought we'd be rid of you by now." But they're not rid of me yet. They may take drastic measures, you know; they always threaten that.

We have to look at two things. First of all, we have been operating with "promises, promises, and promises. That everything is going to be fine with your 401(k); that this is all going to work; that everything is guaranteed. Don't worry about it. Trust us. Trust us!"

Well, what happened? The pensions got wiped out! The guaranteed prosperity, the protection, got wiped out. The insurance companies got wiped out! Everything they depended upon; everything is being taken from them. When they're unable to defend themselves by their own means against what is being done to them by the present incumbents of the U.S. government, the Congress in particular, in general, and by the corporations. This was great thievery! What was done by Hank Paulson: They shouldn't have hung him, because that would have stopped his suffering. Other remedies should be found, and we are going to provide some. The penalty of ridicule; he is going to be ridiculed by us in ways that will be infectious. He will be fleeing; changing his name; disguising himself; probably even growing hair on the top of his head, or such other desperate measures.

But the point is, we owe it to our citizens because they are citizens, because of their status, to provide them protection against the consequences of that bunch of idiots in the Presidency and the Congress who led this nation into these catastrophes. We are responsible. And who is most responsible? The super-rich! The super-rich, the useless ever-sucking super-rich! So therefore, the Federal government tax policy will reflect that. Why not?

First of all, we do have to take over the question of pensions and health care, but we have to do more than that. Look, the whole health-care racket in the United States is a great swindle which affects mostly people in senior years. It's a swindle! What happened to the general hospitals? What happened to the excellent system of hospitals in New York City, as a result of Felix Rohatyn's work? What happened to these things?

You know: You get sick; you go to the doctor. You have to go through this hurdle. You have this contact, this contact, that contact; go here this week, go there next week. You get an appointment for that three weeks from now. You get an operation two years after you're dead. There are certain faults in that system! So, simply putting money into them is not going to cure the fault.

What is happening is, the doctors themselves are being swindled. The system is swindling them, and doing even worse swindling against the patients, against the population. What we need to have is what we learned from World War II, medical experience in World War II. We consolidated a system of general hospitals. You got sick in a neighborhood, you could walk into one of the outpatient facilities of a general hospital system. You get into that through your physician and so forth, voluntarily. You don't have to go through an intermediary and this crap. And we were able to deliver better medicine, more cheaply under that system, than under the crazy system that's introduced now.

The way this system, the medical system was created, crafted, was to impoverish the physicians, to eliminate as many as possible through medical risk insurance, to increase the cost of everything. And the drug companies sat on top of it all. So, we've had a system whose intention, in terms of its embodied function, was criminal. Our law says no law, no practice is condoned, which is contrary to the general interest, the general public interest. These were obviously against the public interest; they're against most people today. The policy now is to accelerate death. "You have a terminal illness? Come back two years from now; we might do something for you, if you're still alive; which we are confident you will not be."

So, in this case, in the medical area, we have to revamp the whole system. We have destroyed the excellent medical system we had in the aftermath of World War II. We've destroyed it. We have to put it back. We have to rebuild the same kind of capability, the same policies that we had then.

In the medical profession, who's making money? The drug companies! You compare what it costs to get certain prescription pharmaceuticals in the United States, with what they cost in various parts of the world, like Canada, various parts of Europe, and so forth. The pharmaceutical companies are the great swindlers, and part of the great swindle.

Get Rid of the 'Green'!

So therefore, you have two sides to the problem. First of all, you have the need to create the generation of income which will allow us to commit ourselves to make these payments which are necessary. That means we have to get rid of green. We're against pollution, but you get rid of green. We now go to a high-technology orientation, which is what we were based on. We go to high-technology industries, energy-dense industries, which means nuclear power today. You can't do it without nuclear power. Stop wasting money on solar cells, windmills. Windmills! What's your technology level in windmills? As a matter of fact, the windmill industry is subsidized. It's a fraud against the people. The reason it's able to operate is because it's protected and subsidized. Solar power? Subsidized. It's not efficient; it's useless. Get rid of this policy.

Now, go to high-technology industry. Rebuild—stop this highway policy. The whole highway system is crazy. You have people forced to spend as much—in this area—as two and a half hours a day each way, commuting from West Virginia or elsewhere to jobs around Washington. What the hell does that do to family life?

You say you care about family, like social welfare, general interest? What are you talking about? We used to have a system in the United States when you didn't have giant corporations controlling everything. The basis for our economy was largely smaller firms, smaller enterprises located in various parts of the country, local agriculture and so forth. So you have economic distribution of productive activity in various parts of the country. And in general, most people, then, could get a job, a decent job, within 15 minutes, or 20 minutes, or half an hour of commuting time at most each way. People would move into areas where the job was there, where they commute within 15 to 20 minutes or half an hour at most to get to the job. What happens if you have two and a half hours commuting on each end of the job day? What happens to family life? Who cares?

So, the problem is, we have to restructure our economic policy in a way which is consistent with supplying these proposed remedies. The remedies are morally right; they're right economically. The question is, how do we pay for them? We pay for them by increasing the efficient productivity of the nation, per capita and per square kilometer. Restore American agriculture! Monsanto is not in charge of life. Monsanto never invented a living process. It never invented life, so why is it taxing it? Why has it got a monopoly on life? What's that? A new form of slavery? My vegetables are in slavery to some foreign corporation?

We've got to stop the idiocy, and go back to the idea—against Prince Philip, against the World Wildlife Fund—that fascist should not be running the world with his policy. And Al Gore should go there and be the house servant for this pig, and not bother us anymore. As a matter of fact, he's too big; he's too fat. Our doorways are not large enough to handle him in and out. We can't knock out and expand our doorways to let him in.

So therefore, we have to make revisions in our policy. We have to make sensible revisions that are consistent with our history as a progressive nation, with our best periods. We are going to be just, we're going to protect our citizens. The right to life is sacred, the right to a decent life, to protection, is sacred. We're going to provide the systems which are oriented to human beings. And these are proposals which are in dispute in this question, which are perfectly legitimate. They're necessary measures. The question is, how are you going to pay for them? Well, I've got some good ideas for what we don't pay for anymore, and what we pay less for. And for, in addition, the new industries, the new places of employment which are productive, which will enable our government to afford to make these adjustments.

So, you have to consider two things. The provisions are morally correct; they're necessary. How do we pay for them? We pay for them by not paying for such junk that we're paying for now, like high prescription drug prices, that sort of thing. We pay for them by eliminating junk. We pay for them by providing mass transit systems so people don't have to choke on highways for two and a half hours to get to and from work, and that sort of thing.

So, we build a more efficient, physically efficient economy, more powerful economy, with better technology. We don't have to have all these white-collar workers. We don't need it. White collars just get dirty quicker; we don't need that. What we need is high-technology emphasis on high degrees of productivity. We need capital-intensive, progressive investment. We need to decentralize much of our production, so we distribute our production across the countryside, as in agriculture and industry. So that in every part of the country, you have options for work, for employment, in communities, within a reasonable commuting time each day. You have all the necessities taken care of, like general hospitals in every area that can be the matrix for dealing with the requirements of the health of the population. And we're going to have to socialize a lot of things, especially for the elderly, the ill, and for education. We're going to have to pay for it. So therefore, if you have to pay for it the old-fashioned way, go to work and earn it.

You Have To Be Right

Schlanger: Now we'll take a question from the floor.

Q: Good afternoon. I'm Doctor Hayes. I'm from Washington, D.C., I'm a Catholic, and I'm a Republican.... I've travelled overseas; I've been to Africa, I've been to the Middle East, I've been to Central Asia and Central Europe, Eastern Europe. I've been in all of the United States, and everyone asks the same question: "How are your policies going to help us have a better life?" And I just didn't get that with McCain or with Obama. So, I listened to your issues, and I say to myself, "How can you resonate your message to the American people, and foreign people, where they understand it?... Because they don't know what they need to know, and they don't understand what they need to understand.

LaRouche: Okay, partly, the secret in life is, you have to be immortal, not physically, but you have to be immortal in the way you think. And that is, you'll find in life, as I have, that most of your fellow citizens tend to be stupid. They tend to be morally stupid. They have the facts before them, but they don't draw the conclusions they should, because they have another agenda they're listening to. They say, "Well, I don't need what you're talking about. I'm fixed," or "I got a plan; something that's going to work for me. I don't want to jeopardize that, just because you come along with this idea."

And, as you're finding today around the country—for example, we get a lot of troubles inside the Democratic Party, but over 50% of the people at the recent California Democratic Convention, tended to agree with the fact of our agenda. They may not have fully agreed with it, but they agreed that this was one of the things that had to be discussed. And they were important issues, like the question of getting rid of Pelosi, for example. She needs a new facelift; maybe that'll shut her up for a while. I'm all for her getting a facelift. If it shuts her up, that's good. You know, with that initial surgery, she can't talk much.

So the point is, in life, when you talk to people, you have to take an immortal view. First of all, you have to be right. And you have to be extremely self-critical to make sure you're right in your own mind, in what you do. You have to get to the point that you have enough knowledge to make that judgment. Then, you have to say it, whatever the reaction is you're getting. Because if ideas are valid, keep them alive, keep pushing them. And, now, people who are afraid of me, because I had too many enemies in politics, say, "Oh, how nice you are. Maybe we can do that."

So, in life, what you have to do, in dealing with your fellow citizens, you have to show patience. The so-called legendary patience of Job, because you have to wait for it to come to you. Your problem in life is not to submit guarantees of a certain time that this is going to happen. Sometimes, you can do that; sometimes I can because I'm a good forecaster, and generally I don't make the mistakes that most people make, so therefore, I'm right because I don't make those mistakes. But, in principle, being right now, does not mean you're going to get success now. The worst thing to do, is to find out what you can be successful at, whether it's right or wrong, and go with that. Our problem with the philosophical liberalism in the United States, which we got from the British, largely, is that people will say, "I gotta go with that, because that will be accepted, whether it's right or wrong."

So, what you have to build up in our citizens is a conception of what's right and what's wrong. And you've got make sure that you're right, and pay a lot of attention to being right, rather than simply opinionated. And if you're that, then you keep pushing. Keep pushing; because keeping ideas which are correct alive, is the very minimum of what you can do in life. Sometimes you can use judgment about where you push it. For example, you don't go to a Klan rally, nor do I go to a Klan rally, to express ideas. I just don't think that's a good idea. There are some parts of northern Alabama I visited, I wouldn't go out at night, where I'm known, because I might not come back.

So therefore, you don't do everything simply because it's right, but you try to select what you think you should be committed to, what you should be able to win people to eventually. And in the case of parents, what you do, is you select: This is a mission which you think you can succeed in, that you should be able to succeed in, and you try. And you may have some longer term ideas, too, which you also would express to people you think you might be able to influence or involve them in, call their attention to. What you're trying to do, constantly, is plant the idea that is needed for the present and the future, and stick at it.

Because you have to think of your work as being immortal, not just you. Don't try to be immortal—you're not going to make that one. No one's ever figured that one out, so far. But you try to be immortal in terms of the values that you are providing for people around you. That's the only thing you can do. That's what I do. It's worked! I've had some big successes at times, and paid a big price to be successful, because my enemies were not pleased with that. I've had some big ones, so I can say that you can achieve big results. And I have. I've been more fortunate than most people, in that respect.

But, at the same time, if you think you want an absolute guarantee that you're going to get that result when you want it—that's selfishness. There's no guarantee in that. But doing the right thing, putting the right idea, putting the right devotion to a cause, into motion, that's valid, always.

The main thing is to be right, and to come to a deeper understanding at all times. That's what I try to do. I enjoy it.

A Coup d'État?

Freeman: This question comes from a journalist here, who writes on politics, and he says:

Mr. LaRouche, I think that it's time to address what nobody else here at this gathering has been prepared to talk about. Because we can talk about the right policies as much as we want, but I think it's time that we examined some of the politics behind what is going on. And I've said, time and time again, that people are pissed off about the financial crisis, about the bailout, but they're not nearly pissed off enough.

It's my contention that the current economic meltdown and everything that has followed it, particularly the bailout, represent the equivalent of a coup d'état. That what has occurred basically is that a political trend that's been snowballing for decades, has essentially now been cemented, and that our government, in effect, has been taken over by a small class of connected insiders, who have repeatedly used money to control elections, to buy influence, and to systematically weaken financial regulations. And the fact of the matter is that Larry Summers is simply the leading and most disgusting example of this.

The fact is, that the current crisis was essentially what these guys needed. They now, at this point, after having been given free rein over the economy; after having literally wrecked the banking system and the financial world; what we're doing now is that we're giving the same people who created the problem, unlimited powers to clean up their own mess. And the fact of the matter is that, as a result, various of these individuals, like Larry Summers, like the gambling addicts who lead companies like AIG, are ending up not penniless, not in prison, but instead they've cemented their death grip on the Treasury and on the Fed.

My contention is that the mistake that most people make in looking at the current crisis, is that they think about it in terms of money. But if you look at it in the terms that I look at it, and you can argue that they're Machiavellian terms—but I think they're accurate—is that I think that what we've experienced is a colossal power grab that threatens to turn the government into the equivalent of one giant Enron, which is essentially, an impenetrable fortress that's filled with self-dealing insiders, whose scheme is simply to steal as much individual profit as they can at the expense of an ocean of unwitting involuntary shareholders, who are actually known as U.S. taxpayers.

Now, the reason that I'm going through this rant—and I admit that it is a rant—is that I think that unless we identify this pathology, then all of the great policies and reforms that we're discussing, will never be implemented. Because these individuals who, right now, for better or for worse, have a stranglehold on the policies of our government, are, as far as I can see, the enemy. And unless we identify someone like Larry Summers, and the general political tendency that he represents, as the enemy, I don't see anything good happening, with this administration or with any other. And nobody here wants to address that directly, I suppose because of where their salaries come from, but since I'm the irreverent member of the group, I wanted to put it on the table and I'd like your comments on it.

LaRouche: Okay, fine. Delighted to do so.

First of all, what you say in general is not inaccurate. It leaves something out.

Let's take 1789 in France. Let's take June-July 1789, in France, and what followed. The danger in this period is that, as you say, in the case of Lafayette, who made a critical mistake in that process: Lafayette's policy was that he still felt an obligation to his King, when the King had become a traitor to France. What had happened was, that it was a British operation—it would probably be interesting to go through this, because this is classic: The British had set up a Freemasonic operation in France which was again controlling the opposition to the King, and the Duc d'Orléans was a key part of it.

So what happened is, they set up this freemasonic organization, or network, on the European continent, which was a branch of British freemasonry, with a European accent. So, this crowd pulled a stunt. Up until that time, of this event—that is, the event three years earlier—the Emperor of Austria was very happy with Mozart. He was very happy with a number of things, including his sister, who was the Queen of France. And what happened was, the British, with this Freemasonic operation, pulled an operation under which the famous case of the Queen's Necklace occurred. And this scandal enraged both the King, who was a little bit of a fool, but also enraged the Hapsburg Emperor, the Queen's brother, who turned nasty. As a result of this process, the French monarchy turned nasty in general, along with her in-law, the Emperor of Austria. And they became hostile to the French people on this issue.

So, in 1789, in this context, the King had relied upon his brother-in-law to bring foreign troops into France, around Paris, to protect the French monarchy. In this same period, Lafayette and his friends had established a negotiation to create a republic, with the intent that the King should accept the position of constitutional monarch of a republic. But Lafayette and company did not follow through, at that time. So his enemy, the enemy of Benjamin Franklin and so forth, who was the typical British agent in the situation, organized an event called the Siege of the Bastille, which had essentially a bunch of gibbering idiots in it, only, who were in there because they were waiting to be transported to an insane asylum. Nobody else was there, except the guards.

So the mob, which was armed by Louis Philippe, Philippe Égalité, besieged the Bastille and committed atrocities. When the guards surrendered, they decapitated them, put their heads on pikes, put the gibbering idiots on the shoulders of the mob, and the mob marched through with a triumphal procession. This, then, created a situation under which the King supported repressive measures against France. And this started this process of the French Revolution.

The 'Twitters': A Dionysian Nightmare

Now, what you're looking at here, in the United States today, is a phenomenon typified by the Twitters. Now the Twitters are very seriously an operation of evil. They're a parody of the ancient cult of Dionysus, of which we have examples: For example, the people at Columbia University, who in the second sit-in associated with Mark Rudd in 1968, were called "The Movement." They were fascists. What's the difference between the socialists and the fascists? They called themselves socialists, they called themselves the left. They were in a sense left-overs, who shouldn't have been left loose. But they were fascists. What's the difference? They called themselves socialists, but they were anti-labor—they hated blue-collar labor—and they hated farmers, and they hated science. They were fascist.

Now, the Hitler movement back in the 1920s had the same characteristics. The environmentalist movement, as we call it today, was originally a keystone of the Nazi movement, in Germany in the 1920s. These guys, Mark Rudd and company, and that entire movement, were essentially pro-Nazi. They weren't Nazi, they didn't wear swastikas, but they had all the other relevant appurtenances, in terms of their behavior. They had become a dominant part in U.S. culture; they are a dominant force among the Baby Boomers. They are the peers of the Baby Boomers, and what's wrong with the Baby Boomers is that they are contaminated by their association with this generation of so-called 68ers, because the 68er generation was largely penetrated and polluted by things like Mark Rudd, and other fascist types.

So therefore, the danger here: This system is not going to last. What Obama represents today will not last. It's doomed, in any case. The question is, what do you get in its place. And the Twitters are the answer. The Twitters are devotedly brainless creatures. Twitter, twitter, tweet, tweet, tweet.

We had this experience in the Dark Age, the 14th Century. They were called the Flagellants. The Flagellants were not a social phenomenon. They were an orchestrated social phenomenon. In the period of fear, terror, the Dark Age, when society was disintegrating, you still had wars, but you didn't have well-organized armies, because the armies had broken down, because the financial system had broken down. So therefore, a new type of warfare was used. The warfare, just like the ancient cult of Dionysus, like the Nietzschean movement.

And what they would do, would be to call on these people—tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet—call them together, go to a certain place, and there's food there. You can steal it, you can loot that. And they would go there, beating themselves on the backs with sticks, or having other people beat them, for their great sins; going out and living by looting the countryside, thus starving the towns and cities, and then moving into the cities, and looting them. A Dionysian nightmare!

The danger here, in the United States—which is why your point is so well-taken—is that, unless we recognize that that is the alternative to what we must do, we won't be resolute in doing what we must do: We must not allow a Nazi-like nightmare, which the Twitters forebode, to be the movement that takes over the United States when Obama, who will soon go down, if he continues on his present role—he'll be finished, his administration will collapse and disintegrate when the inflationary phase of this process hits, and it's about to hit now. The Obama Administration, under its present policy, is doomed, because the United States is on the verge of spiralling into a hyperinflationary process, like that that hit Germany in the Summer and Autumn of 1923. When that happens, Obama—if he continues his present policy—is finished. It may be weeks or months from now, but if he continues his policy, he's finished.

In what way will he be finished? Will he change, perhaps, and become human again? Or will he refuse to change, and be destroyed, along with his crowd? And what will we get, if he's destroyed in that way? Will we get Twitters, the brainless fascists who make the mating call to produce chaos as their children, like the Nazis of the 1920s, who were the predecessors of the Nazis of the 1930s, or what the Jacobin Terror was in France? That kind of thing? So this question has to be treated seriously.

We can not say that we can sit back and say we're right, just keep doing this. No, we have to say, we have to destroy the two threats to this civilization: first of all, the threat that Obama under his present policies, will bring the United States down, as the British desire. Or, that Obama will be destroyed, or his crowd will be destroyed, as a result of what he does, but then he will be succeeded by a fourth Terror.

Now, those who have studied history, in all parts of human culture, know this phenomenon: If you do not provide a positive answer to an evil, you may get an even greater evil. That's where we stand today in the world. Therefore, the problem here is a lack of guts to recognize that these are the alternatives, and the guts to act in a way to prevent these alternatives from coming true. You have to have the guts to fight this issue in the appropriate way. Obama is doomed if he continues this policy. He's doomed anyway. And he's doomed soon. What he's doing will not work, except to destroy him at the hands of his own friends. The danger is, when they destroy him, what are you going to get next? It could be something much worse.

Energy Flux-Density

Freeman: This question is part of about eight questions that have come from a small study group, that is trying to work through the comment that you recently issued on a paper by James Galbraith [EIR, April 24, 2009]. What they say is:

Mr. LaRouche, we have bravely embarked on the process of trying to work through your paper, and admittedly we really have just begun. We agree with you that it's a barren and miserable approach to simply try to treat economics, and economic processes, through statistical analysis. However, at the same time, in going through your paper, what we are faced with is the task of actually trying to come up with a rigorous definition, an actual scientific definition, of what you identify as creativity, and human creativity, in physical terms.

Now, one thing that has come out of the group is that perhaps the best way to approach it is to approach it from the standpoint of what you have put on the table as energy flux-density, or the measurement of the power to do work. We're not sure that's what you mean, and if it is what you mean, we have another problem, which is that—as I'm sure you know—the prevailing view is to try to figure out how to lower energy throughput, rather than to increase it, as a form of raising the efficiency of an economic process. You may want to go into different aspects of this, but it would be helpful to us, if you could put us in the right direction, and also identify whether you think it is actually possible to define this issue of creativity, obviously not in statistical terms, but in some rigorously measurable effect.

LaRouche: This goes to a deeper question. It goes to a baseline question, a Basement question, as we call it. Because the idea of creativity does not exist in the cultural lexicon of any known existing university in the United States. No university in the United States is teaching anything about human beings, because human beings are different from animals because we have creativity. And that creativity is something which no university in the United States has properly defined.

We deal in physical science with the effects of creativity. Generally, that's what physical science, insofar as it's halfway competent, does, is consider the effects, the measurable effects of creativity, as they apply to physical scientific matters, or to cures of disease, which we make a good guess at. We call it a cure if it works.

Therefore, the idea of creativity, per se, is alien to liberal culture. Our culture, the culture we're dealing with, is the culture established by Paolo Sarpi. The Catholic culture is mostly bankrupt. So therefore, the Protestant cultures have taken over, through England and the Netherlands, and the Protestant culture says that there is no such thing as creativity. Or they call anything creativity that they like, or don't like, as the case may be, and they don't know what they're talking about. They're idiots. So they think of creativity in terms of mathematical formulas, and therefore they have not understood the ABC of physical science, as defined either by the ancient Greeks, the Classical Greeks, or as understood by the modern scientists, followers of people like Brunelleschi, and Nicholas of Cusa, and Kepler.

Because a principle is not something you can measure mathematically. That is, the mathematical expression does not describe the action of the principle. The mathematics describes the effect of the principle, not the causal feature of the principle.

Gravitation: What does Einstein say, for example? The universe is not bounded. It's finite, but not bounded. Why is it finite? Well, Einstein says, look at Kepler. Because the universe is bounded by the principle of gravitation, as a general principle. Nothing exists outside gravitation. The universe is bounded by gravitation. The universe, physically, is bounded by universal principles, none of which is a mathematical formula as such. But the bounding, so far, describes the mathematical process. So Kepler defined a general theorem for gravitation, which is the only general theorem for gravitation known in the universe today, by him. And nobody ever invented a better definition of gravitation than he did—today, mathematically. Newton discovered nothing. He didn't even discover himself, or what he was.

So, therefore, science is not limited to derivatives of statistical processes or mathematical processes. Rather, mathematics is a way of dealing with experimental evidence which pertains to the discovery of the hidden presence of a universal physical principle. Now, what we're looking at in terms of universal physical principles involve—what? Abiotic domains. You know, everybody likes to start out with the hard, material stuff—the abiotic domain.

Then you get more sophisticated, and you leave the Department of Physics and you go over to the Department of Physical Chemistry. And when you've grown up, you stop being a physicist, and you become a physical chemist, because you can't understand physical science without physical chemistry, as such, not just plain old physics. Physics is what you take when you've got constipation. Physical chemistry is what you take when you want to get scientific advancement. And then you go at the question of life, and you're interested in the physical chemistry of life, and you can't deal with the relationship between the physics, and life, without physical chemistry. Because the question of what part of the so-called abiotic domain is relevant, specifically, to the living processes.

Oh, now you think you've got a big success, right? You're a physical chemist who specializes in biochemistry, physical biochemistry. That's already a step up, but it's not good enough, buddy. You've got to go further, to a higher level. Human life. And human life is not understood from the standpoint of physical biochemistry. You can understand human life in its effects on physical biochemistry. For example, when a physicist goes in as a musician and also works in a laboratory, he will be doing something with physical chemistry. Biophysical chemistry. But biophysical chemistry does not explain what a human being is, because no ordinary form of life is capable of thinking like that: of being creative.

Now, where does creativity lie, then?

Creativity lies in Classical poetry and song. If you are not a Classical musician, or beloved of Classical music, you are not really a scientist. You're almost a guy who wishes he's a scientist, but hasn't made it yet. Because science pertains to man's relationship to the universe. Science exists only as an aspect of human behavior. Keep your monkeys out. And therefore, you cannot understand creativity unless you understand what science is, and science is human behavior.

So you go back to the study of mind. How does creativity work in the human mind? Interesting question, hmm? Because creativity does not exist as a conscious expression of behavior in anything but human beings. Art, as such, does not exist in anything but human behavior. So creativity as defined in art, is your key to understanding creativity. And all you have to do, once you've made that hypothesis, is, you have to prove it in physical terms. And this is the great challenge.

For example, mankind's potential population density is crucial. What determines that? How would we organize the planet, and change the characteristic of the physical chemistry and physical biochemistry of the planet, in order to increase the human population, to sustain a certain level of the human population and advance it? So therefore, we do know that you have to increase the energy flux-density. If you cannot increase the flux-density, you cannot sustain the population.

So, there's no economy which works on energy minimization. Reducing the energy throughput is the assurance of a Dark Age. There's no way that mankind can continue to exist and progress without increase of energy flux-density. Can't happen. Those who believe that, are being duped.

But then, you understand, as I've emphasized, unless people are educated, and emphasize, and have insight into Classical musical composition, especially contrapuntal Classical musical composition, they don't know a damned thing. Therefore, it's only through this understanding, as applied to the question of physical biochemistry, that you really have touched upon, empirically, direct contact with the idea of what creativity is.

Read the Great Poets

If you want to know what creativity is, look at the greatest poets. Read Keats in English, or Shelley in English. Read Shelley's famous essay, A Defence of Poetry. Read particularly the last paragraph, the long paragraph from that essay: That's the key to creativity. When you are conscious, of your mind working in a way which corresponds to the activity of Classical poetic, or poetic musical expression, when you're able to think in terms of counterpoint, as a way of life, to recognize in yourself, those mental processes which you wish to encourage, which you find, in turn, are precisely the creative potential which leads to achievements in physical biochemistry, then you know what creativity is.

The problem is, in a liberal culture, philosophical liberal culture, based on the idiocy of William of Ockham, as revived by Paolo Sarpi—which is what Anglo-Dutch Liberalism is! The problem with the American people today, is, their education is in accord with Anglo-Dutch Liberalism! With this legacy of Paolo Sarpi. Earlier, you had a different form of impotence, called Aristotle. Aristotle destroys the mind, by denying the existence of creativity. You had a famous Jewish scholar, Philo of Alexandria, who denounced Aristotle's teaching on this ground: that it denies creation! And Aristotle does deny creation.

And so, for example, does Euclid. My break, was I hated Euclid: I recognized he was a fraud from the beginning, my first day in school, on geometry. He's a fraud. Euclid's a fake: He presumes that there are two self-evident qualities, particularly sight, and implicitly sound, which then comes up later—that these are self-evident. They don't have to be proven experimentally. You believe them, because your senses tell you that. You believe your senses!

Your senses are only sense-organs, they're not verities. And you have to adduce reality from understanding how these sense-organs interpret, or misinterpret reality, as Kepler did, in his discovery of gravitation.

But you find in the end, when you think about this, when you work in these media, of Classical artistic composition, which is man contemplating his own mind: man contemplating the mind of man. Then relating that to man's contemplation of man, himself, looking at what man does. Looking at the way nature responds, to what man attempts to do. Then you understand the connection between creativity, as you know it artistically, and creativity as it's manifested in physical effects.

And those of us who've been through that experience, and know what creativity is, know it very well. But, there's been a loss of creativity in the post-World War II period, which was deliberate. Which came together with the elimination of the influence of Franklin Roosevelt. We destroyed the American System, the American concept, in favor of British Liberalism. We set up a system of education. We increased the number of people educated, but we destroyed their minds, as the price of giving them an education.

You go into a classroom: You take a course, this course, this subject, today! You get a question, a quiz, on that course. Did you understand anything? No! Do you understand how to pass the examination? Yes! What's the examination worth, then? What do you actually know? You knew nothing! You knew how to behave, in order to get a passing grade. What does that do with the universe? What does that tell you about the Solar System? Nothing! It tells you how you behave in a classroom in order to get a higher grade; or bribe the professor some way or other, so you don't have to take the course, and get an A grade—that sort of thing.

So, the problem, the idea of actually having proof of principle, in respect to creativity, became essentially a lost art, especially in academia. If you're a fake, and you're a fake as a professor—you barely passed the course, by honors—and you go to David Rockefeller in Bellagio, Italy, where you are entertained by him, and he says, "Oh, gee, you ought to publish a book! You're a smart guy. Publish a book—I know a couple of guys who can fix it up for you." Then you go back, and you go to this university, where you're teaching as an almost thrown-out character—and suddenly you're promoted. You publish a book, two books, on various subjects; you fake it most of the way; But your books are celebrated. The New York Times covers them favorably, or the other review journals do it favorably, and you rise!

And then, you find all the top professors in the universities are the worst louts! The clumsiest, stupid jerks! And the honest ones, are plodders, who are sneaking around furtively, trying to get their ideas in, and nobody wants to talk to them, because they're spoiling the bullshit. You know? They're taking the pleasure out of the bullshit.

So therefore, you have a society which is organized from the top-down, by a bunch of fakers, who are the ideological leaders of culture in the United States today, mostly, as most of my friends from New York know this. That the best people, generally, are swarmed over by the fakers, who are the "luminaries"! And very rarely do they have a few kept people, who are competent, in key positions, just so somebody has a book index, as to where the ideas might be found!

But that's the nature of things. And what I laid out as creativity, is the understanding: It's the most important thing to understand, I think. The most important thing to understand, is man. And to understand man, you have to understand what the difference is between your neighbor the monkey, and your neighbor the man. And sometimes you find it difficult to distinguish between the two of them.

But, if you don't understand creativity, you don't understand yourself as a human being. You may approximate, you may learn tricks, you may learn things that you're confident that work; but don't really believe in yourself, that you know them. You know that they work; you know if you put the right key in the front door, you can get in. But that's what you know. That doesn't mean you're a scientist.

That's the way it goes. And you have to think in these terms: That, one has to understand creativity, per se, and put that question, "Do you understand what creativity is?" Do you understand why Kepler, and how Kepler, was the only person, who ever discovered a general principle of gravitation? Until later, when his conception was enlarged by people like Einstein and Max Planck, for example, who had something to do on microspace; and the idea of how the universe is organized, was modified. But the essential discovery by Kepler, as presented in his Harmonies of the World, is the only discovery of gravitation that was ever made! No other original discovery of gravitation was ever made by anyone, except by Kepler. And if you work through that book, and the steps that he describes, as to how he came to that conclusion, you understand it.

But most people in university will tell you that, today, "Oh! Newton discovered gravitation!" Newton discovered nothing! He was a black magic specialist! He never made a discovery, of anything in science. A bunch of fakers made the whole story up. And they made it up in order to try to discredit Leibniz. It was part of the anti-Leibniz campaign that was run in England, in the first decade of the 18th Century. A complete fake! Everything that Newton is attributed to have discovered, proved to be a fake: Either he was a fake in the claim, or they were fakes in what they claimed.

And every important scientist, always knew, that Newton was a fake. Yet, just think how many places you hear that Newton is this great scientific discoverer. He discovered nothing... except how to be celebrated!

The only public speech that Isaac Newton ever made, was when he was a member of Parliament, and he suggested as his only statement on scientific questions, in the Parliament, ever—"Will somebody please open a window?"