EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY APRIL 1, 2023

Schiller Conference: Overthrowing ‘The Empire of the Mind’

March 31, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Why is the U.S./Britain “Special Relationship,” not “American imperialism,” the central strategic problem of our time? Consider this September 6, 1943 speech of Winston Churchill, given at Harvard University, a center of Anglo-Saxon racialism and Anglophilia from the late 19th century through the early 20th century. In that speech, Churchill advanced his “Basic English” project, a proposal to reduce the vocabulary from 15,000-30,000 words, to one between 850 and 2,000 words. “Let us go forward in malice to none and good will to all.... The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.” Why was Churchill using this speech, in the middle of the Second World War, to propose the evisceration of the English language, the language of Shakespeare, who would not have been possible were he to have been restricted?

Later, Churchill added:

“Nothing will work soundly or for long without the united effort of the British and American peoples. If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail. I therefore preach continually the doctrine of the fraternal association of our two peoples, not for any purpose of gaining invidious material advantages for either of them, not for territorial aggrandisement or the vain pomp of earthly domination, but for the sake of service to mankind and for the honour that comes to those who faithfully serve great causes.”

The Anglosphere, then in 1943, and now in 2023, is speaking the same language—though barely, because many of its representative now squawk in a vocabulary of only 850 words, “nominalisms” like “rules-based order,” “democracy,” “sanctions,” etc., and it is tone-deaf. It can only communicate through threats. This is a Spartan/Roman slave-“civilization,” whose organizing principle is for war.

In contrast to Churchillian imperialism of the mind, Vladimir Putin, in his Decree No. 229, just issued by the President of the Russian Federation, March 31, 2023, called “The Concept of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation,” gave his view of the Russian nation’s relationship to the world:

“The crisis of economic globalization is deepening. Current problems, including in the energy market and in the financial sector, are caused by degradation of many previous development models and instruments, irresponsible macroeconomic solutions (including uncontrolled emission and accumulation of unsecured debts), illegal unilateral restrictive measures and unfair competition. The abuse by certain states of their dominant position in some spheres intensifies the processes of fragmentation of the global economy and increases disparity in the development of states. New national and trans-border payment systems are becoming widespread, there is a growing interest in new international reserve currencies, and prerequisites for diversifying international economic cooperation mechanisms are being created....

“14. In response to unfriendly actions of the West, Russia intends to defend its right to existence and freedom of development using all means available. The Russian Federation will concentrate its creative energy on the geographic vectors of its foreign policy which have obvious prospects in terms of expanding mutually beneficial international cooperation. The majority of humanity is interested in having constructive relations with Russia and in strengthening Russia’s positions on the international scene as an influential global power making a decisive contribution to maintaining global security and ensuring peaceful development of states. This opens up a wide range of opportunities for the successful activity of the Russian Federation on the international scene....”

“Multipolarity,” however, will not work, any more than “unipolarity.” An international community of principle of sovereign nation states that agree that humanity is fundamentally good, must prevail in the short term. At this point, only a vigorous emergency conference and intervention process, invoking not only the Nuremberg Trials of 1946-49, but also the Treaty of Westphalia of 1644-48, the Continental Congress of 1787-89, and the July 1944 Bretton Woods Conference, could avert the otherwise inevitable and unstoppable “division of the world” that will lead, despite the best of intentions, to thermonuclear war.

What actually happened to destroy America’s once-productive economy? The same thing that happened to the American Republic itself. Lyndon LaRouche observed that

“The American system is ‘dirigistic.’ The purpose for which new issues of currency are loaned is broadly restricted to public and private investments—in, chiefly, basic infrastructure, agriculture, and industry—whose effect is to increase the productive powers of labor as a whole. In the British system, the ultimate objective is to increase revenues from the categories of ground rent, usury, and speculation in monopolistic control of prices of selected commodities. This latter is promoted at the expense of improvements in the production of newly created tangible wealth.”

Which of these describes America today?

The same Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716) who inspired Peter the Great to found the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724, nearly 300 years ago, and was a central intellectual influence on Ben Franklin, is the true intellectual author of the “Life Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” principle contained in the American Declaration of Independence—not the pro-slavery “Life, Liberty and Property” formulation of the Royal Africa Company’s John Locke. There is, in other words, a common intellectual heritage that links the United States and Russia, and an intellectual and revolutionary heritage that historically divides the United States from Great Britain. To reject that truth, is to reject the American Revolution itself.

Therefore, as startling as it may sound to some, it is only if the United States reverses its relationships with Great Britain and Russia, and returns to itself, embracing the true history of its 1776 Revolution, can the world, which has, of necessity, morally turned away from America, again see the United States as other than what it has nearly become—the Empire that the United States itself once detested, and defeated. People from around the world with the vision to take up such tasks, in whatever nation they reside, are invited to join and organize hundreds, thousands, to attend the online two-day Schiller Institute Conference April 15-16, “Without the Development of All Nations, There Can Be No Lasting Peace for the Planet.”