Dennis Speed: Our conference is dedicated to Schiller Institute founding members Phil Rubinstein and Ted Andromidas, who both recently passed away. Many have lost loved ones, particularly in the last months as a result of the terrible pandemic as well as other reasons. We also dedicate this conference to them and, recognizing that this is the 75th anniversary year of the end of World War II, to the veterans and for that matter, the civilians, who died in that great conflict. We also dedicate this conference to the victims of the 9/11 attack.

Later this year, the Schiller Institute hopes to carry out, in whatever venue is necessary, its original intent to perform the Beethoven Missa Solemnis in their honor, which had been originally planned for this coming weekend.

Let us now go to a video of Lyndon LaRouche, a co-founder of the Schiller Institute, who passed away February 12, 2019. The video is from his visit to Brazil in 2002, when he was named an honorary citizen of São Paolo.

Announcer: The ceremony at the City Council was only one of a series of meetings that Lyndon and Helga LaRouche held in the course of their week-long visit to Brazil. The visit began with a unique dialogue at a conference held in the auditorium of the Latin American Parliament, at an event sponsored by the São Paolo ADESG, which is the association of graduates of the prestigious Superior War College.

Lyndon LaRouche: We are now at a point that the existing definitions, axioms, and postulates of the system which has increasingly ruled the entire world, for the past 35 years, have now demonstrated themselves to be a catastrophic failure. And for reasons I shall indicate, we are now at the point, where we can not expect this system to last, in its present form, for longer than a few months. It might not even last another week.

What’s the solution? As I said at the outset, the problem today is denial. People are afraid. They’re afraid of power. They’re afraid of the power of the IMF. They’re afraid of the power of the United States. And therefore, they say, we have to play by the generally accepted rules among the nations of the IMF and by the United States. Therefore, when you try to solve a problem, you say, “We have to find a solution within the rules! You can’t violate the rules. You’ve got to find an alternative, within the rules.” But what I’ve indicated to you, there are no solutions within the rules!

This has been a long-term process of decadence, of culture and of economy. We no longer have the kind of leaders in politics we had 20 years ago, or earlier. Our people coming out of our universities do not have the competence of people coming out of universities a generation ago. We are in a decadent culture, a decadent system, which is destroying us! And you’re not going to find solutions in a system, which has shown that the definitions, axioms, and postulates of the system ensure destruction!

But people say, “But you’ve got to go by the rules!” What are the rules? The rules are precisely the axioms, the definitions, the postulates which have destroyed us!

Why can’t we change the rules? Aren’t we human beings? Don’t we represent nations which have the—Read the, you can get this out of the first chapter of Genesis: Are man and woman not made equally in the image of the Creator of the Universe, and endowed with these powers? Do not we have the authority, above anything on this planet, to change the rules?

We have the power. That’s what sovereignty means. Sovereignty means the power to make the rules by means of which we can survive. That doesn’t mean we can make any rules we want to. It means we have to have responsibility and competence; but we have the right to deliberate.