Farm Belt Fighter: ‘Restore the American System and American Culture Now!’

The following is an interview with Ron Wieczorek, an Independent candidate in South Dakota running for U.S. Congress, conducted July 20, 2018 by EIR‘s Robert Baker.

EIR: You’ve been a fighter in the farm belt for years in South Dakota for the policies of Lyndon LaRouche, and the economic policies that made America a great nation. I understand this is your third run for Congress. It’s not as if you don’t have other things to do, raising Charolais cattle, selling bulls and otherwise working in agriculture. Why do this again?

Wieczorek: Back in the 1980s, I had been a Massey-Ferguson implement dealer for a number of years, when Fed Chairman Paul Volcker and President Jimmy Carter took the Prime Rate to 22%. From 1980-1984, I saw one-third of my farm customers go out of business in the ensuing crisis. I was involved in taking testimony on the effects on ordinary farmers of this high interest-rate regime, and in many cases succeeded in getting the Federal Housing Administration to grant moratoria on farm foreclosures.

What we’re experiencing right now is very similar, and I actually expect it to become worse that it was then, if we don’t get some things done very soon. That’s one of the reasons I’m running for Congress. The other reason is that I’m very concerned for our young people. We’ve got a misconception of what Free Trade has done to this country, and we need an educational process to get people reoriented to the American political-economic system.

British Free Trade vs.
the American System

EIR: How do you explain Free Trade to people?

Wieczorek: All they have to do is look at the current economic situation. Twenty-five years of Free Trade has devastated this country and all of the nations that have participated in it, especially the Atlantic Alliance countries of Europe and North America. Twenty-five years of Free Trade has created a post-industrial society. It’s destroyed most of the family farmers in North Dakota. For example, there are only seven dairy farms left in the state. The crisis that the Ag sector in general and dairy farmers in particular are facing is mind-boggling. The eaters are the ones I’m really concerned about, because we’re about to have a food crisis.

The change of the economic policies in our education system to a Free Trade oriented approach, vs. what we had before, has allowed our manufacturing to be moved out of the country, destroyed our labor unions, and destroyed the national sovereignty of a lot of the nations of the world. We’ve destroyed the credit system that this country was built on.

EIR: I know that you have concentrated on what is known as LaRouche’s Four Laws. I think a lot of people confuse the American System of Economics up with the British Free Trade system. Could you tell our readers some about the key elements in LaRouche’s Four Laws?

Wieczorek: The restoration of the original 1933 Glass-Steagall Banking Act by Congress and its reimplementation as law again is absolutely essential. That’s the Number One thing that needs to be done. In 2013, I was responsible for organizing the South Dakota State Legislature to be the first state legislature in the nation to unanimously pass a Resolution calling on the U.S. Congress to reinstate the 1930s-era Glass-Steagall Act. I’m proud to say that the original Glass-Steagall Act was passed with the help of one of South Dakota’s best Senators, Peter Norbeck.

In 1971 President Nixon took the nation off the gold reserve standard and the fixed exchange rate system established at Bretton Woods in 1944, and allowed the currencies of nations to float freely with respect to each other. As a result, the value of the dollar against the other currencies now changes almost by the second. When you think about it, it would be pretty darn hard to build a barn if you had to change your ruler every minute, or every day, even! We need long-term stability back in our currency. We need serious regulation of the banking system again. Separating the commercial banks from the investment banks is absolutely essential to maintaining a stable economic system.

And then, of course, we have to have a national banking system. A national bank, or some form of credit-generating institution, such as President Franklin Roosevelt set up with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. A Commodity Credit Corporation will also be absolutely essential to getting stability back in the farm area, considering the fall-off in prices and the lost markets, due to sanctions that were put on a number of years ago. The sanctioned countries aren’t going to let their people starve to death. We have destroyed our own agriculture sector, at least the family-farmer, by moving to corporate farming, industrial farming. The poor animals are penned and treated like they’re not even living creatures. It’s horrible what we’ve tolerated and done here.

There’s another reason why I am running for Congress. My great grandson, an eighth generation American, was just born recently, and he deserves a future. I think I made a mistake not voting for Donald Trump. I think this man is very concerned about leaving a legacy that could make him one of the greatest presidents we’ve had, if he moves right. I need to get to Washington to help him move in the right direction. He needs to follow me! It’s time to listen to LaRouche.

A Hamiltonian Credit System

EIR: A lot of people think of credit and money as sort of the same thing. You’re saying we’ve got to get, instead, a credit system. Could you discuss the difference?

Wieczorek: Almost 55 years ago, when I first started farming, I had a man who agreed to rent a half-section of land—320 acres. I had a grandfather who told me that if I helped him, he would let me use his equipment to farm that land. I didn’t have any money. I was 18 years old in high school yet. I went to the grain elevator operator, telling him that I needed seed oats enough to plant 160 acres. They extended me the credit to put in the oats, with an agreement that when I harvested, I would come in to the elevator, sell the oats, and pay him back.

I did the same thing with the seed corn company. United Hagie had a program that was interest-free until October, so I got seed corn to plant. My gas man also gave me credit. The company charged me no interest. It was a credit system back then.

Today, any young man trying to do what I did back then, will pay 18% interest after 30 days! That’s not a credit system! Farmers and business people and the small towns were making a hell of lot more money back in the 1950s, even into the 1960s, and were a lot more successful than they are today. Today, there’s nothing left of most of our small towns. Recently I found myself on Main Street in Marion (pop. 784 in 2010). Peering into the window of a clothing store, I just cried. The manikins were clothed, but the clothing was faded and all falling off. The racks were still there, but everything was covered with dust. The store must have closed 10-15 years ago. Nothing has changed in Marion during all these years, except that so many have lost their livelihoods and their lives.

Under Free Trade, we’ve had probably 20 years of stagnant wages—actually probably a decline in wages. People now have to have two or three jobs to maintain a family. It’s not only the farmers who are getting hit; it’s the laboring man also. While the Wall Streeters are busy squirreling away their so-called profits, at the same time they’re indebting the nation deeper and deeper, because we’re creating so little new tangible wealth.

Moving all our production to the least-cost areas of the world, is nothing but a looting system, and when you loot your fellow man and your fellow country, how do you expect them to be able to buy your products? The only thing you can do is keep lowering and lowering the prices of your products until everybody is collapsed. It’s a system of mutual destruction.

Infrastructure

EIR: I know your campaign put up a huge billboard just east of Sioux Falls on I-90. It’s got a picture on it of a magnetic levitation train. Why are you promoting that?

Wieczorek: Several reasons. We need major infrastructure for the future. If we’re going to be a world that’s going to get along, we need to be helping other countries. With the Bering Strait tunnel, and mag-lev trains all over North and South America, Asia, Europe and Africa, and even the possibility of tying into Australia some day, every continent in the world could be connected, in a peaceful way. Rather than using just the rivers and the oceans as a means of transportation, this extensive rail network will be much better, as it provides the potential for development all along the routes. We will build new cities along those corridors of development.

Along with high-speed rail, we’re going to need water development. The North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA) project that President John Kennedy supported clear back in the 1960s, to bring water down from the Yukon and Mackenzie rivers in Alaska, should have been built a long time ago. That massive water management project will generate the electricity for the rail system. You can’t get any environmentally cleaner power than electricity produced by hydro, nuclear, or (in the future) fusion.

Creating construction jobs to build all this is no different than what Alexander Hamilton and President George Washington did with road and canal building. It’s the same as what President Abraham Lincoln did with the Homestead Act and the trans-continental railroad. We haven’t done anything like this since the 1970s. Free Trade doesn’t tolerate such development because the speculators have a system in which they can make more money in half an hour, than on a 50-year financing of hydro-electric system.

EIR: In your discussions around the state, you’ve stressed the importance of culture, of education. A recent joint study by the American Farm Bureau and the National Farmers Union reports that the number one concern of farmers is opioids. How are you giving people hope?

Wieczorek: Again, I’m going to knock Free Trade, because it’s the evil here. Free Trade looks at Man as a commodity for cheap labor. That’s as far as the concern goes: getting as much work out of the individual as possible. That’s not what this country was about. We use technology produced by our minds to make things more efficient and more prosperous. That pursuit is supposed to free up Man, so he can have a cultural life to enjoy.

Culture and Education

In America, we don’t have that culture anymore. It’s now totally entertainment; it’s not based on a culture that uplifts and develops the human mind. It’s a culture that wastes our time. Turn on your TV and tune in to this athletic mentality. You’ve got twenty millionaires running around fields chasing bags of hot air. What kind of culture is that? We should have choruses for all our young people, where they can develop their minds.

Actually, if you learn to sing properly, at a very early age your mind learns how to control your vocal chords. Singing teaches you lawfulness and orderliness. I really think that people with a proper classical education will automatically do the right thing 90% of time, because you’re training your subconscious. That’s what education should be about. The subconscious, your mind, is the part of you that has the potential to exist for ever, if used properly, in the ideas that you pass on to others—the ideas that you generate with that thing between your ears—I mean, that’s a terribly important thing. In America today, we’re wasting that most beautiful and natural resource.

I truly feel sorry for the kids today, with the education system we have, which is focused solely on creating laborers for a workforce, rather than developing the human mind in the proper direction. We’ve simply got to overhaul our educational process. I think I got a better education in a one-room schoolhouse (located on my grandfather’s property, by the way), because of the effects of a classical education back then, than my kids are getting in these ungodly, overbuilt school systems of today, with all that money spent on athletic fields. I’m not against athletics, but when you monetize it, there’s something wrong with it.

EIR: You told the Yankton Daily Press & Dakotan recently that in 1991, during the economic embargo against Iraq, you worked with the Committee to Save the Children in Iraq. You warned at that time that we had better change our policy, or we would see a massive disruption clear across the Middle East.

Wieczorek: Yes. Along with 19 other American dairy farmers from eight states working to save these children from starvation, I personally organized two tons of milk powder to be transported to Baghdad. I didn’t want my children and grandchildren to be enemies of the Iraqis. I totally agreed with what LaRouche said at that time that wars of aggression should never be part of the American System. Food absolutely should never be used as a weapon. That’s about as evil as you can get, as far as I’m concerned: to starve innocent young people and the elderly. I don’t know how much less merciful you could be than doing something like that.

We need to get along with people. Economics has to be looked at more as a method by which you house and clothe and feed, and otherwise care for more and more people at a higher and higher standard of living. It’s a science, not a looting process. We have to get over the idea that somebody has to lose, so somebody else can win. We need to go back to the American System, where you had a win-win situation—what FDR intended to do for Africa, and with the Marshall Plan of rebuilding all of Europe. When we rebuilt Europe, we made prosperous the people there who could then purchase our manufactured products after we had built the greatest manufacturing process in the world to save us from Nazi Germany.

The reason I’m a big LaRouche supporter, is because Lyn represents the Constitution of the United States in the most dramatic and best way that it can possibly be represented. In the 1992 Presidential campaign, I brought more delegates for Lyndon LaRouche to the South Dakota Democratic Party State Convention than Bill Clinton had. Stupidly, the Democrat party disqualified several of the LaRouche delegates.

South Dakota

I started out my adult life as an Abraham Lincoln Republican, then switched to an FDR and JFK Democrat, and am now an Independent. When the parties changed their principles, I changed parties. Lincoln, FDR, and JFK would all be in the LaRouche organization today. Much of China is moving in the proper direction. They’re on the LaRouche team. They’re using LaRouche’s policies. Russia is the same way. Leading Russians know more about the American System than the most Americans do today.

The educational process that I’m pushing to get through, is part of the LaRouche program. It’s an absolute must, if we’re going to turn this nation around and become the great and wonderful, beautiful and respected leaders that we were at one point.

EIR: How are South Dakotans reacting to your campaign?

Wieczorek: I’m getting a lot of positive feedback! In the process of campaigning, I usually try to point out the fight between the Republic and the Empire systems. That’s something that has to be acknowledged. If you look at the Empire systems of the world, they’ve always ended after about 200 years, or maybe a little bit longer. This country, however, was built on the new principles of a republic, where the purpose of the government was to uplift and develop the human mind and the productive powers of its citizens.

An empire system is a few people at the top enslaving, and otherwise taking advantage of their fellow men to try to get ahead. Many of the people I am speaking to quickly understand the difference between what our former government was, and what it is today. If we let this continue much longer, the United States is going to be the empire that’s going to collapse. It’s not the enemy from without that’s destroying our minds and the concepts and methods of the American political-economic system; it’s the enemy from within.

EIR: President Trump has done some pretty interesting things recently, including meeting with Russia’s President Putin. What do you say about that, and the massive post-summit attacks against Trump?

Wieczorek: I’m totally supportive of President Trump’s efforts to bring peace to the world. I appreciate what he accomplished in his meeting in Singapore with Kim Jong-un of North Korea, his getting along with President Xi Jinping of China, and his latest meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. He has probably done the best that he could do by doing what he has done.

Trump’s opposition in the United States is based on the system of empire. I cannot believe what’s happened to the Democratic Party. It’s turned away from being the party of the working man and the family farmer, to the party of the Wall Street fraudster or bankster, as FDR would refer to them. They’ve forgotten who Roosevelt and Kennedy were. These Presidents were generators of peace. Even during the Cold War they communicated with Russia.

Some of these lunatics who are running their mouths off, condemning the President for meeting with Putin, are using the word “treason.” That’s a very stiff word. I think that a lot of these people screaming “Treason!” are in fact themselves the treasoners. These people are sticking their necks out a very long way. I hope the ropes don’t slip off. Truth and Justice will win in the end, but I hope our country is not destroyed in the process. I hope we can get a turnaround, before we get a civil war.

We Need Honest People To Use Their Minds

EIR: What is your next step?

Wieczorek: I have three opponents: a Libertarian former police officer who’s a medical marijuana activist, a Democrat former state court judge, and a Republican former chairman of the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission. All three have worked in some capacity or other for the government all their lives. We don’t need more bureaucrats in Washington! If we’re going to “drain the swamp,” we need to get rid of the bureaucrats and get some ordinary and honest people up there who have some experience and some concepts, and are willing and able to use their minds.

I’m 75 years old, and probably shouldn’t be doing what I’m doing, but nobody else from this area is doing it. I really feel that I have done my homework. I know what needs to be done. I’ve had experience in agri-business. I’ve been a farmer. I’m a member of the Farmers Union and National Farmers Organization. I’ve been a political organizer. Over the past twenty-five years or so, I have participated in many international conferences convened to promote the construction of infrastructure and general economic development.

I’ve been an advocate for the “forgotten man,” you might say, watching one-third of my customers going out of business back in the 1980s, and seeing all those suicides. The last time I looked, the suicide rate among farmers was higher than it was at any time during the 1980s, as far as percentage of farmers. We don’t have many farmers left. I doubt if we’ve got half a million actual family-farmers left.

So, we haven’t got much time to reverse this policy and get this country back up and going again. Maybe we need this collapse to bring down some of these giant monopolies. I don’t know. I think there’s a much safer and better way to it, if we can get the public organized around what needs to be done. If they will just stand up and politically fight. That’s the only way they’re going to get out; they can’t get another job; most of them are over-worked already. It’s time we stand up together. We have a president that wants to drain the swamp, who’s moving in the right direction. I think we just need to send some good people to Washington who appreciate the concepts he’s trying to get across.

I really think we have to get LaRouche’s ideas more into the public arena. A lot of people are more or less familiar with LaRouche’s ideas, and agree with them, but we just need some elected leadership that can take the point on this.

I pledge to work to end the coup against President Donald Trump. We don’t need an impeachment crisis. I pledge to work to get the United States to join China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as part of a program for general economic recovery, a program for the future peace and prosperity of the United States and the entire world. I will work to get Glass-Steagall reinstated before the impending financial crash renders sensible banking reform unattainable. I believe that the increase in productivity is the metric for the application of credit. We need to fully engage the nation in fusion power realization and space exploration.

I don’t expect to be the “miracle man” to change everything, but I certainly believe the ideas I represent can have a major effect on making this a much, much better world.