LaRouche Youth Movement:
`A Second American Revolution'

The Schiller Institute and International Caucus of Labor Committees (ICLC) met at Bad Schwalbach, Germany, on March 21-23, 2003, for a conference on "How To Reconstruct a Bankrupt World." Representatives attended from 45 nations, including 120 LaRouche Youth Movement activists from across Europe, and from the United States. What follows is a transcript of part of the panel given by youth organizers on March 23. Some of the discussion has been translated from German. For transcripts of the other conference panels, see EIR, April 4, 11, and 18.

The Historic Mission of Joan of Arc

Erin Regan: The time to build a new worldwide Renaissance—it's here!

Now, the fact that all of us are gathered up here together at the same time, is very promising. Because if you asked us what time it was, most of us probably couldn't tell you, because we don't wear watches! One of the many flaws our generation has, is the problem of not wearing watches. It is a big characteristic we had to deal with in many offices throughout the United States. One example is that our NC [National Committee member] in Los Angeles had to go to the store and had to buy about 15 watches for all of us, so that we would be in on time.

So I would like to say that I agree wholeheartedly with the comment that [ICLC Executive Committee member] Will Wertz made the other day, that I've never been more proud to be an American, and I've never been more proud to be a human being. This weekend has demonstrated that justice must prevail, that Lyndon LaRouche's campaign will not take shape just in the streets and institutions in America, but all over the world. Joan of Arc was handed the helmet in Schiller's play as a metaphor of the historic mission that she must will, and the courage that she must accept. Lyndon LaRouche has handed us all that same helmet. It is dedicated to create a revolution to change the spirit of all of mankind.

How do we, in a sense, get out of the failure of the present moment? How do we move the world beyond the current dark hour? What would be the basis of a new Renaissance? That is what was in the minds and in the hearts of all the great republican thinkers for thousands of years, and this is what did come to blossom in the American Revolution. We are calling now and forever, for this tradition to become a reality in every part of the world. And this is what Lyndon LaRouche's movement represents. And we are gathered here at this panel, representatives of the future of what the universe must look like and what shape society must take.

Once again, the fear of Lyn [Lyndon LaRouche] and his ideas has the oligarchy quaking in their seats. They are terrified. And I think they are consulting with those little green men beneath the floorboards that Lyn refers to. And the biggest question ringing in their ears is: How does Lyndon LaRouche get all of these young people? Why can't we recruit the youth? Where did they come from?

Unfortunately, where we came from is why they are not recruiting us. Now, "What's wrong with where we came from?" some of you might ask. We are the Baby Boomers' kids, "Generation X," the "lost generation" or, as we all know, the "no-future generation." Any way you say it, it is not very uplifting. I am sure when our parents were young, they did not envision this as their legacy, but when they were challenged, they did very little in the face of corruption. Now LaRouche says that we have the potential to become the new Renaissance generation. And we were never told by anybody but Lyn, that we should do something good for humanity, that humanity needs us, and that we would be a part of humanity forever. What we were told instead was never to stand out: "Be part of the crowd!"...

We were always told, "Don't get political!" "Join the Army!" But then our parents said, "Preferably in a time when there is not a war." As you see on this man's T-shirt [indicating a transparency being shown], the new fashion is: "Be scared."

Lyn often refers to the "patchwork family" that we come from. I can tell you from personal experience, being in this organization for four years, that the amount of divorces, the divorce rate that you have in the United States in particular, is extremely high. In Los Angeles, almost everybody has been a part of the counterculture, where the most planning you have is the plan for the next "rave" that you go to. Not making a meeting in time or going to school. Most people are dropping out of school. Right now is the dark age. This culture might not be feeding Christians to the lions, probably because they taste like John Ashcroft....

But this culture is crumbling. And the missing principle was Lyn. The people that haven't met Lyn yet will be introduced to him, when we take over the United States and every country in the world. I would like to introduce to you and give you a visual idea of the LaRouche Youth Movement. We are inviting you—not checking your ID—and we want everybody to join this movement, because we need you, and you need us. Thank you.

Performance by Jessica Tremblay (soprano), Matthew Ogden (bassoon), and Megan Beets (flute) of the aria from J.S. Bach's St. John Passion, "Ich folge dir gleichfalls mit freudigen Schritten."

[Megan Beets reads the beginning of Friedrich Schiller's play, The Virgin of Orléans.]

Yes, beloved neighbors! To this day are we
Still Frenchmen, still free citizens and masters
O' th' ancient soil, the which our fathers plowed;
Who knows, who over us commands tomorrow!
For everywhere the Englishman doth let
His victory-laden banner fly, his steeds
Are trampling on the blooming fields of France.
Paris hath him as victor now received,
And with the ancient crown of Dagobert
Adorns the offspring of a foreign stem.
The grandchild of our King must wander round
In flight and dispossessed through his own realm,
And 'gainst him fights i' th' army of the foe
His closest cousin and foremost peer,
Yes, his own raven-mother it commands.
Around burn hamlets, cities. Nearer still
And nearer rolls the smoke of devastation
Into these valleys, which still rest in peace.

And it is actually from this valley, that Friedrich Schiller has his Johanna go; and she chooses to leave this valley and to go to these burning cities, and she chooses, as a young shepherdess, to become a warrior for the fate of her country. So the question is at that point: What is the king doing? What is this disposessed king doing?

The first encounter we have with Friedrich Schiller's King Charles, he is sitting in his court, surrounded by jugglers and troubadours, and he has just received the news that his field commander of his army has just quit. And that his soldiers, his mercenaries, are about to disperse because they have not been paid, and the whole treasury is empty. So it is a pretty desperate situation.

Again, the messenger comes in and he receives the news that the Duke of Burgundy, who was referred to as his closest cousin, his foremost peer, who was fighting on the side of the English, has actually refused King Charles's offer to reconcile.

So here come three councilman of the city of Orléans. They come and fall on their knees at the foot of the King, and they beg him at the last moment to come in. To send his army in and to not let this jewel of France fall, to give them his protection. And in complete despair what Charles said to them is: "God shelter you, I can do no more." And he prepares to withdraw across the river and completely give up.

Now, it is at this point that we actually receive news that the French forces have prevailed at Orléans and it's a virgin that led them. This is something worth mentioning, to perhaps encourage you to take up Schiller's challenge in the development of this play: That in a moment of death, at the end of this play, the last line that Johanna gives to us as a challenge is: "Kurz ist der Schmerz, ewig ist die Freude," "Brief is the pain, the joy shall be eternal."

Tina Rank: Moreover, the question is now, why have Joan, and Schiller—as he represents Joan—why have these two, over generations, won their battle again and again? And how can I assert that? The first time I had that play, The Virgin of Orléans, in my hands, I thoroughly devoured it! I come from eastern Germany. We had a revolution in 1989. Our parents fought—but for what? What does one fight for, when he has no route, and no destination? And what still remains from it? We have embraced a system in which this generation—without prospects—is floating in a certain hopelessness. It's not only like that just in eastern Germany, but really in the whole world. We have to face the question, what is there for our generation? Should we be stupefied, because of the intentions of our parents, and because of this counterculture? We'll leave this an open question for now.

What was it like in Joan's time? It really didn't look a lot different. The people then also had little hope, they had almost a hundred years of war between nations, a total dead-end society, where people bankrupted themselves or nursed their egos. People are born and die. Then came a girl, a woman, who said, "Something has run off the path here!" She realized that what people were doing in this dead-end society was not something to live or die for. Joan recognized this. She stepped outside the situation, with this understanding, and she fought, she fought for France. But the difference from today was, she wasn't only fighting for the security or freedom of her country; rather, she was fighting for principles. One of her missions—beyond the liberation of Orléans—was to make the true king into a real king. How are we to understand that? Friedrich Schiller put these beautiful words on her lips:

No more shall we have monarchs of our own,
Nor shall we have a master native born—
The King, who never dies, shall vanish from
The world—he who protects the holy plow,
Who the flock protects and fruitful makes the earth,
Who the bonded serf leads to his liberty,
Who the cities joyfully puts round his throne,
Who standeth by the feeble and the evil scares,
Who of envy nought doth know—for he's the greatest—
Who a man is and an angel of compassion
Upon this earth so hostile.—For the throne
Of monarchs, which with gold doth shimmer, is
The lodging of th' abandoned ones—here stand
Both might and heartfelt charity—here quakes
The guilty one, with trust the righteous one comes near
And jesteth with the lions round the throne!
The foreign monarch, who comes from abroad,
Whose Fathers' holy bones do not repose
In this ancestral land, can he it love?
He who was never young among our youth,
Unto whose heart our words will never ring,
Can he a father be to his offspring?
(The Virgin of Orléans, Prologue, Scene iii)

What Joan really meant by this, is, in principle, nothing other than what Lyn is doing today. Joan intended to give a person the strength—a king, a man, who truly approaches the matter of taking responsibility for his people, with principles; to lay the foundation stone so that man can develop himself further, can strive for that which is higher—and not have to worry himself all day about where he can get something to eat; to establish the economic and educational foundation for this.

It is a natural law, that man is born in order to strive for something higher. Joan realized, that it doesn't work any other way, and Schiller lets her say that.

The Virgin of Orléans was one of the first plays that I read, when I first became familiar with the organization. Schiller allowed me to see something—me, and I am sure, others also, who have read it—a brief moment of joy. He gave me an insight, and proved to me, that there are grounds for hope: For there is something higher! He gave me the strength, and the power, and the incentive to continue to fight. Schiller understands how to stimulate this potential of man: "Joy, joy, beautiful divine sparks" ["Freude, Freude schöne Götterfunken"], is the best example. He means, the spark which every man carries in himself. Schiller and Joan, precisely, were people who manifest that again and again—right up until today, since there are so many people here. Therefore, they have won their battle. They took these sparks, and struck and puffed on them so long, that they kindled a fire. But best, discover for yourself what Joan and Schiller wanted to say. For that purpose, we have just a little incitement for you, from the beginning, the Prologue, of Schiller's Virgin of Orléans:

[Megan Beets reads Prologue, Scene iv:

"Farewell you mountains ... all the trumpets sound."

Tina Rank recites the same passage in German.]

How Do We Find the Truth?

Jason Ross: I'm Jason from California, and I'll introduce a new theme here, which is: How do you know what to do—once you have the will?

As everybody knows, LaRouche has been hitting constantly on Gauss's 1799 report on his proof of the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra. Now, Gauss wrote this paper for today, to stop this war. Because what he goes through is exactly what Lyn went through on Friday [in his opening speech to the conference]: How do you get out of a tragedy? How do you solve, with a truthful method, a tragedy, to get yourself out of it? The way we got into this crisis is through many years of bad thinking.

We'll go back to the Greeks, to Plato: the Meno dialogue of Socrates with the slave-boy Meno. Socrates asks the slave-boy a simple question: "You have never been trained in geometry, have you?" And the boy says, "No." And Socrates: "Okay, here is a square. I want you to double that square, to make it twice as big" (Figure 1). Has anybody an idea, what the slave-boy's first guess is? [Someone in the audience replies.]

Okay, let's double the size of this side and that side. The thing is, if you do that, you get a square that consists of four of the original squares (Figure 2). So, it is a little bit too big.

Next, he says, maybe let's just make the side one and a half as long as the first one (Figure 3). And if you do that, look what we've got here: You've got the original square on the lower left, and these two rectangles above and to the right of it. Each of those is half a square, so with the square and those two you already have doubled the area. And this "little guy" here is also there—you are too big. So you are off again.

But Socrates gives him a hint: "Look at the square. It is made up of four triangles, that the original square had two of. Great, it is twice as big. The question is, though, how long is that line, the length of the side, to make the square twice as big? Does anyone know how long that line is? I heard: 1.4, or 1.4 and something. I don't know whether that would cut it with Plato. Is anyone going to say: "The square root of 2"? Okay, but this just means: The side of a square of 2 is the square root of 2. That's not an answer, that's just another question.

Now, we take the diagonal of the square: Let's look at its length in terms of the original line that we had (Figures 4-5). How are we going to get it? It wasn't twice as big, it wasn't one and a half times as big. And the square of 2, does anyone know how big it is? Wow, it is somewhere between 1 and 2, and there is a whole infinity of numbers between those. You get one and one-half, one and one-third, one and one-fifth, one and two-fifths, one and three-eighths, there is an endless supply of numbers there. But nobody in here, with a whole infinity of numbers, can say what it is? Even though it is right there, plain as day in front of us, it's just the size of a square right there, the diagonal?

Something interesting. Maybe we just found something that was beyond the infinite. Maybe our idea of what is possible to do is not going to cut it, to solve the problem represented?

So, let's investigate whether we can figure it out or not (Figure 6). To find out if two numbers can be looked at in terms of each other—I forget who came up with this—there is this process: See the black line onto the thick line on top, on the left and the right. It's two quantities. See if you can compare these two with each other. Take the shorter one and remove it from the longer one. And you see if you can put the longer into the short one again. Here it works. This new shorter length goes into the length on the left twice. A relationship of 2:3 or 1@c4. Maybe we have to keep trying and spend our whole life, looking for the size of the side of the square (Figure 7).

You kept trying it out, getting smaller and smaller pieces. But it never quite goes away. There is something there you just don't get.

Let's say we did figure it out, we got some fraction N over D (N is the numerator on the top, D is the denominator at the bottom). So we take that fraction, make a square out of it and have an area of two. The top part square is twice the bottom part square. Numbers are even or odd, right? Let's say the top part is odd (Figure 8).

The odd part square on the top is twice something else, and if you've got twice something, it is going to be even. So you can divide it into two parts. Has anybody seen an odd number squared that became even? Does that ever happen? So we failed. Maybe the numerator is even, maybe that is the trick. And if the denominator is also even, then you can divide both of them by 2, and again and again, until you get one of them to be odd. So, let's say the denominator is odd. An even number times itself is twice an odd number times itself. The thing is, if you get rid of this 2 in front of the two odd numbers, you cut it in half, it's still even on the left. And an even number can't be an odd number. So, we really have found something that we honestly can't express with our numbers. We can find things that we can't solve by analyzing with what we already know.

So this points us in the direction of discoveries. Now, with these squares and lengths you could look at relations between them. This is where algebra came from; it came from a fellow called al-Kharizmi who was looking at squares, cubes, lengths, and asking, what is the relationship between these areas? So you could pose a question, like people are tortured with in math classes, like: x²+10x=24. Look at it in terms of a square. It's x on each side, a rectangle, 10 by x in an area of 24. They could pose a question which they couldn't answer. What if I had a negative area? x²+1 = nothing? Can you have a negative area? Can you get paid to live in an apartment with a negative floor-area? No, you can't. So, they were stuck. They ran into something they couldn't solve. And they said: I guess there are questions that shouldn't be asked, because we can't answer. Too bad.

Then mathematicians came up with something absolutely shocking (Figure 9). They said, wait, instead of saying this is something that's not real, let's say we can use it. Let's say, we have the square root of @ms1, let's admit that. With that we can solve tons more equations. We can do all sorts of things now. It was an incredible discovery. It worked great. But what is it? Does it have an "is"? Is it just an effect? If somebody asked you how a car works and you say, well you push the gas pedal and it goes forward, is that an answer? No, you are just telling what it does.

This is where the difference between Gauss, and Euler and Lagrange, comes in. Euler and Lagrange were perfectly contented to say, well it works, doesn't it? What more do you want? It is a discovery, sure. We can use it to solve a number of equations. But for one thing, Gauss showed that it doesn't work. And it doesn't give you a new principle to impact the Noösphere with.

It is like another great discovery in the same vein: derivatives. Let's say you are running out of money. Your financial system is collapsing. So you just invent some derivatives, you sell weather. Enron did it, and it worked great, right?

Wait a minute, no, it didn't work. If you try to fake it, the universe is going to know. If you go into your own domain in math and try to prove something that doesn't exist, the universe is going to tell you, it doesn't exist. It is going to present you with a paradox, which is good. Because it gives you something new to find out. So, when you get this feeling in your head: "I don't really get this, I don't know what is going on," that's good, be happy about it. What Gauss did in elaborating what -1 was (I'm not going into the details here, we could do that tonight or as homework), he found another, an even higher idea of number, than this one with the diagonal of the square. And, this is important for us today. He said: If you want to know the truth, you have to dump your ego that wants to say it knows everything, and find out why the universe is telling you that you are wrong.

This is what LaRouche said all science is about. That's what he said at the Lebedev Institute. He said what we call modern physical science is based on taking what people believe is the organization of the universe, and proving, it's wrong. So I want to let Jeanne d'Arc take up that theme.

Ending a Dark Age: Joan's Triumph

Elodie Viennot: Hello, my name is Elodie from France. I am going to come back to Jeanne d'Arc indeed, because she was in a situation at her time very similar to what we are faced with today—which is, the fate of civilization was threatened. France was actually doomed. Everywhere villages were being burned. You had bandits running the countryside. It was desperate. The king was not doing anything to save the nation, and the British had already invaded most of the northern part of France.

[She shows a map of the British conquest of France.] In 1429, specifically, the war has been going on for 92 years. And the French have been into a pattern of losing those battles in most of the recent decades. And it's getting very dangerous—just as today. We have a war that could punch us into the most violent dark age we have ever seen. At her time there was one city left, called Orléans, that was holding the British from spreading into [all of] France, spreading all over Europe, provoking the same type of violent dark age as the type of danger we are faced with today. So, the question, when you are faced with such a crisis, obviously, there is something wrong with the way your civilization is operating.

When Axioms Fail

So what Jeanne looked at: You have to find the failure. You have to find where we failed, that produced such a danger and such horror, which is not just about what you feel, it's about succeeding and accomplishing the change. And that's where Lyn has been talking all the time about the question of axiomatics. Because you cannot go with fixed measures in those situations. You can go into Iraq right now, if you want, but that is not going do anything. You can go and sell all your jewels; in Jeanne's time, you could have sold all your jewels and given the money to the King for him to feed the troops. That would not have changed anything, because there was an axiomatic error in the way people were thinking.

Now, what happened with the city of Orléans, is, there was one hope. The British have their supplies coming: the food, the ammunitions, some more soldiers, coming to help the siege. The British have been besieging Orléans for seven months. The inhabitants of Orléans are starting to be a little bit too desperate. They are running out of ammunition, out of food, and out of people. So this is really an extremely dangerous time. The British are coming with supplies for the siege. This caravan, the French army knows what road it will take. So this is the hope. This is the hope, to break the supply line and make sure the siege will not be able to hold much longer. So they go in. The French have more soldiers than the British, they have cannon, artillery, while the British only have archers. But they lose, again and again and again. No matter how much force they have. So there is an axiomatic problem, it is pretty clear.

What happens afterwards is, Jeanne d'Arc comes in. She arrives in the city of Orléans on a white horse with a white banner saying "Jesus—Maria." That's a little bit different idea of war than what we have seen before. We have feudal lords who, besides fighting amongst each other, fought against the British by sending their subsidized cannon fodder onto the battlefield. Jeanne d'Arc comes in. She had just sent a letter to the British on her way to the city, which I am going to quote right here because you need to understand that she was not operating on any fancy idea here. She sent to the British a warning of her coming:

"Jesus, Maria! King of England and you Duke of Bedford, you call yourself regent of the Kingdom of France; you, William de la Pole, Sir Talbot, and you, Sir Thomas Skills, who call yourself lieutenant of the aforesaid Duke of Bedford; render your count to the King of Heaven. Surrender to the Maid who was sent from God, the King of Heaven, the keys to all the good cities you have taken and violated in France. She has come here from God to proclaim the blood royal. She is entirely ready to make peace if you are willing to settle accounts with her, provided that you give up France and pay for having occupied her. If you do not do so, I am commander of the armies and in whatever place I shall meet your French allies, I shall make them leave it. Whether they wish it or not. And if they will not obey, I shall have them all killed. I am sent from God, the King of Heaven, to test you out of all friends, body for body. And if they wish to obey, I shall have mercy on them. And believe firmly, that the King of Heaven will send the Maid more force than you will ever know how to achieve with all of your souls on her and on her good men-at-arms. And in the exchange of blows we shall see who has the better right from the King of Heaven."

And she has not received any answer, meaning that she is going to attack them. So before the battle starts, she gets everybody to swear that they are going to be profoundly moral, that they are not going to fight out of revenge. They are not going in and kill like monsters. They are not going in and rape the women. She also gets them to swear that they are not going to have sexual fantasies about her, because she is dealing with an army of men who are not exactly the most humanist people.

This is very important to have a moral quality to the army. Look at today. If we had a youth movement without the pedagogical work, without keeping track of Lyn's thinking all the time, forget it. People are brought up in a completely amoral society. And you cannot win any battle like that.

So Jeanne d'Arc gets them to swear all this. And she is still fighting against the people in her army. The military commanders don't want to go and fight the siege of the British. They really don't. They have even ordered the mayor of the town not to open the drawbridges, so that Jeanne d'Arc can't go out and fight. So when she goes to the mayor and he explains this to her, she draws her sword out and says, I will cut your head off, if you do not let me out. So he opens the bridge. And the old generals, the old aristocratic commanders, scramble behind to catch up with her. And she leads the charge.

The first day of battle is a hard and bloody day. She is wounded. But she goes back the next day anyway. And when she goes back, by the end of the day, she is about clear that the British are ready to be defeated. Remember, the siege has been going on for seven months. The next day, the third day of the battle, is very challenging. The British have maneuvered themselves into their most advantageous formation. They have the best archers in all of Europe. They have all their archers and longbowmen, which is another type of archers, lined up together, facing the French Army, which is armed to the teeth, ready to fight. And the British archers are hiding behind wooden poles stuck into the ground, sharpened and pointing towards the French, meaning you can't attack the British. They are going to kill the entire army, if Jeanne launches the charge. Because the sharpened poles will kill the horses, the archers will kill the men.

So what can she do? She cannot surrender. She cannot just turn away and say, "You won." No, because Europe is going to hell if she does this. So what does she do? What can she do?

If you look at the universe as a fixed world, you cannot get out of your system, "Oh, this is so horrible," and then you surrender and you give humanity what is not a big favor. She just decides to stay there and look into eyes of the British. She just stays there. Imagine, it is early in the morning. The two armies are facing each other, and the French just stay there. The British are ready for the French to attack. And they stay there. For quite some time the British look at this completely confused, completely shocked. And they are so shocked, that they end up turning around and they give the victory to Jeanne.

This is what you call an axiomatic change. This is called the Socratic method—in case you hadn't understood that Plato's dialogues in fact apply to warfare. This is called the Socratic method. You find the axiom that your failure depends on, and you take it out. That is what she did.

'Take the Responsibility!'

Then she wants the Dauphin crowned King of France, which was very important, because nine years before that the king had signed a treaty with the enemy, that any King of England would be also be King of France. He had abdicated the national sovereignty, abdicated his mission to the nation. So she gets him crowned again. As Lyn always says, she went to see the King, and said, 'You have to stop being a stupid king. You have to honor the nation. You have people on your hands. Take the responsibility!" She had to fight very hard to get him to want to be crowned. He did not want to take leadership at all.

Then she says, "We are attacking Paris." That is where the King betrayed her. He refused. He signed another treaty with the enemy. He gave the British the authorization to be able to fortify Paris. And he refused to give the army to Jeanne. She did not really understand what was going on, but she kept on. She had about 200 mercenaries with her. They went to attack this little strategic city called Compiegne where a lot of logistics, information, weapons, food, etc., were going through to the British troops in Paris, and she happened to be boxed in. She was too weak, and the others knew that she was going to do this, and she got caught as a war prisoner.

The British end up after months of negotiations, they buy her for about 10,000 golden coins. They really want her, because they think they will never win this war if she is alive.

So they put her on trial for five months. Every day, for eight to nine hours, she is interrogated nonstop. Would you hold up? If for eight or nine hours, right now, you were taken to Guantanamo in Cuba, and you were questioned and questioned and questioned, because you are associated with Lyndon LaRouche? And they try to break you, by all psychological means they can. How would you do? Would you have the moral fitness to hold out in this fight as the meaning of your life—and that they cannot touch you, because it is a a meaning that is just not in the physical realm? They can't kill it.

She had this sense. And when they said, we are going to burn you, she got a little scared. And she signed a short paper, saying she was guilty. But she signed it with a cross. And when she was at war, any time she would want to send a fake message, she would sign it with a cross. Soon after that she withdrew from this position, called for the judges to come back, saying, "I am not signing this paper, give this back to me, rip it up. I am not signing this paper, I am not guilty of heresy, I am fighting for the God-given mission of the general welfare. I have to save this nation, I have to save the Kingdom. Give me back this paper. I am not guilty." And they burned her alive. They burned her alive, and she didn't flinch at all.

So the consequences of this were very big. Louis XI, the next King to follow after this one who had betrayed her, built the first nation-state. Without her we wouldn't be here today. Without her we wouldn't be 6 billion on the planet. Without her we wouldn't have had the American Revolution. Lots of things would not have happened. We wouldn't have had the 15th-Century Renaissance. Can you imagine the 21st Century without the 15th-Century Renaissance? We would be in a feudal system. So she fought. She gave her life for us. To be able to really create real humanity, dignified humanity. And she succeeded. One of the things that happened is, the Church was unified. Without that, you would have had the Black Plague going on, bodies lying there because no priests are going to bury the body, since the priests wouldn't know what Pope to choose.

So on all levels, there was a dark age. And she intervened and succeeded. Her death got a lot of people to think. One of the British persons who was right there when she was burnt, decided, as soon as he saw her burning and looking up at the sky and yelling "Jesus," he said: "This woman is a saint." He was in big psychological trouble for quite some time, because before he had really wanted her dead.

So this is what a real leader is. With Lyn, who tried to convey to us on Friday night, are you willing to put your life on the line? Because your life might actually never die if you accomplish those matters.

Gauss and Joan

There are some people who don't understand this, like Euler, or Lagrange, or d'Alembert, some of these mathematicians Jason was referring to. They see the world as something fixed and very boring. Lagrange actually said that he could put all of physics into mathematical analysis, just manipulating symbols. You could try as hard as you want to manipulate symbols to save France or save the world today—it won't work. But he said it anyway. And they tried to take the square root of @ms1 and said: "Oh, we can't really give it a physical meaning. Well, it doesn't matter, we just try to make the universe bend to the way we think, because we really want to think this way." But the biggest mistake they made, and a lot of people make when they discriminate themselves—also Euler discriminated himself. He denied that he had the power to find another hypothesis, another idea that would explain the generation of another kind of number. He denied this to himself, he refused to see the power of the human mind.

And if you don't see that, do you really want to keep people alive? So, that's the big question you should wonder about, because Gauss looked at those numbers and he showed they are not fixed things. You have 1, 0, -1, you go from 1 to -1? What is -1? Is it just a dot, a point, a thing, a counting object? I never saw just counting objects. "Oh, how nice"—what a boring world. The point is, -1 is when you make a reflection to 1. It is like a mirror. So he said: "That's a transformation process from that standpoint, if numbers are just like codewords, reflections for a real action process, then when you are looking for the square root, you are just looking at the middle point, the halfway into a process of squaring, and what's the halfway between that, from a specific distance? The one in the middle. So, your number line is right here, and there is something outside the number line."

I'm just giving you a very, very brief idea of what Gauss is talking about, and obviously we can't go through this right now. But the point is, if you think about numbers as fixed counting objects—you look at the world, as through the universe as a whole, and even at the human mind as a fixed counting object, and the people in the French Army, the people from our parents' generation, and also people of our generation, they still think that way. And you don't see the power of the human mind, and that's why we are in such a big crisis right now—at least one of the reasons.

Socratic Method

Truth is not what you see. Look at the trial against Jeanne, how she was burnt. She was sanctified in the beginning of the 20th Century, that's pretty late. How can you look at something? Look at Lyn, "conspiracy against the IRS"—did you believe it? When he was put on trial, did you believe it? Or did you make the hypothesis, that his fight was an eternal fight for the common welfare of all people? This is the question of hypothesis—you hypothesize on the intention. Kepler used this word "intention" for universal physical principals. And you should think: If the principles are not in what you can see, what about your life? Is the principle of your life in what you can see of your life? Is there a higher principle? Something akin to the question of immortality? Because those principles don't die. So if you operate on that level, maybe that's something different than saying: "I'm alive, because I'm alive, and that's what my purpose is—to have as much pleasure as I can."

The reality is higher than that. So you don't have to worry about dying, you don't have to worry about this "being not considered good," because if you know you are fighting for the good, nobody can touch you. They can't get you to flicker. To get the point about life, because that is the paradox: We die, that is the paradox of our life. I'm going to die, you are going to die, so what do we live for? ...

But before that I just want to remind you of something that Lyn said: "The sense organs of the human individual are part of the mortal human being's animal-like biological organism. Sense perception does not present our mind with direct images of the world outside our skins, but rather, as Plato and the Christian Apostle Paul (I Corinthians: 13) warn, our senses show us only shadows of that reality which has tickled the human individual biological mental sense-perceptual apparatus. So Plato compares the experience of sense perception to shadows caused by unseen real objects, as if upon the walls of a dimly firelit cave. Human beings are nonetheless capable of discovering the real, essentially unseeable, immortal universe, whose included non-substantial effects are those shadows called "sense-perceptions."

The Bankruptcy of 'Classroom Economics'

Daniel Buchmann: My name is Daniel; I am from Berlin in Germany. In February, I was in America organizing and we were driving in a car back from Richmond, where we were organizing in Virginia, to Baltimore, and the people were asking me, "Hey Danny, what's wrong with the Germans? I mean you have all this great tradition of Schiller, you have Brahm, Gauss, Kepler, so what's wrong with the Germans?" So, it does not make any sense, that there are 7-8 million unemployed in Germany, that's the country where much Classical work comes from. Ja, I told those people in America—and in school I learned, you know, Hobbes, Lockes, Adam Smith, that's what we learn in our universities and schools on philosophy and economics, and that's the reason for the crisis. So obviously, it is another paradox, and we are here to solve it.

If you really want to understand the nature of this crisis, just go to one of the university classrooms on economics, that is the best way to understand the crisis. Nowhere else in this country do you see a bigger amount of dangerous foolishness per capita and per square meter. You see professors and students, they are talking economics on the level of the Wall Street Journal and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. That's where those people quote from. From an empiricist standpoint, I mean if you just walk in this country and you visit different places, you could say from an empiricist standpoint, that everybody is just too limited to solve the problems we are in right now.

But can this satisfy us? It does not satisfy me, so that is the reason why I am standing here and doing this work, and that is why I joined this movement of Lyndon LaRouche.

What Lyn said—I mean, look at the state of our education system as I just described. What has to happen: Young people have to emerge as true leaders, as true thinkers. And in order to do that, to become true leaders, we have to relive original discoveries. We have to study the great thinkers of the past, and what those leaders contributed to humanity—and those contributions last forever. We just have to study them.

One of the very interesting characters in history is Friedrich List. And this man has been mentioned quite often during this conference. Why is Friedrich List so important? What was so original in his life? How did he use his life to become immortal and to contribute to our work today, to have peace on this Earth and development?

I began to study List with this book Outlines of American Political Economy, and I had not been reading many pages, maybe the first 20 pages, and it was like, "Wow!": Globalization, free trade, that has been proven wrong in the 1820s, maybe earlier. So why are we in this mess today? And this was quite a shock, and I decided to work more on this. I mean, it is just ridiculous. We have to get out of this and create a new Renaissance.

Friedrich List was born in 1789 in Reutlingen, that is in Württemberg. So, he grew up in the aftermath of the French Revolution, he saw Napoleon conquering Europe and Germany. He saw the so-called continental blockade that was under the Napoleon regime, when all British influence, for example British goods, were not allowed to be imported to continental Europe. So, the continental European economy was isolated from Britain. That was one thing that happened in that time, and then Napoleon was defeated and we had the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and through this Congress the Hapsburg oligarchy was restored in Europe.

And renewed British influence came to continental Europe. And this meant influence especially on the economy; the economy was flooded by the English dumping cheap imports. And ironically, by that time Friedrich List was studying Adam Smith—Adam Smith's work. And when you read this book, at that time you see the public opinion and the opinion of all the academics is with Adam Smith, and his book seems to be just great and everything is right—and on the other side, Friedrich List saw the economy collapsing in Germany, factories were shut down, farmers went bankrupt, people didn't have enough food to eat.

What Is Real Wealth?

So, what List did: He said, there has to be something wrong the theory, there has to be something wrong with the axioms. What List asked Adam Smith, not personally, but what his question was to Adam Smith, was: What is wealth? What is true wealth? Is it just money on an account, or is it having gold and diamonds somewhere in your palace, is it raw materials, maybe military power? Friedrich List said: That is not true, none of them is true wealth. And he said: True wealth is our ability to produce, to produce wealth. That is the true wealth, to be able to produce it.

So, this was a big change in the axioms. You may have goods to trade with, but you use them up. So, therefore you have to produce. And as a first approximation, List said: Well, we can say, we have to produce more than we consume. And in his 1841 book, The National System of Political Economy, he said: The very fact that we human beings can produce more than we have to consume for ourselves means there is something in the universe, which says human beings want to go to new lands, let's say new continents, let's say to some places where we have not been before, we want to do new things, we want to—I mean to us it seems like common sense, it seems like it is very clear, but it was not clear to Adam Smith and it was not clear to the professors at the universities then. And it is not clear today to many so-called elites.

Friedrich List had this idea—around 1820, that's when he developed those ideas, and people were saying, "Look, this man is completely crazy, he is so enthusiastic about the future, what we can do?" and later, some years later, they said, "He is crazy, he wants to build railroads, this is something new, how can he do that?" So this is what people thought about Friedrich List, and he said to the dukes and kings in Germany: "We have to have reforms, we have to save our country, and therefore we have to have reforms in the economy." But people just didn't listen, they slandered him. They even tried to throw him in jail, around 1821.

So what could he do? In his situation the best thing to do was: He escaped. At first to other European countries, like France, Switzerland—and he met, for example, Lafayette—and later he went to America to work on his economics. He studied the so-called American System of Political Economy—that means Mathew Carey, Alexander Hamilton, and this scientific environment of those people. So he did not meet Alexander Hamilton personally, but he could read his books, so he could be in a dialogue with him. In America he found the right environment to work on his economics, and he said in his Outlines of Political Economy, almost at the beginning:

"In consequence of this exposition I believe it to be a duty of the General Convention in Harrisburg, (that is in Pennsylvania), not only to support the interest of the wool growers and wool manufacturers but to lay the axe to the root of the tree by declaring the system of Adam Smith and Co. to be erroneous, by declaring war against it on the part of the American System, by inviting literary men to uncover its errors, and to write popular lectures on the American System, and lastly by requesting the governments of the different states as well as the general government to support the study of the American System at the different colleges, universities, and literary institutions under their auspices...."

So again, List just changed the axioms and this unleashed a process of discoveries, and he could develop a brand-new system of political economy. And what really struck me in this book The National System of Political Economy was that he said: Look, maybe in the future we could figure out a way to produce heat without using one of the known materials to make fire with. So we could say he hypothesized nuclear energy. He did not know anything about it, but he said: Look, maybe we will find something else, we will find something new. This is just great!

Who talks like that today? Who talks about production and investment in the future and having science-driver projects? It is Lyndon LaRouche and his movement. Here we find optimism and people who say: Look, let's produce, let's get things done, let's develop.

So, as I told you earlier, look at Germany, look at the universities, we have Locke, Hobbes, we have Adam Smith, we have people talking about the Wall Street Journal and some crazy stuff like that. So, if you look at that, you see the great importance of the work we are doing here, and I personally don't see anything but this movement to create a new Renaissance, and it is our duty to do it. We have the means, we have the intellectual means, and we just have to do it. So, I would ask everybody here to join the movement, to do the work, to create a Renaissance. In the end, the universe will give it back to you.

LaRouche's Unique Contribution

Limari Navarrette: Hello, my name is Limari and I am from Los Angeles. All of you might have a question right in your head, what exactly are we out to accomplish? Perhaps there are scholars around the world who have read numerous books on List, on Joan of Arc, who know a lot, who are very knowledgeable. Although there are millions of people out there on the street who are as passionate as we are about stopping this war, who realize that economic development is something needed in the world—what is the difference between everyone else and what we are doing?

The difference is something that Lyndon LaRouche has been doing for most of his life, and that is confronting his own immortality. He saw the situation that the world was in, he knew where it was headed, that this civilization would not survive, and so, instead of running from the work that had to be done, he confronted his own immortality to actually intervene on the course that history was taking.

So, how do you actually have the confidence to do that? How do you actually know that it is worthwhile to even bother intervening on history? We have just presented it to you today. It is what Joan of Arc has done, it's what Gauss did in disproving Euler and Lagrange, it is also what Lyndon LaRouche has been doing now for decades, and to actually have a confidence of mind to go out there and to confront people in your country who are supposed to be leading your country and ensuring that you are going to have a future and say: "Look, this is what you need to do! The Eurasian continent must be united, we are in an economic collapse, and you must listen to Lyndon LaRouche!"

So, we are confronting our peers with this. This is why people are joining this movement, because they realize that for their entire lives, they have been lied to. The generation that has come before us, has told us: "Well, all you gonna have to do is go to school, sit down, shut up, listen, do as you are told; and you should have a nice car and a nice house, you know, once you hit the age of 25." But more and more of us are realizing, that this is not the case.

There is an economic collapse happening and you see a religious war being started. You look back in history and you realize that a religious war has always created a dark age, in which civilization went backwards. And so we hear LaRouche and we hear a complete breath of fresh air. The very first time I was actually hearing what a real leader sounds like. And so he has actually brought these ideas back to life, that we presented to you. In making the connection between the immortality of the soul and what these ideas mean—because you can just read as many books as you want; you can hold up a sign "No blood for oil!"; you can do all these things, but unless you have an idea of using your life, which is a short life, to do something to ensure that the generation after you is going to be able to have running water, to have a comfortable life and work on the same idea, that you are able to work on right now. Then you must confront that question. So, we are coming together, young people are joining this movement from all over the world to create the first global Renaissance in history.

Those of you who want to create Eurasian Land-Bridge must understand that although you may feel a bit pessimistic, you see a very corrupt culture today, we are your allies, to create the Eurasian Land-Bridge. And this is not a social club where people are getting together and talking about nice ideas. We want to give you a sense of action, that right now we are confronting the leadership of the United States with LaRouche's ideas, we are changing history, and that is what we are going to give you a sense of in just a moment.

'LaRouche's Campaign Doesn't Tap-Dance'

Timothy Vance: My name is Timothy from the West Coast, and I am with LaRouche in 2004. I have a question for the audience, and I ask you to be truthful: Honestly, how many of you guys looking up here thought you were watching a panel on the Youth Movement? Come on, raise your hand! [After a while, some hands timidly go up.] Okay, you are being deceived! You have to realize, if you thought you were looking here at some nice kids, you are blocked! I really have to be honest here, what is up here is not the youth per se, it is not about us—it is about LaRouche, and if you think about it, it is really about you. The policymakers are in need of your help. Before I start my presentation, I want to personally thank Mr. LaRouche and let him and the youth in this room know, that LaRouche's Presidential campaign doesn't tap-dance.

In dealing with questions of immortality, and economics as well, it is always good to refer to our modern-day Socrates, Mr. LaRouche. But perhaps pedagogically to illustrate our political method for intervening in the strategic global situation, I might add that the Democratic Party without the leadership of LaRouche and those who are associated with him, those Democrats who are working with him, the party has no more moral authority to exist or to play any role in making national policy.

So, to introduce how LaRouche's mobilized youth are actually taking over the Democratic Party and putting LaRouche in a position of executive authority, I am going to refer to the development of a youth movement in 399 B.C. around Athens in ancient Greece. A hell of a world, wrecked by cultural degeneration and a self-destructive military conflict known as the Peloponnesian War. I chose for this Plato's Apology of Socrates, in which Socrates makes his defense against accusations brought against him in court in the form of a jury of 501 Athenians. He is an old man, and at the age of 70 he has been indicted on charges of corrupting the youth and of offending the gods officially recognized by the state.

But in good fashion, of course, like Mr. LaRouche and like his youth movement, Socrates was neither defensive nor apologetic. What do I like about this particular dialogue? Well, it is the way Socrates handles political corruption, not only within ourselves, but also in organized political form. Also look at the way he actually holds people—not just the jury, but the reader as well—look at how he holds them to the question of immortality. If you read the dialogue, it is about 20 pages, and he holds you to this question; not throwing out an aphorism, not some nice little one-liner—he holds you to this question for a long time.

And this is actually what makes up a majority of the political work we do. See, LaRouche has actually created an organization, an effective political instrument, in which we dwell on this question for most of the time—I must say like righteous gadflies, we go out there and we hold other people to this question of immortality. We go to the college campuses, we go into the offices of government, and we go on to the streets, globally. And we try to get people to think, what are they going to be.

We make people double the square in front of local supermarkets. That is actually how we are going to get a new Renaissance. That's the way we are going to get a new economic system. You have to recognize this and to recognize this within yourself, because this is crucial. And hopefully the video that I am about to show, will give you a sense of it.

[Tim showed a video about the intervention into the Young Democrats event in Sacramento, commenting on it. Faced with the dilemma of either giving up in the face of screaming Democrats, or trying to scream louder, senselessly escalating the situation, the LaRouche Youth came up with a third option—singing the spiritual "Oh Freedom!"]

Let's go back to ancient Greece now. I would like to read to you a quote from Socrates after he has been convicted and given a sentence of death; Socrates says to the jury: "Now, I want to prophesy to those who convicted me, for I am at the point where men prophesy most, when they are about to die. I say, gentlemen, to those who voted to kill me, that vengeance will come upon you immediately after my death. A vengeance much harder to bear than that which you took in killing me.

"You did this in the belief that you would avoid giving an account of your life. But I maintain that quite the opposite will happen to you. There will be more people to test you whom I now held back, but you did not notice it. They will be more difficult to deal with, as they will be younger, and you will resent them more."

That is why I want to use, to show the end result of rejecting the warnings of Mr. LaRouche, the warnings he has made in his previous Presidential campaigns, a rejection of LaRouche and his Democratic supporters within the Democratic Party up till now.... We have been thrown out of these meetings, right? This kind of insane reaction coming from the Democratic Party has only successfully divided the party and united LaRouche's supporters in an even more determined effort.

And that quote of Socrates can also be applied to the global strategic situation. Look at this crazy utopian faction, this war party, who thinks that they can stop Eurasian economic development by launching a war in Iraq. Well look, what they did to themselves, poor guys; I have to feel sorry for them, because what did they do? They destroyed their alliances, and the nations of Europe and Asia are now cooperating more with each other than ever before. That's the role of justice. This is what we are talking about.

You have to look at the way Socrates actually describes the question of death in his Apology. The opportunity and responsibility we have been blessed with is indeed easy to avoid. He goes on to say, that there are many ways to avoid death, in every kind of danger. There are many ways to avoid getting a new economic system, there are many ways to avoid stopping this insane push for perpetual warfare.

But guess what? History will hardly have the time to record the particular ways in which we may choose to avoid taking responsibility for the crisis in the coming days and weeks before us.

Like anyone who has ever worked on any of these so-called impossible problems that the Greeks put forward, we do a lot of pedagogical work on these impossible problems, doubling the square, for instance; also the trisecting of an arbitrary angle—I have not even talked about doubling the cube. There is a lot that goes into it. So, these problems might seem impossible, but the solutions do indeed exist. It is just that many of you don't know the solutions yet. And I can assure you that LaRouche knows what to do, and that the youth working with him have a good sense of it.

And so the only remaining question I would like to raise with the audience would be: "What will I do, given a case of what I now know to be true?" But of course, for the answer to that question I let you be the jury.

"Oh, Freedom" is sung, and Erin Regan calls Lyndon LaRouche up to the podium.