LAROUCHE WEBCAST
Change Is a'Comin'
This is the transcript of a webcast address presented by Lyndon LaRouche on June 26, in Northern Virginia. It was chaired by his national spokeswoman Debra Freeman. His keynote speech was followed by a nearly three-hour dialogue with participants. (Video of the entire webcast is archived here.) PDF version of LaRouche's address and the subsequent dialogue.
Debra Freeman: ...The cascading crises, that are exploding all around us, really must be addressed, and it's clear that there is no one who is willing or capable to do that, outside of Mr. LaRouche. We need only look at the events of the past 24 to 48 hours, where a House-Senate conference committee produced, for passage by both houses of Congress, a financial "reform" bill that could only be described as anal rape of the U.S. population. And we were talking earlier, and I commented, that to talk about loopholes in this bill, is like talking about anal rape as "overenthusiastic sex."
At the same time that that outrageous move was taken, on behalf of Wall Street and their masters in London, Harry Reid saw fit to withdraw a bill that would have extended unemployment, and other benefits, for more than 2 million Americans.
And then, of course, last night, what we saw in the great state of—or at least once-great state of Texas, the Texas Democratic Party chose to call the police on Kesha Rogers! Who is the duly elected Democratic candidate for Congress there. And who is one of the few people in the United States who is standing up and defending the U.S. population.
And there is so much more that could be said, but, really, with these crises being just a little tiny taste of what we are facing nationally and globally, Lyn's presence here today, is truly a gift. And therefore, I would ask you to join me in welcoming him back to the U.S.
Lyndon LaRouche: We are at the point that what used to be called forecasting, is about to be called "hindcasting," because we are near the breaking point of the entire system. And I shall begin what I have to say today, by some discussion of the subject of forecasting, at which I'm probably the world's leading expert.
Because, I've made actually a limited number of forecasts. People try to count the number I've made, but I have made relatively few actual forecasts, as units. I have, at other times, commented on a forecast I've made, in terms to bring people up to date on that forecast. But there are actually a limited number of forecasts that I've actually developed, and the particular forecasts that I've given from time to time, are simply updates of an outstanding forecast which I've made before.
We're now at a new kind of crisis, because we now have almost freed ourselves from the ability to rely on money. Money has become almost worthless. And you're going to see, what we're in now; we're in, right now, one of the worst depressions in world history, certainly in Trans-Atlantic history; the worst depression is now occurring.
And, in terms of the amount of money in circulation, only a relatively very small part of the amount of money in circulation, is actually involved in production and trade, including consumption. That is, the physical consumption of the population, the physical consumption of industries, and everything else, compared with the amount of money which is out there, which is being bailed out and multiplied at a great rate, while industries are closing, communities are shutting down, and the Congress, of course, as Debbie said, they have now condemned 2 million people—2 million people in the United States have been condemned to lose their unemployment compensation. And this is going to happen beginning next week and over the coming couple of weeks, into July.
Now, this is not going to have a good effect on the reputation of the Members of Congress, or we may call them the dis-members of Congress, is a better term for them. But we've got to the point that you have to realize, that the idea of counting an economy in terms of money, is rather idiotic! Here you have an actual shrinking of the income and expenditures involving goods, and essential services, and you have the mere circulation of gambling money!
So this is like, you're playing "Monopoly," and a guy comes in, and he's got a few dollars in his pocket, and he's in there to gamble, and the gambling is going on in trillions of dollars. Actually worldwide, we're talking about a circulation of monetary aggregate in the order of magnitude of hundreds of trillions of dollars, as against the actual, shrinking amount, of currency which is actually in circulation, in what are really product commodities.
But, if you eliminate the category of financial speculation currency, which like a giant game of the board game "Monopoly," with artificial money, synthetic money, which is not money—play money! And what you have out there, is play money, in the name of financial derivatives, is the real money that's growing and increasing. The actual money that's in circulation for goods and services is shrinking; and the shutting down of communities, of cities and towns and states, which is now happening at a rapid rate, is the reality.
So now, you can no longer try to measure an economy's performance for a nation, in terms of money. You have to think about fake money, which is the greater part of this thing, and the real money is shrinking! As the employment, the production, the investment, and everything else is shrinking. And many of the things that are bought, are actually—most of the price is worthless.
So therefore, no longer can you say, that "I have studied money. I went to college and I studied money, and I learned about all these rules about circulation of money!" Now, only an idiot still talks about money, in that way. Because most of the money out there, not only should be, but must be, cancelled! And the only way you can do that, either in the United States, or Europe, in particular, is by a Glass-Steagall reform, of exactly a carbon-copy of what Franklin Roosevelt put in, in 1933.
Anything which differs from the Roosevelt 1933 Glass-Steagall Act is a fraud! And it is a condemnation of humanity! Because what we have to do is get rid of this money! Not all the money, but money has got to pass a test. It's got to pass a lie detector test. "Are you real? Prove you're real!" Oh, we have a very simple test for reality on money: The money that qualifies for circulation, under a Glass-Steagall standard, will be treated as real. Any money which does not satisfy a Glass-Steagall standard is essentially going to disappear!
Now, this means, essentially, that you will still have banks in the United States, but the amount of capital they list, will be shrunken. Greatly shrunken. Most of the money that is now listed in the financial institutions of Europe and the United States, in particular, will be sitting out there looking for a home. And there will be no homes for it, under a Glass-Steagall rule. You will have all these financial institutions, which do not meet a Glass-Steagall standard, or the portions of banks that do not meet a Glass-Steagall standard, will be simply allowed to die! Because the reality is, that they're only Monopoly money—see it's not even paper Monopoly money any more! It's electronic. And it breeds automatically! Oh, it does breed automatically!
Money breeds automatically, in this area. How? Well, look at these automatic bids, the automatic bids on the financial markets, where people bid and make contracts, and the contract is now made contingent on somebody else's contract! You make a contract, which is a speculative contract, and your speculative contract is based on what somebody else is supposedly doing with their speculative contract. So what happens then, it's one of those "if ... then..." kind of agreements.
So the money, the fictitious money, is bubbling up at great rates. So what you have to do, is destroy the worthless money. Destroying the worthless money is going to mean the major financial institutions of the Wall Street type inside the United States, and outside, are going to be wiped out.
Now, people will say, "But you're going to wipe out the money!" "Yes, exactly, fellow, you've got the idea now!"
We're not going to wipe out all money. We have a blood test, for legitimate and non-legitimate money: If it's actually money, as money was intended, by the United States, from the beginning, then, okay, that's good money, and that will be treated with respect.
The Worst Crisis in 7,000 Years
But then, we're going to have a problem. We're going to find out that many of the banks we will save with a Glass-Steagall reorganization—and it will be an instant one; it will be the kind of thing that Franklin Roosevelt did with the bank holiday. That's the way it will work. If it doesn't work, don't worry about the United States, it won't exist any more. Nor will most of the world. Either Glass-Steagall, or most of the world is not going to exist. We are at the worst breakdown crisis, in all organized history.
There may be some earlier parts of history we don't know much about, and therefore, we can't take that into account so much. But we can take into account what we know of actual history, especially over the past 6 or 7,000 years or more: And this is the greatest crisis of humanity, on a global scale, in 7,000 years of history. And it's happening right now. It's happening this Summer. We're on the verge of a total breakdown of everything. Right now.
Therefore, a Glass-Steagall, right now, is urgent, both for the United States, and for Europe. Other parts of the world can deal with it. That is, actually India's in better shape, relatively speaking; China, on this account, is in somewhat better shape.
But in the Trans-Atlantic community, the Trans-Atlantic economies, they are all about to go—dead!—in the collapse of the greatest bubble, in terms of per-capita relative ratios, in all human history, all known human history. And it's happening this Summer! It's in process, now!
If the present laws and behavior, in the Trans-Atlantic community of nations, continue, by the end of Summer, you will not have economies in the Trans-Atlantic community.
That means, of course, that we have to get rid of this President. And it's easy to do: Tell him to quit. Just like Nixon quit. Nixon had a warning, that the Congress was ready to vote him out, for impeachment. And Mr. Nixon, who was much saner, listened to that word from the Congress, and said, "Okay, I'm quitting." Because by quitting, he avoided a lot of criminal charges that might have come, if he'd actually been impeached, because he'd done some things that were not nice. And therefore, if he'd been impeached, that "not nice" factor would have clicked in, and the crimes that his Administration had committed, and everyone in his Administration who was convicted for those crimes, would lie on his doorstep. He would have spent the rest of his life in prison. So he decided to quit while the going was good.
And you have the same thing now. Obama: You don't really have to impeach him. You have to just pass through a quick vote of impeachment, and let him know it's surely coming, and he's going to scamper. And we've got all the necessary evidence available in offenses by his Administration. And in the case of a Presidential Administration, where you have systemic offenses, that is, where it's no longer a question of whether the President actually "said this," or did not; the fact that the President has condoned it, means that he's bought into all his close associates and their institutions. And if they've committed a crime, he's committed a crime; that is, his Administration has committed a crime. And the only way people can get off, from criminal charges, under impeachment conditions then, is for him to quit now, and the whole bunch of rascals, to quit real fast! That's the only way to deal with this thing. And we've got to have that, hopefully this Summer!
I've got a birthday coming up on Sept. 8. I'd like to have a United States functioning, to celebrate my 88th birthday!
Stick to the Constitution
Now, with this situation in money, that means that all of you who have been thinking about forecasting, and making investment decisions and things like that, no longer work according to the kind of rules to which we've been accustomed unfortunately, during the past year or so! Therefore, we have to think in new terms. No different than our Constitution—our Constitution's fine, that's fine. Best one around; stick to it. Best Constitution any nation has, despite the way it's ignored. Just enforce it. It covers practically everything we need to know about getting through this crisis. Just have to apply it. And don't listen to London. Because their howls and their screams are going to be unbearable.
So therefore, we have to think about real economy, which means physical economy. And for us, the financial reorganization, the physical reorganization of the United States through a Glass-Steagall application, opens the gate for now deciding what we're going to do about organizing an efficient physical economy. This involves things that most of you probably have never thought about. Because everyone assumes that, when you're talking about economy, you're talking national economic policy, that you're talking about financial policy, you're talking about it in financial terms.
Now, the only trick here is, that as long as your actual product is increasing more rapidly than your income, your financial income, you're in good shape. The economy is growing relative to the baseline of what your system of prices was before. What we have to worry about is physical economy.
Now, we don't have, really, much of a physical economy any more. We shut down our automobile industry, we shut down nearly everything. We're shutting down municipal services, throughout the nation. We have a vast number of unemployed people who desperately need employment, and incomes with that, and who are going to need emergency assistance to carry them over until they can get back on a regular job sort of employment, or the equivalent employment. So therefore, we have to think about what our policy should be.
I've written, now, a piece which is going to print this weekend (see Feature), which covers a certain amount of what has to be done. This is the first of a series of reports which I shall publish, or write and publish, during the coming weeks, which covers a new conception of how to organize an economy on a physical basis. Because, we have entered a period where many of the old ideas we used to have about physical economy, or the practice of physical economy, no longer work. Because new considerations have to be taken into account, and therefore, I have to do my work as a physical economist and define the principles of physical economy, under which we must operate, in organizing such things as, not only this recovery, but what has to be done on a global scale over the remainder of this present century.
And the goal of this century is a scientific-driver program, which is designed to solve the problems, many of which do not have known answers presently; crucial problems, in moving human beings, safely, from the Moon, to Mars orbit, and descent. And the problems are serious, but they are inherently soluble, even though we have not yet discovered many of the required solutions.
So, we're talking about what? You're talking about, if you count generations in the United States, or Western Europe, as being approximately what they are today, 75 years or so, should be a normal level of social planning, in terms of goals to be realized, in terms of human life. So we're talking about, essentially, we're talking about 75 years. We're talking about three generations, the three coming generations.
Most of the population of the United States, and of Western Europe, has, since the death of President Kennedy—or his assassination, at the convenience of the British Empire—since that death, we have been losing the competence for production and other things, of our population. Today, we do not have a labor force, which is qualified in terms of skill or mental competence, for what we could have expected, as normal, for our society, our adult population, back at the time that Kennedy was assassinated.
We have a current generation, under 25, in which a very small portion of that generation is actually qualified for doing any kind of useful work! We're going to have to employ them, we're going to have to bring them into the economy. But, they're not competent: They don't have the attitude; they don't have the intellectual development; they don't have the commitment to being serious, which is required for honest work. They have almost no intellectual development; they're living in la-la-land, someplace, or on drugs, or degeneracy of some kind. They're not really qualified to exist! That's not their fault, as such. It's what we did to them, by allowing what has been done to them, since the assassination of Kennedy.
So therefore, we have to say, "We're going to have to get people who are qualified to work, urgently back to work, to employment which involves emphasis on skill and technological progress. And scientific progress."
Now, we don't have the industries any more! They've been destroyed, successfully! We've gone from industries to the Bushes! And now, to worse, this Obama-land.
So in this process, since the assassination of Kennedy, the United States has been sliding, down, down, down, down. And the quality of the population, that we had per capita then, does not exist any more now. We have lost the industries, we have lost the infrastructure, we no longer have an automobile industry and what that represented. Because the automobile industry was not just for making automobiles—that was a big mistake. We went too far with automobiles. They shouldn't have taken away the railroads. They shouldn't have taken away mass transit. They shouldn't have concentrated people in super-large cities, and left whole parts of the United States to slip into decadence.
We need smaller cities. We need cities which are, generally, not in excess of more than 1 or 2 million population. Preferably smaller. You want a city in which people can get to work, even by walking, or by available, convenient transit, within 15 minutes or so, each way, each day.
You need a decentralized/centralized conception of economy: You have a centralized economy in terms of purpose and cooperation. You connect it by power systems, by water systems, by mass transit systems in general, so that the country functions conveniently for people. You don't try to fly people a distance of 1,000 miles—it's a mistake, generally. With high-speed mass transit, especially of the magnetic levitation type, we can get people from one place to the other, within a thousand-mile radius, much quicker than we can by air! We now have the ability to go over 300 miles an hour, in terms of mass transit, railway transit. Safely and securely. We have the development of improved magnetic-levitation systems which are not wheel systems, not wheel-rail systems, but magnetic levitation.
We should have been going in that direction a long time ago. We were capable of doing that. But what we did, with the end of the war, and under Truman, we began shutting down mass transit! First, by letting it decay. In the case of Los Angeles, for example, they had a system—they shut it down! You know why you get bad traffic jams in Los Angeles? They shut down the rail system, the intracity rail system, which was much more efficient. So we need mass transit.
We have a stinking water problem. You know, we have to drink water. At my age, you should take at least three liters of water a day. As you get older, you dry out more rapidly, and if you're going to be functional, you have to take in more water than you do when you're younger, and juicier!
So, we do require a mass transit system, we require water systems, as well as these other kinds of systems. And so what we have to do, is, we're going to organize our economy; the leading end of our economy is going to be infrastructure.
What Is Infrastructure?
Now, infrastructure is not what most people think infrastructure is. I'll give you an example from the thing I've written, for example:
When you start with European civilization, which essentially starts in the Mediterranean, the Mediterranean culture was largely an offshoot of Egyptian culture. And then you had other areas of the Mediterranean developed. Now, the power in the Mediterranean was navigation power: These were cultures, whose nature, in terms of their development of astronomy—remember, astronomy was developed, how? Astronomy was developed by trans-oceanic navigation. Because we had, for about 100,000 years, or two groups of 100,000 years, we had on this planet, we had a great glaciation. More ice cubes than you can count—piled higher and higher. So where did man live, when the northern part of North America, Europe, Eurasia, was covered with ice, most of the time, and to great depths? How did we live?
Well, you find that there were cultures living in Africa and so forth, but they weren't developing very much, because they were not faced with the challenge of—ice cubes. So, how did civilization develop? Well, for example, under the glaciation period, you had a rather warmer climate in the Arctic than you have today. There was a change in nature of the climate. It was a time when the Bering Strait was not open, and therefore, you had a different kind of climate throughout the system, for about 100,000 years at a crack. So how did people live?
Well, we know how they lived, because we know about navigation. And we know how you navigate, using stellar systems. Look at that map up there: It's called a star display, a star show, hmm? And how do you navigate by that? And why do you navigate by the star system? You have to get from one place to another place, which is, say, 1,000, 2,000 miles distance. You may be coming from the Arctic, where you go in the Summertime; you're largely a maritime culture which lives on fish and foodstuffs.
You're also Trans-Atlantic, because, as we know, there were Trans-Atlantic cultures, in this period of the glaciation! You have, in the area of the Valley of Mexico, the Pyramids of the Sun and Moon; you have another area, right next to it, which are the remains of a time of a maritime culture, which was living in central Mexico, north of Mexico City.
So there were maritime cultures, which navigated, with the aid of development of astronomical tables and characteristics.
For example, in 35,000 B.C. there was such knowledge; it's known to us. Like the great cycle, the great 25,000-year cycle in history, which is recorded in some of the cultures from these areas. So mankind developed a culture, based on mapping the universe, by looking up to the stars, as a device of navigation for these conventional travels, trans-oceanic travels, which were conducted periodically in those periods.
So out of this, we developed a system, a maritime system in all the great cultures that we know of; affecting European civilization were maritime cultures. But the maritime cultures contained some people who had some bad behavior: They would set themselves up on islands, for their headquarters; they would collect their wealth from people; and they would live on islands where they would feel secure against the barbarians of the inland areas. And they set up a system, which was a maritime system, based on navigation, which was actually rooted in trans-oceanic navigation, dating from no more distant time in the past, than the last great glaciation of 100,000 years that we went through, which we came out of about 17,000 B.C., and so forth and so on.
So, now, for a long period of time, human culture, and the economy that goes with it, the power of mankind depended upon maritime cultures, many of which were of this type, like the Greek imperial kind of thing that existed there, associated with the Cult of Apollo. And up until the time of Charlemagne, the European civilization was largely dependent upon maritime culture of the Mediterranean.
Charlemagne's big change was to introduce a new system, based on developing of inland waterways. Now, people, of course, had used major rivers in Europe, before then. For example, up the southern end of the Rhine, you would have mineral excavations occurring in that area, and the minerals would go downstream the Rhine, and up to the sea. So the maritime cultures actually began to extend themselves along the major rivers, into the interior of Europe, for example. This had already been done earlier, by the development of the maritime culture of Mesopotamia, which started with a culture at the base, and it moved upstream.
So, this pattern of maritime cultures, with offshoots which are upstream connections to maritime cultures, became a characteristic.
And, in this system, the dominant system as we know it, was a very nasty kind of system, which we call an oligarchical system today. On which the maritime culture, and its control over trade, was used to establish monopolies of various kinds, so that the poor landlocked people were generally reduced to a state of something like serfs or slaves. Which is what the Aristotelean doctrine is: There should be no knowledge of the use of fire, because fire defines man as being independent of this kind of control.
The change that came with Charlemagne, was the development of an inland system, based on connecting the major rivers of Europe, including the Danube, of course; the major rivers were connected by canals. And the first step toward modern economy from maritime culture was the development of the water system by Charlemagne. That was the typification of it.
The U.S. Development of Railroads
Now, later, in the beginning of the 19th Century, our conception of developing the territory of the United States, was that of Charlemagne, the same level: using the great rivers available to us, which were means of inland maritime trade, and we extended that, as Charlemagne had, with canal systems, like the Erie Canal, or the Baltimore & Ohio Canal, these kinds of things.
Ah, but then! If you look at the map of what used to be our railroads, you will find that in the course of the early 19th Century, we began to develop railroads, and we developed them along, chiefly, the lines of canal routes: The Baltimore & Ohio Railway system traveled along the Baltimore & Ohio Canal. The New York Central Railway system evolved out of what was developed as the Erie Canal, going up the Hudson, getting into these canal systems, the Erie Canal to Buffalo, and similar areas in New York, into Lake Erie; and thus, we opened up the gates, more to the northern side of Ohio.
We treated the development of the Mississippi River system and the Ohio River system, in a similar way, and we developed railway systems, especially around the Ohio system, to the Mississippi, and we went beyond, with the railway system. The idea was developed by John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, before he was President. And he, while he was under President James Monroe, laid out the plan for the development of the United States, which was still ambiguous up to that time. But John Quincy Adams, as Secretary of State, opened up the question, and found the answer.
So, he mapped the thing and said: The United States is going to be a continental territory, with two borders, the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean, and borders on Mexico, and borders with Canada. That's the United States; that was his definition. At the same time, we had development, in the 1820s, the development of the railroads, beginning with the Reading Railroad, which was the first, real significant railroad developed in the United States, functioning one, up to the coal region. Getting coal.
So now, what happened in that process, what came out in the time of Lincoln and so forth, came out with the conception of the Transcontinental Railway system. And this was developed largely on the inspiration of our military Corps of Engineers, including military officers who were going out of military service, who would continue their function as heading up these large projects. Because, in the American System, as in most competent European systems, military skills were based on engineering. So the first thing you had to be was a competent engineer. You want to conquer territory? Become an engineer. When you know how to conquer territory, when you know how to manage territory, then you can understand how this territory question relates to people. So now you understand how to build an economy.
So we built the Transcontinental Railway system, and that was the next great change: first, maritime culture; then, riparian systems which are based on both canal systems, linking great rivers, similar kinds of process; then, the development of the railway system. Now, each of these changes was an increase, a qualitative increase, in the productive powers of labor. We then went on to other things.
Now, the British didn't like this. Because the British were actually the British empire: Calling it "British" is convenient, I suppose, but it doesn't really tell you what was going on. It's more Venetian than anything else. The British are a bunch of brutish people who are not too well educated, and their table manners are terrible. Their diets are disgusting: Look at their waistlines! They're much too overweight! They don't have a good diet, they have a terrible diet. But the diet is their habit! It's sort of a national heirloom or something, a national cultural heirloom. They go around, and they get so big, they can't fit in the same small house; it interferes with their breeding—which is probably an advantage in this system. But in any case, the British Empire was actually an extension of the idea of a maritime empire. Now, they did develop some railroads in response to some things, but that's not what was intended.
So, the very fact that we developed a Transcontinental Railway system, which was completed as a system, after Abraham Lincoln was dead, and in the wake of the 1876 First Centennial celebration of the existence of the United States, we developed what became known as the American System of political economy, really developed it: a continental nation, secure in four borders, North, South, East, and West! Connected internally by the development of power systems which are tied to the development of mass transportation systems, at that time, based on rail. That became the character.
The Threat to the British Empire
Now, what happens is, Germany and Russia, and also France—but France's role was less in this process; France was more or less limited to the French nation. But Germany, under the leadership of Bismarck, adopted the American System of political economy, as the system of economy for Germany. It was out of this, that Germany, which was a relatively poor nation at that time, from 1876 on, under the influence of Bismarck, but with consultation with the United States, created the agro-industrial power of Germany. At the same time, a Russian scientist, Mendeleyev, advised the Tsar—Mendeleyev was in the United States for the 1876 Convention—he advised the Tsar to adopt the American system of using the transcontinental railway of Russia, that is, the Trans-Siberian Railway, as the basis for the development of the mineralogy, and the industry and agriculture of Russia.
Now, despite the political system of Russia, with the serf system and so forth, Russia became a power. Moreover, Russia and Germany, through this development of their systems, the industrial revolution in Germany, which occurred after 1876, the development of the Trans-Siberian Railroad in Russia, and similar things; these things, and the cooperation between Russia and Germany, became a threat to the British Empire, because it was a threat also from the United States. In other words, the replication of the model of the United States, in terms of infrastructure, using the advanced Transcontinental Railway conception, and the industrial development that goes with that, when copied in Germany, with echoes of copying it in France, but particularly in Germany and in Russia, became a fundamental threat to the continued existence of the maritime supremacy of the British Empire.
And that has been the defining issue of world history, since Lincoln and 1876.
The United States, therefore, is the greatest threat to the British Empire, by its very existence: That is why people who like to kiss the British Queen's butt, are trying to destroy our nation, now! We are the greatest threat to this system of British imperialism, which is global, today. And if you look at what happened, from the moment that President Franklin Roosevelt died, and that pig Truman, a Wall Street property, came in as a stooge for Winston Churchill, the United States has been systemically destroyed, inch by inch by inch by inch, and with the assassination of Kennedy, which came from British sources, by way of French and Spanish sources; but actually, the assassination was done by French assassins, operating against de Gaulle, from Spain, who were deployed via Mexico, to cross the border into the United States, and kill the President of the United States.
Why? Because, the United States was then being presented with a British scheme for a U.S. war in Indo-China. And Kennedy, with the advice of Gen. Douglas MacArthur and the support of Eisenhower, had a policy: There will be no extended U.S. land war in Asia! And as long as Kennedy lived, that policy was going to stick.
So the only way the British could get the policy that they wanted, to get the United States to destroy itself in an extended land war in Asia, was by killing Kennedy! And so you had people who were out to kill de Gaulle, for similar reasons in France, de Gaulle's opposition—there were more assassination attempts against General de Gaulle than any known figure in recent history, any known leading figure.
And so, assassins who were based in Spain, operating therefore through questionable circles in Mexico, deployed through Mexico to the border of the United States, crossed the border, assassinated the President of the United States, with the complicity of Wall Street interests.
Now, from that point on, the United States has been systemically destroyed! For the glory of the British Empire! And the center of the treason within the United States, is located in what's called Wall Street and Boston—the Boston banking system, financial system, which is a spawn of the British East India Company. The Bank of Manhattan was founded by a traitor who was working for the British, Aaron Burr. Wall Street was created by Aaron Burr and the British; the New England system, Boston-centered, essentially the same thing. Now, what have you got? You've got a Wall Street enemy, inside the United States, and against the United States, Boston-based and New York-based, particularly. Also Chicago-based.
And this is what our problem has been. So, living in this problem, where we, because we came from Europe, to here, because we couldn't do in Europe what our culture, our European culture, would let us do, so we came here!
First Columbus came here, on the inspiration of doing this. Columbus was a disciple of the doctrine of Nicholas of Cusa, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, one of the leaders of the Renaissance. And he came here, after getting the three ships to do it with, he came here, from an area the Habsburgs controlled, at that time. And therefore, the Spanish colonization and the Portuguese colonizations of Central and South America were a failure, as the case of what happened to Columbus and so forth, attests. That was the problem.
So, the first time that we really launched what became the successful movement of European culture into the Americas, was with the Boston developments, with the Mayflower and the Massachusetts Bay Colony, of the 17th Century. That was the first development.
Immediately, during that period—during a period of several decades in the middle of the 17th Century, the germ of the United States was established in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and spread from there. The British finally succeeded in crushing the Massachusetts Bay Colony. But! That didn't end there: The effort was revived, and it was revived around figures who ultimately came to include Benjamin Franklin.
And so, the policies of the United States, were based on European policies, conceptions developed in Europe, conceptions which were based on Nicholas of Cusa's understanding, in the 15th Century, that Europe was so corrupt, that you would have to take the best of European culture, and move it to a continent across the ocean! To take that culture, and let it express itself, in a territory out from under the British imperial system or the imperial systems of that time. And that's what we were. And we succeeded.
This Republic is the most precious thing, that the world has seen in a very long time. And it's now being destroyed. And it's being destroyed in part, because our own people do not know, and understand, the legacy which they represent, which they embody. They don't know what kind of education system we require to be citizens, really—not to qualify for voting, that's important; but to be citizens: that is, to embody this legacy from many generations before us, a legacy of humanity's progress, which we, in particular, established with the creation of this Republic. We have allowed that to be taken away from us, and destroyed!
Mankind Needs a New Dimension
And this is a question of physical economy. And all the other aspects of economy are essentially appendages of that mission. We're now at the point, that, if this nation is destroyed—as it's being destroyed under this President and that pack of scoundrels and fools and cowards and prostitutes who represent our Congress today—if we allow this to happen, this will be a calamity for all humanity, for generations to come.
Therefore, we have to go to Mars, not because we want to get there, but we don't want to fail to get there! Because, what does this mean? We're going to a new conception of basic economic infrastructure, which started with the space pioneers in the 1920s, and into the United States. We began to realize that mankind needs a new dimension, beyond railroads, beyond old water systems, needs a new dimension for the expression of humanity in the Solar System.
This is not just for "getting there." This is for giving man a mission, a natural mission for mankind, on which we will base the culture which increases mankind's options, and also the security of humanity. That is, by developing ourselves, instead of sitting on one planet and depleting that planet and doing nothing else, and becoming fat and lazy—instead of that, let's take on a mission!
Let's look ahead 75 years, three generations. And let's take what we have now, with these—we've got young people under 25 who are in a disastrous state of education in life. They're going no place, unless we do something for them. We're going to have to give them a mission, and an opportunity, which inspires them, so that their children will not be so damned stupid. And therefore, by three successive generations of development, I'm satisfied, from the work that we've been doing in the Basement,[1] and similar kinds of things, I'm satisfied that we could develop the scientific and technological capabilities, in three successive generations—all the time, bringing our people up to a higher level of productivity—to make up for what we've lost, and to go beyond that. And it's certain to me, that there are the technologies available to us today, which, if we continue to develop them, will enable us to do that.
There are monstrous problems in trying to get to Mars! That's not empty space out there. Mankind needs a gravitational system or the equivalent to live. You get away from Earth's gravitation, and Earth's protection of our environment, you're in trouble! We faced this, in going to the Moon, and with the space work generally. This is largely in the medical/biological area, among other things. But we know we can solve the problem. What the solution is, precisely, we don't know: So, we've got to find out!
We know we have to develop the Moon, which is accessible to us, readily, with technology already developed by us. We know we can develop an industry on the Moon, because you don't want to take off from Earth, and lug a lot of things up from Earth; there's just too much effort involved. Go to the Moon, take your technology to the Moon, develop industries on the Moon: You can build the spacecraft and other things you need, to go to Mars!
Which has been the mission, ever since the 1920s, when the landing on the Moon was first planned by some people in Germany! That got diverted into a different purpose of course, under Hitler. But, we revived that, after the war, and we went in that direction, on a program which was not designed to make weapons. It was designed to enable us to go to the Moon, and by going to the Moon, to be able to go to Mars!
Why do we go to Mars? Because it's the nature of man to do so: The nature of man is expressed by the fact that we are not a fixed species, with fixed behavior. We're a species that must develop, as mankind has developed, despite all the setbacks. Mankind has greatly improved, since our first evidence of what mankind was on this planet. Improved through technology, through intellectual development, stimulated by technology; by improvements in culture, especially Classical culture.
And the purpose of man, is to find his place in the universe.
Don't worry about what the destination is. We've got to find our place in the universe: We must develop! Mankind is creative. Mankind must create! Mankind must develop!
And if we do that—the space program, as we would develop it—my estimate is, that it will take three generations to develop the capability to actually put human beings safely on Mars. To solve the problem of gravitation in interplanetary flight and that sort of thing. We can do it! We don't have a population which is trained, yet, to undertake that mission. But we have a population, which is ready to be uplifted from despair, now, and plan that the grandchildren of people today, of young people today—the grandchildren of young people today will solve that problem! And it should be our mission to dedicate the United States, in particular, and the planet as a whole to that mission, to give mankind a sense and a determination of a future which should belong to mankind.
Mankind was put in this universe for some purpose. We're not always too sure what that purpose is. But we're sure of one thing about that purpose: It requires, as history has shown us, the development of the intellectual powers of mankind, the intellectual powers of man's progress. The future, if it means anything to have children and grandchildren, is to ensure that the children and grandchildren have made an upwards step, beyond what's impossible now. And to do as we've done before, from our past experience, in making the kind of progress, the changes in behavior, and progress, and increase in the power of mankind, to solve great problems, problems of disease, all kinds of problems.
The Mars Mission and Immortality
We know that is a requirement for man. Therefore, we have to put a name on it, and the name we put on it for the short term, is the Mars Mission. And we say, that within three generations, we'll take this wretched nation, this poor, broken-down, ruined, betrayed nation, and, in cooperation with other nations on this planet, we will develop a technology and the people capable of carrying it, which will, step by step, bring man to his true dignity, to recognize the place of man in the universe. Not to what we're going to do in the universe, ultimately, but to know we're there!
And we need that.
You know, people talk about immortality and so forth—what's it mean? Just another person being produced, to replace the one that died? No. Immortality is the certain understanding, that you are living today, because you are doing something, which is going to lead to the development of man's power in the future. Your immortality lies in your grandchildren, and your great-grandchildren beyond that. Your immortality, your purpose of your life, is what comes out of it! That you're a permanent part of the universe! Because, by developing within the universe, you've demonstrated that you're not just a drop on the planet: You are part of the universe, forever!
And that should motivate you.
Now: This kind of thinking, requires some changes in economics. So therefore, back to the point: infrastructure. What we shall do, is, we shall take what we have of our technology, now, what remains of it, and what we're getting, and what we can share with other nations—we're going to take that technology, and we're going to build the infrastructure needed to develop the industries, and other things we need. So what we do, is, we take a project like a transcontinental rail system, and transcontinental water system, other similar kinds of systems, which are global in effect, but for ourselves, for the inside of the United States.
We must now, since we're going to be short, the banks are going to be short of money, we have to do this reorganization, which means we're going to save some banks, but they're not going to be able to carry themselves on their present level of activity. They will be banks in bankruptcy reorganization.
Now, what's your plan for banking reorganization of these bankrupt banks that we have saved, which now conform to a Glass-Steagall standard? You're going to have to say, "Well, we don't owe any more of this debt. Most of this Federal debt just died! We killed it, before it took us over."
What we are going to do, is, we are going to take these great infrastructure projects, which we know desperately we need today; we are going to use these infrastructure projects as a way of rebuilding the skills and attitudes of our own population. We are going to educate them for this mission. And then, as we do that, we're going to say, "Wait a minute! But, how do we develop this infrastructure?" Oh, well, we've got to build an industry.
Ahh!! So, we'll build an industry to make the infrastructure project work! We will make many industries. We will build water systems as part of the infrastructure. That will also stimulate more work.
So, now we will take this population, which is halfway cast off, and abused, and we will give it work! What kind of work? We will give them the work of developing the infrastructure. We'll give them the work of the industries, which at various parts and localities in the United States, are industries which are going to supply what is necessary to build the infrastructure! We are going to put the nation back to work.
And we're going to take Federal credit, under the U.S. Constitution—having cancelled this phony debt!—we now are clear to utter new credit, under our Constitution. We're capable of reforming our Federal banking system, as Alexander Hamilton would have done, and generating credit, which is now going to go, number one, to these infrastructure projects, and next, also, to the industries and agriculture which is necessary to support the infrastructure projects.
Now, we have an employment plan.
We have to have a technology driver, a long-term technology driver: The space program becomes the conception of the spillover—because we had spillover before, with the Kennedy program—the spillover of technology and science from the space program, will be the stimulant for the progress in the quality of performance of our rebuilding of the economy.
So, now the Federal government, with its power, having cancelled all this worthless debt, will now fund the banks. It will go to our commercial banks, within the Federal system, and their spinoffs in the states and localities, and they will now get Federal credit, to pass through to the banks, to go to support and fund the local industries and other things that go with the infrastructure, and the industrial and agricultural development. All we need, is the ability to pay the interest on that debt.
And where does that come from? It comes from the gains in technology, science and technology: You increase the productive powers of labor. What you're investing in, is the increase in the productive powers of labor, including turning people who are not productive at all today, and showing them how to become productive, and giving them the opportunity to become productive.
So therefore, we are not concerned about "money," as such. There's no magic in money. Money is simply an arrangement which is necessary, to coordinate a flow of credit, within a diversified economy. That's all. It's a way you pay people, a way you buy, and a way you sell. And you have to have a system which is reliable. But it's for that purpose: the same thing as the Massachusetts Bay Colony's system of scrip. And that worked fine! For two generations, it created miracles! And Europe was shocked by it, astonished by it—and frightened by it.
So that's all we have to do, is have a reasonable interest rate, a basic 1.5% interest rate in the Federal system and the international system. A fixed exchange rate among nation-states, which are sovereigns. And that's all we need! But we need the imagination and the devotion to make it work.
So therefore, don't worry about the money. We're going to cancel most of it! As Franklin Roosevelt would say, "Winston! We're going to cancel your system! And we're going to bring back the American System, which worked just fine, until you got your paws on it, you ol' bum!" That's the matter.
Now therefore, the questions which should concern us, are questions, issues, which I touched upon, in what I said so far: We need mission orientations which are physical. Now, physical does not mean just, you know, sweat. Physical means you have a conception of man's relationship in the universe.
There Is No Such Thing as 'Zero Growth'
Now, we have had a great help from a Russian, and he had great help from a lot of other people, like Pasteur of France, things like that: Vernadsky. And Vernadsky was probably the greatest scientific thinker, in terms of his actual concrete achievements, in Russia, during the first half of the last century.
What Vernadsky did, with a prompting, in large degree, from the example of Louis Pasteur, was to recognize that the physical universe is composed of three primary sub-elements, things which are not living processes, nor products of living processes as such. Then you have living processes in general—animals, plants, and so forth. Then you have mankind. Now, all living processes are anti-entropic, that is, they are, intrinsically, as processes, they tend to grow: They have a principle of growth in them. Growth and development. The entire history of paleontology and so forth shows that the nature of living processes—and this is even true of the non-living process—grow. There is no such thing as zero growth in the universe! There is zero growth in some minds, and also retrogression, but that's a different question—and behavior.
But in principle, nature does not dictate zero growth. We're not in a zero growth. There is no such thing as a principle of entropy: Everything grows.
Look, you have the evolution of the planet, you're dealing with this petroleum mess in the Caribbean. What is this? Well, the Earth—hey, buddy, the Earth makes petroleum! And it makes it down there, deep! Deep wells, gas, and all that gunk, it makes all this stuff! Which is not living, but it is being created.
Then you look at animal life. You say, where does animal life start, in our account? Well, it starts with kinds of things you wouldn't even recognize as life, today. And then you have the development of new species, one after the other, layers and layers of species, increasing their power over the planet, changing the character of the planet. Wonderful! And then, you get man: And the difference in man is, we are capable of conscious creation! Animal life itself, all animal processes, the development of higher species, from lower species; the development of planets!
Where'd the planets come from? They came from the Sun. The Sun, one day, began shedding, like a disk-like formation around itself. And it began to slow down a little bit, because it kept throwing this material off, which sort of slowed down its rate of rotation. And then, inside this layer of material, this disk-like formation, the Sun irradiated this, and caused a process of development, where you get the famous thing which you used to get in chemistry about the 92 elements of the Periodic Table.
And you have in the planets, forms of matter which do not exist in the Sun! They were developed, by the Sun, in this process of synthesis. This created a gaseous state, as Gauss said, and, because of certain characteristics of the orbit, as Gauss observed, these layers worked like fractional distillation. The different planetary orbits began to condense, and form planets and moons and other such stuff. And suddenly, we had the 92-element Periodic Table presented to us—at my age, in my youth. Things have grown since that time. I didn't do it, but it's grown.
So the universe itself is inherently creative! The Solar System is a creation of the Sun. The process of the Sun creating the Solar System is a product of the characteristics of the galaxy! We are simply—and our Sun, our Solar System, is on the edge of our galaxy. Our galaxy is one of many galaxies. These many galaxies form a universe, beyond what we even know—we have estimates now, but it's there. Everything is creative. Naturally creative! Every state of nature, defined by Vernadsky, is creative. The animal kingdom is creative; life is creative, inherently! And life is everywhere.
Humanity is consciously creative! Only mankind can willfully generate a higher state of organization within the universe, willfully, by an act of will, an act of knowledge. Our mission is that. And that's what should guide us; that's what should be our mission.
That's what we've lost! Because all the greatest scientists and all the greatest thinkers of mankind have always thought in that direction, and have always moved in that direction.
So therefore, the task is this, and that is the essence of physical economy.
The Essence of the United States
Now, there are many more aspects to this, which again, in the first of this series, which I have just completed—I take up there. I have more things to take up, rapidly, in the course of these months before me, to get this out. I find there is a layer, inside the United States, of economists and others, especially some economists—you would be surprised—some economists in the United States are actually quite competent and moral. You may not know that from Wall Street, but that is a fact of the matter. And so, therefore, they understand this.
We have people, many people, academic people, who are cowardly. Their stupidity is often a result of cowardice. They know that if they seem to know too much, they're going to get into trouble. So, as my father used to tell me—and I used to get very upset about it—he said, "You got to be stupid. Don't try to be smarter than the next guy, he'll hate you for it. If you want to get ahead, be stupid—but be sly." I never accepted that.
Because, my view is that you have to stimulate other people to become creative. You have to worry about—because you are going to die! We're all going to die. So what's our purpose? Our purpose is to stimulate people who are going to come after us, to continue this process of creativity. And to adopt missions, and to make discoveries of new missions, which means that mankind is going to continue to live in the universe. This is what the essence of the United States is. This is what the essence of the people who built and created this United States is. It's the essence of the greatest achievements in Europe. Which we were trying to defend, and propagate, by moving people into North America, for example, or the whole Columbus venture: Is to try to save humanity, from its own depravity! By taking the best of humanity and moving a portion of it, to a different territory, where it's free to make a contribution to humanity as a whole.
Look what we did! Look, we started out with, essentially, two Northern American populations: One, about the same time, the beginning of the 17th Century, we had the settlements in Canada, from France. And the settlements in what became the United States. Right? These two cultures; one, the Canadian thing was the act of Jean-Baptiste Colbert, especially. He was the one who shipped these people over here: Whole villages were take up from France, and put on a boat, and sent up to what we call Quebec, today. And that's how Canada was founded.
So these were projects, of taking the best of Europe, taking a stratum of it, moving it into North America, and then trying to develop a culture, free of the European repression. And that is what we are today.
I deal with Europe—my wife and I deal with Europe—she deals with it from there; I deal with it from here, and also from there—and I know the problems of Europe, from that experience: They really don't have a system like ours! They use languages which are not strange to us—usually. And they have the same kind of potential, as people. Some of the best of our culture comes from Europe: scientific culture, music, poetry, and so forth, was an export from Europe into the United States. But we selected a form of assimilation of these things, which enabled us to achieve the greatness that the United States did achieve, in the course prior to the assassination of Kennedy.
That should be our mission. So, what I will be doing in the coming period is that.
Now, what I know is about to happen, and I have anticipated it—I have a very young lady, here, who watches me, sometimes, and tells me about some of my friends. And she has a battery of questions. I don't know what the questions are exactly, but I can anticipate the character of the question. She's given me the categories, and identified the character of the people who are asking these important questions. And therefore, I should presume that what I have said now, as prelude, will be filled out by my doing the work of answering these questions which she will now dictate to me!
Lyndon LaRouche's nearly three-hour dialogue with participants, which followed this presentation.
[1] The "Basement" refers to a group of young people who are collaborating with LaRouche in making fundamental scientific breakthroughs, especially, at this time, in the field of cosmic radiation, and its impact on man's ability for interplanetary travel.
