This transcript appears in the December 9, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this transcript]
Dennis Speed
A Westphalian Approach: Introduction to Panel 2
This is the edited transcript of Dennis Speed’s Introduction to Panel 2, “Peace Through Development,” of the Schiller Institute’s Nov. 22 conference, “For World Peace—Stop the Danger of Nuclear War: Third Seminar of Political and Social Leaders of the World.” Mr. Speed served as the moderator for Panel 2; his Introduction in which he included audio-visual material from President John Kennedy and Lyndon LaRouche.
Dennis Speed: Welcome to today’s Panel 2 of the Schiller Institute Conference, “Stopping Nuclear War Now.” This panel is called “Peace Through Development.” We want to welcome you all from all around the world to today’s conference. You’ve just heard, at the beginning of our conference, the canon “Dona Nobis Pacem,” which is being sung all over the world by participants in the drive for peace being made by the Schiller Institute. Today’s conference has already heard from people from all over the world: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute spoke this morning along with an extended panel. This afternoon’s session is on the topic of “Peace Through Development.”
“What is the fundamental interest of the United States? Is it to find someone we call an enemy, the way the British do? And go out and prepare for war against this chosen, designated enemy? Should we go out and pick out official enemies of the United States and stage wars with them, simply to have somebody to shoot at; or someone to hate? Is that our policy?”
What we also want to call attention to—it being November 22—is that today is the 59th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. We will memorialize President Kennedy by first having President Kennedy speak of another great American, whom he eulogized only four weeks before his own death. And that was the poet Robert Frost. What you’re going to be hearing are some excerpts from Kennedy’s speech on October 26, 1963, at Amherst College.
From President Kennedy’s ‘On National Strength’
A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but also by the men it honors; the men it remembers.
In America, our heroes have customarily run to men of large accomplishments. But today this college and country honor a man whose contribution was not to our size but to our spirit; not to our political beliefs but to our insight; not to our self-esteem, but to our self-comprehension.
The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility, against an intrusive society and an officious state. The great artist is thus a solitary figure. He has, as Frost said, a lover’s quarrel with the world. In pursuing his perceptions of reality, he must often sail against the currents of his time. This is not a popular role. If Robert Frost was much honored during his lifetime, it was because a good many preferred to ignore his darker truths. Yet in retrospect, we see how the artist’s fidelity has strengthened the fiber of our national life.
If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.
I look forward to a great future for America—a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.
I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty.
And I look forward to an America which commands respect throughout the world not only for its strength, but for its civilization as well. And I look forward to a world which will be safe not only for democracy and diversity but also for personal distinction.
Speed: Where is that voice in contemporary America? That’s what American Presidents used to sound like, and that’s what they used to be concerned with. Unfortunately for the world, Lyndon LaRouche, who ran for President eight times, is now deceased, and is not here with us. Earlier today, we played a clip from him from 1999. We’re going to play a short excerpt from that again now, as a way of describing what we mean, and what I think President Kennedy just described to you as the moral standpoint from which the idea of a Westphalian approach to peace can be, in fact even at this late date, expressed. And yes, expressed by statesmen from the United States.
From Lyndon LaRouche’s 1999
‘Storm Over Asia’
So the solution to war, as has always been understood by the great strategists of modern European civilization—and also China—is to bring peace. How do you build peace? Well, certain principles: We agree that a sovereign nation-state is a fundamental human right, established by modern European civilization. So the first human right we must agree upon is the sovereignty of the other nation-state. If we can agree on that, we’ve got a start. If we agree that the purpose of treaty relations is to find mutually beneficial effects. Do we want to promote trade? Do we want to promote the benefits of trade? Do we want to see other nations more secure, more internally secure, with happier people less likely to get angry and start doing terrible things?
Let’s find a new way. Let’s stop talking about how we want to fight for this, we want to fight for that, we want to fight against this. Let’s stop that nonsense, and say, what is it that we really need? Can’t we find a way to cooperate and build peace and build security, and build cooperation? Can’t we go to others and say, isn’t common justice so much in the interests of us all? Haven’t we learned our lesson? Isn’t it time that we cooperate? Isn’t it time that we build a system which is consistent with the interests of us all, as they tried to do in the very difficult negotiations which established the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648? That’s what the policy must be.
Speed: Was John F. Kennedy assassinated because that was precisely the policy he elected to follow in the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis? Well, it would be nice if the documents related to the Kennedy assassination were ever released to this generation of Americans, to know that. But for those of us who don’t intend to wait for that, we attempt to answer this question in the form of finding persons, both in the United States and outside of the United States, who resonate with that intent.
