'With Our Constitution, WE, As A Nation, Have a special Mission'
May 22, 2023

'WITH OUR CONSTITUTION, WE, AS A NATION, - - HAVE A SPECIAL MISSION'

Lyndon LaRouche spoke to supporters in Teaneck, New Jersey on May 22, 2023. After his opening remarks, LaRouche and his constituents continued their dialogue for another hour and a half.

DENNIS SPEED: All right, so, 1 a.m.1 p.m.... I'm Dennis Speed. I'm coordinating the LaRouche campaign in New Jersey. We have the man here with us. And, as he did yesterday, I'm sure he'll do today: Which is, he spent the time, letting people know something about current history that they may not have knownnamely, that they're at the center of it. There are a set of developments, of a momentous nature, that they, themselves, are shapingwhether they're acting or they're not acting. LaRouche, in the last two years, in particularand with respect to particularly, as we've seen, with the Presidency of the United Stateshas launched an offensive, that may just preserve human civilization. The military of this country, military intelligence establishment, many other sectors, are responding, and they are being led by his initiatives. And every place around the world, and any place you see something important going on: This man has been the catalyst for it.

Many in the media don't want to admit that. Many otherwise don't want to admit it, but it's nonetheless true.

And so, today, what Lyn is going to do, is, as he always does, he'll open, and he'll define for us that role in current history that we all could be playing, if we choose to think in a time of crisis, the way he chooses to think in a time of crisis.

So, I'm very happyI'm sure we're all happyto have with us today, Lyndon LaRouche. And here we go.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: So, we'll warm things up a bit.

The issues that face the United States today, are three: First of all, we have a terrible financial-monetary crisis. The monetary-financial system is in the process of collapsing. It's only a matter of how soon. It could collapse tomorrow; it could collapse next month, could collapse sometime in the summertime. But, it is inevitably on the road to a collapse far worse than 1929-1933. [interrupted by problems with the microphone]

The world is now gripped by a crisis: A monetary-financial crisis, far worse than 1929-33. And we shall only get out of it, if we have a Presidency, which responds to this crisis, according to the same principles that Franklin D. Roosevelt used in March of 1933. Otherwise, there is no hope for the United States, or for the world in general.

We have a second crisis, which is reflected by the war in Iraq, the ongoing war in Iraq: It never ended, once it was started. This war, with its implications, prevents the possibility, of collaboration among nations, of a type that is neededa collaboration that is neededto deal with the international financial crisis. In other words, what we will have to do, since all the major banks, are bankrupt; the Federal Reserve System is bankrupt; the economy is collapsing: What we shall have to do is, first of all put the banking system into receivership, bankruptcy receivership by government. The first purpose of doing that, is to prevent the banking system from disintegrating, in order to maintain the flow of credit and so forth, to keep the economy going.

Secondly, we're going to have to reorganize the financial system.

Now, we're also going to have to have cooperation, with other countries, to put the IMF system into bankruptcy receivership, for reorganization, with the intent to reestablish, the kind of monetary system, fixed-exchange-rate system, protectionist system, that we had back in the 1940s, the late 1940s and 1950s.

The problem, essentially, economically [interrupted by someone trying to fix the mic] (He's moving you. Well, he often gives people a moving experience!)

All right. That's fine. This is family, you know?

So, the problem is, that we in the United States, were, until the middle of the 1960s, the world's leading producer society, as a result of the Roosevelt changes. With the assassination of Kennedy, following the Missile Crisis, and the beginning of the official war in Indo-China, we underwent a cultural transformation, from a producer society to a post-industrial predatory society, which is living increasingly by looting other countries. The typification of how this works, is Wal-Mart. If you want to know what a disease is, you look at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart moves into an area, with one of its, now, "super-malls." It goes to the people who are supplying stores in that area, which were producing and selling to stores, for retail sales. Now, Wal-Mart says, "You will produce for us, at prices which compete with Chinese labor. If you don't, we shut you off." So, you see, when Wal-Mart moves in, with a mall store, in the counties around that mall store, businesses began folding up.

So, what we've done is, by the change in the monetary system which occurred in 1971-72, we bankrupted entire countries. We reduced them to the condition of virtual slave-labor. We then turned around, especially beginning 1982, and we began to force them to produce for us. For example, the case of Mexico: Mexico was put through a crisis in 1982, from here. It was bankrupted. It has been ruined since then. So Mexico's internal development has been destroyed. What do they do? The United States says, coming to NAFTA, which is the epitome of this processNAFTA is sort of a glorified Wal-Mart operation"You will now produce for us, your labor will produce, as virtual slave labor, for us! We will lay off our labor, shut down our industries, and we will now buy from markets such as South and Central America, China, and so forth, where virtual slave labor conditions exist.

"Therefore, we will shut down our farms. We will shut down our factories. We will shut down our communities. By turning Hispanic people and others virtually into slave labor for production of the United States."

And the quality, as you know, is generally poorespecially that from South and Central America, because they're employed as virtual slave laborwith no skill. For example, look at the housing projects you see in various parts of the United States: large-scale housing projects, in areas where people are moving in, when they're moving out of areas like the industrial belts, and so forth. Take the case of New Jersey: What happened to the industrial development, which once existed in New Jersey? It's shut down, largely. So, now, you have a different kindyou have a vast housing speculation, based on the Greater New York market. The mortgages are rising. What do they employ? They employ cheap labor, unskilled labor, to produce shackswhich we used to call tar-paper shacks, years ago. Now, they're made with chip boardthat's the good quality, actually. And, essentially tar-paper shacks, with a few gold faucets in them (maybe); plastic exterior; and a $400,000 to $600,000 mortgage.

Now, remember that, in former times, they used to say, that you shouldn't spend more than 20 to 25% of your family income, to maintain a place of residence. What does it cost today? [Someone from the audience speaks out, "60%."] Exactly. So, what happened to family relations? The character of families? Raising children? How often do people meet to have dinner together, in families? We've destroyed the culture. We've destroyed the people, and we've transformed our economy in the way we've done. We don't educate people any more, because we say we educate for jobs. And what are the jobs? So we are dumbing the population down, impoverishing it, we're taking away its health carewhich it used to have. Took it away!

So, we are in the process of destroying ourselves, and we're destroying ourselves, as an imperial power, which loots the rest of the world, to maintain the wealth of our wealthy, and to impoverish our people, in general: We have become a society, like ancient imperial Rome, which stopped producing; depended upon what it stole from the countries it conquered, and from slavery; reduced most of its population to quasi-unemployed or unemployed; provided a subsistence hand-out, as a political manipulation of the population; and entertained the population, with things like the Coliseum, where you could watch lions eating Christians.

So, we have become, like imperial Rome, a society of "bread and circuses." Degenerate, ever more degenerate qualities of mass entertainment, are the dominant feature of our culture. So, we've been transformed into a rotten society. And some people like it that way, or pretend they do.

We have become, also, a no-future society. That this nation, under present trends and policies, has no future.

The young people, those who are young adults, are sensing this more and more. They look at their parents' generation, who are in the 40s and 50s, and they say, "You have given us a society with no future. We are condemned, if we live that long, to spend the next 50 to 60 years of our life, in a no-future society. And youMommy and Daddyare glued to that television set, or some other kind of degenerate mass entertainmentand ignoring reality and blocking out reality by a fantasy life, in an entertainment society."

So, we're a society that's going nowhere. And, we're in a world, which, overall, if this continues, is also going nowhere. And that time, is now.

So therefore, we've come to the point, which is not unusual in history, that once-powerful, great civilizations are in the process of disintegrating. And the disintegration is largely moral, first of all. The economic effects, come as a moral disintegration.

How did this happen? You had, back in the 1960s, you had a change after Eisenhower left office: First, you had a fascist, Allen Dulles, who organized the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. Shock Number Onefascism was back in the world. Number Twowe had the Missile Crisis, the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, and people were huddling in their cellars, or barrooms, waiting for the end, when the missiles would hit, the thermonuclear missiles. Then, we had the assassination of a President, by the right wing. And that was covered up, too. Then, after he was dead (and he had opposed going into the Indo-China War), they used the fact that they had killed him, to push through the Indo-China War. Then, we had a process of cultural degeneration, where you had the young people going into the universities, in the middle of the '60swhere they were being trained, presumably, to become, within a quarter-century, the leaders of society, whether in government professions and so forth: They took off their clothes, soaked themselves with LSD, and rolled in the dirtand they're now running society today.

This is what happened to us! We went through a cultural change, from the world's leading producer society, into a decadent society, which is a caricature of ancient Rome's degeneracy. Which means, that the people who have acquired these habits, who are now running the country, who are in their 50s or very early 60s, that generation has no conception, no ingrained conception of how to run anything. But, they're dominating it. They want to keep their "pleasure society," like many decadent empires, which want to keep what they consider their personal way of life, their social way of life, the upper 20% of the income brackets. They cared nothing for the rest of the people.

Take a comparable case in India: India has a billion people now; it's second after China, in size of national population. There was recently an election, which came as a shock to many people around the world. Vajpayee, who had been the Prime Minister of India, had been a very successful politician. But: He had not paid attention to business. And, while the upper 300 million people of India were living at standards of living, generally speaking, comparable to those of people in the United States and Europeand on the rise, in terms of the IT business600 million Indians were living in collapsing poverty. This is a condition, generally, throughout Asia. But, in this case, what happened is, 40-odd percent of the urban population went to the polls; 70% approximately of the rural population also went to the polls, and they voted the existing government out of office.

So, what you see is, the process now, is a process worldwideIndia only typifies ita revolt by the poor against the oppression, the oppression of this system, that it provides no future for the people. That's what we have here. The question is: Given the fact, that the people who are saturated with the degeneration of this culture, who run the society, are doing this, how can you get our government back, with the dedication to the kinds of outlook, that we had under Franklin Roosevelt, or the period following that? That's what I represent.

That's why I really have a problem: Because, this system is coming down, and what's going to happen? What was the reaction of the banking system of New York, to the collapse of Argentina? They said, the Argentine debt must be paid, to the creditors in the United States, even if it means killing Argentinians. What will the same kind of people do to the people of the United States, under conditions of a financial collapse here? They will do no differently to the people of the United States, than they've done to the people of Argentina. The conflict is, that under a condition of crisis, such as the type we face now, the only way we can save ourselves, is to have a Presidentthat is, the Executive branch of our system, which is unique in the worldwho does what Roosevelt did, and said: applies the Constitution, that the sovereignty of the United States lies in its people, not in the government. The government is the instrument of the people, but the sovereignty is the people. And the government must be the agent, the efficient agent, of the sovereignty of the people.

What must he do? He must defend the people: He must defend the living, the conditions of life of the living. He must defend posterity, and the security of posterity.

If a President does that, as Franklin Roosevelt did that, he gets into a lot of trouble with the bankers. We had a case like that in Europe. The crisis hit in Europe. What you had from 1922 to 1945, the bankers pushed through fascist regimes in Europe. And they took over in continental Europe. What were these? These were response to a crisis, to establish a dictatorship, to prevent the people from demanding that the general welfare of the people be the standard of performance for society.

The people who are opposed to me, are opposed to me, because they know exactly what I would do, as President: I would do the same thing, in principle, that Roosevelt did. In a crisis, you have to defend the nation, and you defend the people first of all. The bankers come second. Their claims are not primary. The people's claims, to life, the claims to the prosperity of their descendants, their children, their posterity, is primary. This is our character, to our melting-pot country! We're a melting-pot nationalways have been, from the beginning. We're unique, in that respect: We're a true melting-pot nation. Most of us know it.

Therefore, what's the purpose? It's not a nationalism, in the sense that you find in some other parts of the world. That's not our nature. We're not racial, or ethnic nationalists. We have a few people who aberrate in that direction. But, we're a people who are looking for a nation, in which we can live, develop our posterity, and look forward to a better life for our posterity than we have for ourselves. That's the notion of general welfare. That's the basic thing, that the American thinks about, when he's conscious: To have a country, which is committed to the general welfare, the sovereignty of the people, and the benefit of posterity. And that's the characteristic of a melting-pot country.

I mean, people came to this countrypoor! Poor immigrants, looking for an opportunity, sacrificing, often suffering, to get their children ahead. And you would see the migration. People coming in as poor immigrants, struggling, building a family, being assimilated into the community. Then, their children would rise, in condition of life, better condition of life than they had. And they worked, to make that possible. And their grandchildren would be among the leaders of the professions in the country. And that's the way we thought of building a nation.

So, we have to recapture that sense. And the only way it's going to happen is one way: You have to break the back, of the arrogance of the generation, which is running the country. What will break their back, is when they see their money is going, and they depend upon the government to save them. They give up their arrogance: Right now, the Democratic Partyit's just like the Republican Party, in one sensethe Democratic Party is committed to what is called the "suburban group." What's the "suburban group"? The upper 20% of family-income brackets. The Democratic Party is controlled by the idea, of trying to control its population, in the interests of the upper 20% of family-income brackets. It's called the "suburban policy"! It's what Hillary Clinton, for example, supports. It's what they adopted from Tony Blair, in London, as a policy in the Democratic Party. The lower 80%, who have been suffering increasingly over the past period since 1977, in terms of the physical conditions of life and opportunities, are shoved to the one side. What they do with the lower-income brackets, they give you "wedge issues": How do you feel about abortion? Did you have one recently? You know, this sort of thing. These kinds of issues, which tend to divide people, about social-cultural issues, which are not the primary issues of the nation, are then used: to divide people, to weaken, and put the poorer strata of the population against each other; and thus, with a small group, to be able to control the political process as a whole.

So, that's what we're up against.

It's necessary to understand this in a deeper way. And, we've gone through this, and most of you know it, because we did a lot of work around this, about this problem of Synarchism. When the United States was founded, at that timeit began from about 1763 on, when the British became an empire, the British East India Company, through the Treaty of Paris of 1763. And, the British at that point, the British East India Company, had two concerns: One, was to destroy France. And other, was to prevent the English colonies in North America from achieving independence. These were the two policy-planks, of the founding of the British Empire, in the middle of the 18th Century.

We founded our republic. We founded it with a Constitution, which is the best in the world, of any country. Qualitatively, far and above. But, we were only 7 million people, and once the French Revolution had occurred, which was organized by the British in order to destroy France, and the terror of Napoleon was unleashed, from that point on, the United States was isolated. And all kinds of things happened to us, because we were a small nation, of 7 million people, against the entire forces of Europe.

So, that was our situation. And, we didn't get out of that, until Lincoln changed the country with his leadership, during the 1860s. Then we became a great power. But, from that point on, the intent of European forcesespecially the Britishwas to either take us over, or destroy us. And, European countries were never able to develop a system of government comparable to our own, because of this factor.

So therefore, with our Constitution, we, as a nation, have a special mission, through our Constitutional tradition. And it's to try to bring forth on this planet, what was the original intention of the founding of our republic: To create a model republic, which would inspire other parts of the world, to do the same in their own countries. And to bring about a system of a fraternity, among sovereign republics, which would create a peaceful order among nations of this planet.

That is what we accomplished in a sense in World War II. You had the British, who were part of this fascist operation. But the British didn't like the idea of giving up their empire, to a continental Europe, Hitler-run, imperial system. So therefore, some people in Britain (including Joe Kennedy, the Ambassador, the father of Ted Kennedy) was fired, because he was a Goering-lover, of Hermann Goeringvery close to the fascists.

But, nonetheless, these fascists decided to support Roosevelt in fighting the Nazis. And we led, in defeating the danger of Nazism. If Roosevelt had not done what he had done, the world would have been under a fascist system. It actually would have been led by Adolf Hitler, and his crew would have ruled. Roosevelt saved the United statesand saved civilization, by that leadership, and we saved it.

So, it has become our destiny, in part, to take the legacy of what we did, in forming this republic, to be the leading institution to fight for a system of fraternity among sovereign nation-states, and cooperation on this planet. That's our historic mission.

It's ultimately the only security we have. Because, horrors can develop in other parts of the world: If we can not work, to create a just world order, among sovereign nation-statesnot an empire, but a cooperative system among sovereign nation-statesthis planet, with the technologies that exist, and the dangers that exist, will go into Hell.

Therefore, we have a mission: Not only to save our country, under the threat of the present state of affairs, the present depression; but, at the same time, to take a leading initiative, as our country, to bring about cooperation among nation-states around the planet, using our influence, and our perspective of that world.

Now, this is exactly what I did, in the case of going at this Southwest Asia policy: There can be no peace in the Middle East, unless the United States does its job. Because, you can notapart from the negative factors, like the Bush Administrationyou can not have a Middle East peace, without settling the Palestinian-Israeli question. And you can not do that, unless the United States does it! It is impossible to bring that about, except by action by the United States. We can do it. We can bring it about.

It takes understanding. It takes an approach like the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 to do itbut we can make it happen. And, if other nations of the region, as indicated by response to my proposals recently, from the so-called Arab world, there's a willingness to go in that direction. And there's a willingness to trust my initiative in pushing that policy. So, all these things are tied together.

Here we aregreat depression; we're about to disintegrate; we have decayed. The people who are running the country are decadent! They're corrupted by the transformation in culture, which occurred, especially from about 40 years ago, on. We have a younger generation, in the 18 to 25 age-group, which know they have no future, under their parents' system! Therefore, they want a solution. And, if the younger generation can, somehow, kick their parents' generation into some degree of sensibility, to say: "Daddy and Mommy, please rejoin the human race. Give up your fantasy life, and rejoin the human race. Your grandchildren and our grandchildren demand it. They have a right to life. They have a right to a future. Come back to your senses."

And, if we can do that, and if we do it with our Constitutional tradition: We, as the United States, will, once again, as with our founding as a republic; with our renewal under Abraham Lincoln's leadership; with our renewal of our role in World War II; we can, once again, become ourselves.

And, that's what I'm committed to. I can't say how it will work, or when it will work. I know what I must do. I know what we must do. I know the concept we must have, and continue to work for.

I do know, that Kerry is a loserwell, he's a loser! People who were thinking of supporting a Democratic candidate, and hoped that he would be that, on the Republican side, are deserting it, and saying, "It's hopeless." Some people are even saying, it's better to have Bush in, because Bush will sink things faster than Kerry will; and that will force the issue, where we will be forced to change.

That's our situation.

So, what we are doing, is a morale factor, for the U.S. population to know that there's something else, besides what we have now.

Look what we had in the year 2000: You had two absolutely incompetent candidates for President of the United States! You had George W. Bush: a mental case! A stupid character! He's only a puppet for a ventriloquist, called Dick Cheney. And Dick Cheney can only talk, when he takes the rug out of his mouth. And we had Gore, who was also equally bad, in a different way. The American people had, in effect, nobody to vote for, in the year 2000! And they got nothing, as a result! Or, less than nothing.

Again, now, we have Bush re-running: Now, we know what he ishe's the dumbest man in America! And a mental case on top of it. He's a puppet! And then, you have this Kerry, whoyou knowis probably a nice guy. If people came into his office, and said, "I got a problem. My neighbor's got a problem," he'd take down the name, and have some aide go out, and try to do something, like a social worker. So, he'd be a kindly social worker. But, a Presidency of the United States, is not be a social worker, a kindly social worker at this time! We've got some very serious issues, which he refuses to face.

So, we have, again! A disaster! Going into the summer conventions, we have a disaster. We have a Bush-Cheney ticket, as of now, which is going in for renewal. We have Kerry ticket, and who knows what else, which, as of now, is utterly incompetent! It's a replay, in that sense, of the year 2000, where the American people had a choice between nothing and nothing! And again, we're being given a choice between nothing and nothing, with this acute crisis.

The problem I get, is an acute demoralization, spreading among our people. They don't say, "no other candidate can win"! They say, "We are going to lose!" We are losing. It is as a people, that are losing! It is the country, that's losing! Not the candidates.

And, the only chance is now, is that the onrush of this financial collapse, and the anger of what's happening in Iraq, to what that implies: that these two things will produce a shock, which will force a change, in the way this election campaign is going.

What we have, on the positive sideas you may have observed: The center of our system of government, is the Executive branch. The Executive branch is not just the President; the Executive branch is the professional military; it's the diplomats; it's the intelligence service; it's the other people who are part of the institutions of Federal governmentnot only while serving in government; but also out of government, as college professors, or in some profession, who are still in active relationship to people in the government apparatus.

The Executive branch of government of the United States, is unique, among governments in the world, in the fact, that it follows the Constitution: We don't make coups in our country, against our government. They do that in other countries. But, on the sense, that the Executive branchwe have a Presidential system, which is supposed to react, as necessary, to breaking developments. We're not a parliamentary system.

We have, in addition to these sections of our government: You see, the military, the intelligence services, are leading the attack, against the Bush Administration's horror-show in Iraq, in the Middle East. That's where it's coming from. These are people I've been working with, in this area of our establishment, the Executive branch: sections of the intelligence service, military, diplomats, and so forth.

And also, with people in our Congressional system, Legislative systemboth on the state legislator level, and on the Federal. And you see, now, as you see reflected in the press, you see a process, in which a number of Senators, other members of Congress, are working together; working together with retired generals; working together with retired intelligence people; working together with others. You find a certain section of the press, like you see sometimes, the New York Times, there's a story that's planted, which may have originated with me. It then is re-written by somebody else, and it comes out in the New Yorker magazine, or the New York Times, as the way the Children of Satan was reflected in the New York Times.

So, we have a process, among institutions which are associated with our system, our establishment, which are reacting, against this horror-show in Iraq, as it's coming out.

So therefore, our situation is not hopeless. But, the system works slowly. In the political party campaign organizations, we have the worst rottennessboth in the Republican Party and in Democratic Party: It's rotten.

But, the under conditions of crisis, where the people realize, they can not submit to this party process any more; and, in which important people who are associated with the Executive branch, who are also associated with the Legislative branch of governmentboth on the state and the Federal levelrealize how serious the crisis is, a shock will produce a reaction. And, you've already seen a good deal of it. You've seen it around the pictures from Iraq. The pictures have produced a shock. People have gotten off the edge, and moving.

So, the situation is not hopeless. We have to keep fighting, all the way through: Because there are forces, which know they have to move, and these shocks, which will come fast and furious now, will give us new opportunities.

We have toreally, re-create our political system, again. It's been destroyed over the past 40 years. We have to re-create it. We have to build a process, a political process, in our country, which involves the people, involves the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, as active parts of this process. The poorer people of the country, think of themselves as begging of handouts; or nagging for handouts. They don't think of themselves as having the power, to influence the shaping of the policies of government at the top. They're begging for the bottombegging nastily, begging aggressivelybut they're begging!

They're not thinking, about how to make the country work. They're not debating, how to make the country work. They're debating little issues. Where they get this, where they get that; who gets this, who gets that.

In the meantime, we're losing everything.

But, we've got to put the country back together, again. And we have an opportunity presented to us, known as a crisis: a great financial and strategic crisis. This crisis will come to us as a shock, which may force us to realize we've been behaving like fools for too long. For two generations, we've been behaving like fools. We'll stop behaving like fools; we'll think of ourselves, asallas participating in the leadership of our country, the leadership of our institutions. And we'll go in, not saying, "I want this; I want that. My neighbor needs this." We go in, saying: "What does this country need? What do our people need? What does the next generation need?"

Start to think like a President, as if you were a President; and you're caring for the country. Try to find out, what is right for the country. And find your place, in that. Find your own sense of identity, that you're part of that. That's what we have to do.

Okay. [applause]

LAROUCHE IN DIALOGUE IN TEANECK, NEW JERSEY CAMPAIGN MEETING

PHILIP RUBINSTEIN: I think I'm pinching hitting, here, as they would say. So, we can just take some questions, if people can raise there hand, and identify yourself, if you can.

Q: My name is Lilian [ph]. I want to know what your position is on the death penalty.

LAROUCHE: It should not be allowed.

Q: [followup] One more question: What about denying people the opportunity to vote, when they've imprisoned?

LAROUCHE: That's another big one: It's not quite the same, but it's close to it.

We've taken strata of young males, of presumably African descent, and we have used the so-called "guidelines," in sentencing, not only to imprison them selectivelyand it is a selective action. But then, we do something elsewe then give them long terms. Now, it's done by a system. The system is the guideline system: Under this, prosecutors are rewarded for, not only the number of convictions they get, but for the amount of money they get, the fines, and for the number of years of sentencing they get.

Under the Federal system, sentencing goes in five years increments! You can have a guy caught, dealing with pothe can get 25 years. All right, this guy's in prison. He's probably in there for 10 years, 15 years, or 5 yearswhatever. What happens to him? His family comes to visit him, weekendswith the children. What happens, then, after about a decade? You know, a couple of decade? The guy who's imprisoned, his children are now arrested for the same crime he was arrested for, when he went to prison!

So, we produce a community of crime, and we've gone particularly at certain strata of the population. First, those of African descent, and secondly, those of Hispanic descent. We've selected those, especially, and look at the communities, look at the children. Look at the economic situation. Look at the family life. What we are doing, we are destroying these people! Usually over minor crimes.

And while they're destroyedwell, you got a guy who's a big drug dealer. The FBI picks him upor, some other agency. Do they put him in prison? No! They don't put in prison! They put him on the street! As their man, to catch more victims. He's the guy who now goes out, and gets customers, and turns those customers in, who get time, 15 to 25 years.

So, you look at the effect of this, in terms of the percentile, of the population which is affected by this system, this criminal justice system, and you say, "We are destroying, systematically, a whole section of our population." And the first thing we say is: We've got to do something about reviewing these guidelines, reversing them, and having courts actually clear this thing, to reduce these sentences, first of all. If the sentence is legitimate, reduce it, to a sensible sentence. Then, also, work for the immediate rehabilitation of that person, as quickly as possible in society, and provide access to work and so forth, for them. Because, you've got to think about the next generation. What is going to happen to those children, if the father's in prison for 15 years, and he can't get a job when he gets out, except kind of a bum thing, and he's probably going to go back to the same thing he was put in prison for?

We are destroying our people.

Q: [followup] Why have a prisoner's vote being denied? If you're an American citizen, you're supposed to be able to vote.

LAROUCHE: Of course, we should. But we have a fascist Justice Department. In the middle of the 19, together with the return to the death penalty in the 1970s, we have five judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, who shouldn't be allowed as dog catchers. Led by Scalia, Antonin Scalia. So, this is systematic process, as part of the destruction of the country, and it's intentional.

These guys are practically children of the Confederacy: That's their mentality.

What is Scalia? Scaliathe same thing as the Confederacy: "shareholder value." What's "shareholder value"? It used to be called "slaveholder value"! John Locke's philosophy of law.

So, there is a deliberate intention to destroy sections of the population. That's what's happening with health care. The same thing is happening with health care. This is deliberate.

So, we have to recognizethe death penalty's simple, straightforward: It's wrong.

Q: [followup] What about white-collar crime? Why do they not go to prison?

LAROUCHE: Oh-ho! Well, that's because they pay a small part of their loot as a fine. The Enron cases are a good example. [laughing]

Q: [followup] Right! Exactly! [laughing]

LAROUCHE: Well, it's obvious! I mean, well, you don't have to put them in prison for a long time: Just take the money away[generalized laughter].

Q: I have a question for Mr. LaRouche. [My name is] Muhammad. You said Kerry's a loser, as he proved himself to be so, over time since he declared himself. But he is in a powerful position. And I discussed this with one of our members, Richardmy mentor. My Jewish mentor. He's not here, he's in the office. I've known him for about ten years, super person. I asked him the same question, but I want to get the scoop from you. I said, "Can we redeem Kerry?"

LAROUCHE: Well, I've done everything I could. They said he should come to me and I'll take his problem over.

Q: [followup] I mean, have we?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure! No look, I have indirect representation in Kerry's office regularly. We say what should be said, to that office. For example, he did pick up my 10 million jobsbut, he didn't know what went with it! [laughter]

Q: [followup] He's very selective.

LAROUCHE: But, the problem is, he also wants money, because he wants it for the campaign. That's his conception. He's playing within the upper 20% suburban policy.

You know, you say, if I'm running an election, do I need a lot of money? No, I don't need a lot of money! Maybe it's a lot of money by poor people's standard, but it's not a lot of money, like this $40, $50, $70, $80 million. You don't need to buy the voters, if the voters are working for themselves: That is, if the people are going to the polls, because they are fighting for themselves, and thinking as citizens about the nation and they're out there, saying, "I'm going to do my job for the nation. It's in my interest to do so," you don't have to buy them. You may have to help them get to the polls. You may have to have people volunteer to assist them get to the polls and so forth. But: If you you're trying to buy the vote, it's very expensive.

So, the problem with Kerry is, Kerry's problem is, first of all, he is a guy who is not really capable, emotionally, of dealing with the kinds of issues that have to be dealt with.

Q: [followup] Does he know the issues?

LAROUCHE: Hmmm?

Q: [followup] Does he know the issues? Does he know what's at stake?

LAROUCHE: No. He doesn't understand reality. He's the kind of guy, who would respond to a human interest case. In other words: some mother's sick; a problem in a family. That is, a do-gooder. A social worker. He has shown a social worker mentality. For example, in his Iowa campaign, he became very popular, because he went sort of door to door campaigning, and he went through and got lists of complaints. People would come up to him, and tell him what their story was, and he would refer the story, say, "This can be fixed this way. This can be fixed this way." He's a do-gooder. But, he is not a conceptual person who has the guts, to think through a conceptual issue. He's not an un-courageous person, in some ways. But, he doesn't have the guts.

Look, he failedwhen he was on the Iran-Contra job, and he failed on that. He finked out! Admittedly, he was under death threatbut, he backed offon the Iran-Contra issue. He's backed off on a number of things. He does not have the qualities needed to become a President.

Now, what you can do, sometimes, with a candidate like that, if somebody else is really running him [general laughter].

Q: I was hoping you might talk about the history of this region, and its connection to Alexander Hamilton. And going back to the Revolutionary War. And the industrialization of the country. Because, especially, the area of Paterson, we were thinking about, when we were campaigning in Paterson, using the city as a kind of polemic, because it's a hell-hole now. But, you say to people, you know, "You want the solution to Paterson, it happens to be right under your nose." And, I'm wondering if you can give us some good history, the history of this area.

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, when the country was developing, the concentration of power production, ran from Boston, down toward Virginia. And this has a very specific history, which Graham Lowry wrote about, in some detail in his Vol. I of his book. But, you look at the way this developed: You had Friedrich List came in, in the second wave of development of the region: Friedrich List came in and moved up the Delaware; moved up the rivers, to develop the water system. Canals were crucial at that point. Then, what followed canals was the Reading Railroad, for example, which was, again, Friedrich List's operation.

So, this part of the concentration of productive poweragricultural and other productive power. And what happened there, was a logistical point, with the development at the time, in which industries developed. And, you had, for example, the iron for the cannon, for the Revolutionary War, were made in southern Jersey, in the bog iron fields. It still exists there today, as a museum

Q: [followup] Yeah, I've been there. I'm from there.

LAROUCHE: Oh, okay. Fine. You know the bog iron thing from the Pine Barrens. That's where they had these little bacteria that would create these balls of iron; the deposit had these balls, bog-iron. And they had a smelting plant. And from the smelting of little balls that the bacteria had left in the swamp lamps, they made the bog-iron that the Revolutionary War was fought on.

So, yes, this had a history. And all the way through, up through beyond World War II, into the 1960s, this area still had a very strong industrial potential. You saw, the Ford Motor assembly plant, all these kinds of things were here, were reflections, were byproducts of this potential. As in Connecticut you had machine-tool capabilities.

And the driving thing for industry, is machine-tool capabilities. Who can make machine tools? You make machine tools, that's how you make products. If you can't make machine tools, you can't make products. So, you had Connecticutmachine toolsaround the Boston area. Machine tool. Here, Jersey, machine tool. Philadelphia, machine tool. The center of the machine tool, running west.

So, this area was the heart of the industrial development of the United States, in that period. And it went on for generation to generation.

Q: [followup] What happened?

LAROUCHE: Wellwhat happened, is, we went to becoming a post-industrial society. We became more and more like the Confederacy. We had a terrible thing, such as Woodrow Wilson, who polluted this state, before he became President.

Q: [followup] I'm going to ask you a lot of questions.

RUBINSTEIN: Well, let's goif you get to monopolize it, you get to monopolize it. Does anybody else have a question? Okay, yeah.

Q: Good day, Mr. LaRouche, my name is Carl Fener [ph]. On the question I'm asking also is on trade, and on the teaching system in the United States, here. My cousin, she came up last year, because she'd been recruited to come here as a teacher. And the question I'm asking: Why it is, that this country have to go outside to recruit teachers and nurses, and we can't produce teachers and nurses in this country?

LAROUCHE: Because we decided not to. This is a result of the cultural paradigm-shift, which came over the course of the past 40 years. We went away from being a producer nation.

And, look at, for example, our medical system as a whole: Who took care of the British, in the recent period? The British were taken care of by Indian doctors! By Indian and Pakistani doctors. More and more Americans are being taken care of by Indian physicians, Indian doctors. Some are trained here, but they're Indian doctors.

So, we are depending more and more, not only for skills, professional skills coming into the United States from so-called Third World areas. We are no longer doing it ourselves.

Q: [followup] But, then we are looking at some brain-drain in South America. What I'm seeing happen home right now, is that America is brain-draining all the best people from our country, and bringing them here, on the pretense of a lot of money. So, when they come here, it is not so. But, then, when they leave back in Guyana, is illiterate teachers. So the country is becoming illiterate, because the best teachers is going into America, and I want to know why we can't produce teachers to sendwe should be able to be choosing teachers, and sending them around the world; not taking from those countries and bringing them here, and then we be saying, "These people are taking our jobs." And you bringing them in, and people right here can't get jobs. So, nobody's addressing that.

LAROUCHE: This is outsourcing. In other words, you've got two things. It takes 25 years to produce a professional in any country, from birth to professional status.

All right, now, we take productsthe U.S. population is being sustained by products made abroad, not by products made in the United States. We're outsourcing. We're globalized. Now, the same happens to human beings: Instead of taking a product, in the sense of a saleable product, from a country like Guyana, you take another kind of production: a human being! That country produces a limited number of talented professionals. So, what you do, is, instead of producing a professional in the United States, which we stopped doing, in large degree, we go down to reach down there, and you grab one of the professionals from there, and rob that country of one of its professionals! That's what you're describing. And that's part of the globalized system.

What you're dealing with, is the attempt to destroy the sovereign nation-state, and reduce the world to an English-speaking empire of Tony Blair and George Bushor something like that. This empire will gobble up resourceshuman resources and so forthfrom all over the world.

It will also destroy human potential inside the United States! The idea is: We've got to get rid of high-priced labor inside the United States. How do you it? You kill it off.

So, now you get cheap labor: whether as cheap-labor products, from Mexico and so forth, as virtual slave labor; or, you reach into a country, a foreign country, you eliminate your skilled professional in the United States"because they're too expensive"and you bring somebody in, who'll work cheaper, from one of these countries.

So, this part of the process of globalization. It's NAFTA, in its worst aspect, the human side. We're depending on, we're using Indian mathematicians for our IT industryfrom India! I was just in Bangalore, this last year. Bangalore is a center of this. You have Indian mathematicians are being employed, in great numbers, for the IT industry. We're doing the same kind of thing: We're destroying the United States. We're no longer maintaining our capabilities. We're no longer maintaining our professional cadres we require. We're no longer having high-quality production. We're shutting down our industriesand we're looting the world!

This is the characteristic of an empire, in the tradition of the Roman Empire: which impoverished its people inside Italy, and looted the world to sustain the empire, until the empire itself collapsed. That's what we're doing.

Q: [followup] So, what are you going to do about this? What would be your policy against that?

LAROUCHE: Go back to what we call a protectionist system. That we used to have, before Kennedy was killed.

Q: [followup] So, you have schools, and everything

LAROUCHE: Yeah right. Go back to the thing, a protectionist system. You have what's called a "fair price" policy. And the idea is, you protect the U.S. goods, so they can be produced at a fair price, which is the price at which you can maintain quality of labor, and maintain the quality of the physical capital.

Q: Isn't it true that the Roman Empire ceased to be an empire, when it when it ran out of people to go ahead and loot?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, it used them up. More or less. It happened in the area of southern France for example, and other areas. And Italy, itself. It was a dark age. It was called a dark age. And we're on the verge of something like a dark age, now. This is the way we're going. If we don't have an answer for this crisis, now, we will go into a dark age.

Q: With the educational system right now, it costs more than a lot of people make in a year, to go to college for a year.

LAROUCHE: This is the answer [indicating LYM members]. [questioner laughs] No, we've started the answer. Yeah, the educational system doesn't really work.

Now, what we've got: you got a bunch of these young guys, 18 to 25. If they're organized in a proper way, and involved politicallyas well as scientifically and otherwisethey are going to be the leaders of a new culture. And they're willing to do it.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, I'm part of the youth movement here in New Jersey. I had a question on Christian fundamentalism in the United States. This is something I've been reading on; I've been reading your papers, that you wrote on this stuff. I was just reading "Plato and the New Political Science," which is something you wrote in the '80s. And I was reading an article in Fidelio that had to deal with Jesus Christ and civilization. And this whole idea, that there are 70 million people in America that make up this base, you know, of people that worship the high priestsyou know, the high priests like Pat Robertson, and all those people all over the country. I see them on TV every day. They have thousands and hundreds of thousands of people just worshipping them and just listening to them. And this is a problem! Because, I mean, the people not necessarily have a bad intent: But, you have these people like Pat Robertson, that control a whole mass of people.

And how do you deal with the problem of actually getting people like this to realize that they're actually the cult that's destroying this country, as a opposed to we. You know, we get the slap for ityou know, "Oh, it's the LaRouche people. This is a cult." You know, "These are the people that want to destroy the war in the nation. Because, they're out here telling the truth."

And, it's become very disturbing to me, because every day I go out and I talk to people, and this kind of neurosis is growing, and it's growing, and it's growing, you know. It doesn't look like it has a boundary condition to it.

So, I don't know what you have to say about it, but.

LAROUCHE: Well, simple: First of all, you go back to the 14th Century in Europe, which was a new dark age, it's called. You had the population of Europe dropped by one-third, the total population; and one-half of the parishes of Europe vanish from the map, physically. Now, one of the characteristic features of this, was a group which was sort of the "Pat Robertson group": It was called the Flagellants. They would go around in great hordes, predatory hordes. And they indulged in beating themselves. The religion was based on beating themselves for their sins. And they were predatorsthey would just go from area to area, and steal. That's the way they would live. They were "evangelizing": So, they would go around beating themselves. And they would come in like cockroaches or locusts, and cities would beat them off.

Now, this is the precedent for Pat Robertson, today. You have, this is a form of organized insanity, which has two components: One is nominally Catholic, but they're not Christians. They're very popular around Northern Virginia. They're theshall we saythe Allen/John Foster Dulles/Avery Dulles Catholics. For the fascists. These are the rat-line: You know, when they got the Nazis out of Europe, they ran into South America and North America, and they became part of this thing. It was called the "rat-line," like running down the rat-line on a ship. And so, they're there.

Now, they have a unity, which involvesthe whole thing like Tom DeLay is typical of this. They have a so-called Protestant fundamentalist unit, and the two are together. You have Hispanic tradition, the tradition of the Grand Inquisitor. The tradition of the Inquisition, which you see reflected by Mel Gibson, with this movie, on the Passion. He's part of that. So, you have this kind of thing.

You have it embraced with the Confederacy, which is what Pat Robertson represents. The Confederacy is centered around the Nashville Agrarians, which trained Kissinger and others. So, you these two forces, which are used as a force against civilization, against culture. They're used like a Ku Klux Klan lynch mob. And they have pretty much that mentality. But, they are like the Flagellants.

And, when you allow a culture to come demoralized: What do these guys believe? They don't believe in God. They believe, that if they can get an immediate battle of Armageddon going in the Middle Eastthey don't have to pay rent next month; their diseases will be cured, free of charge, by miracles; they will have sex forever, without even having to buy Viagra. And this is the kind of thing they believe in.

And you have a lot of fakery in organized religion, especially these types, or that type. They don't understand what immortality is; they have no religious belief in a meaningful sense. But, they form these kinds of cults, and they're extremely dangerous.

The only cure is, they need to be evangelized. [questioner laughs, surprised] You know, you actually have to say, "Okay, what is immortality?" They couldn't define it for you. They couldn't define it for you. You say, "What is the meaning of Christ?" They couldn't define it for. They say, "Well I have been taught..." "The Bible says..." "The Bible says..." hmm? And everyone has their own interpretation.

What's their argument? You say, "Well, that's nonsense, from a theological standpoint."

"No! God wrote this, in the King James Version! And He intended that I would understand this, automatically. And therefore, whatever I read in this section or passage of the Biblethat's what God intended me to believe! Therefore that's the right the interpretation of the Bible."

That's the kind of thing you run into.

So, what do you do? They need to be evangelized. [background chuckling] No. They really, actually need to know, what do you mean by immortality? What is the difference between man and animal? They don't know the difference. And so, that's the way you approach it.

And, by creating a movement, a political movement, which moralizes the country, moralizes the people, you'll save some people from this garbage pile they've wandered into and are rolling in.

RUBINSTEIN: I want to throw one thing inI'll take advantage of my position herethese things seem frightening, and they are frightening. But, remember in the United States you had the Great Awakening, Jonathan Edwards: Man is a worm. This swept the United States in the early 18th Century, 1730-1740.

But, precisely the kind of argument that Lyn put forward came from the Founding Fathers, and you had the American Revolution, that in a sense, overwhelmed them. They were evangelized by it. Or, you had the Millennarians, in the United States, really began before the Civil War1846-48.

Lincoln, who was a great quoter of the Bible: He never went to church. He knew the Bible better than any of his opponents. And, again, that address to what humanity is, overwhelmed what appears to be this force of insanity. You have to not get overwhelmed by the insanity. And, if you're not overwhelmed by the insanity, the power of these ideas are greater.

Q: [followup] I'm trying not to get overwhelming. But, when 70 million people are talking about the Rapture that is going to happen, because war in the Middle East is sent by God, okay? God sent Bush to destroy Saddam Hussein, and this is in the Bible. You have to deal with this, you know?

RUBINSTEIN: Yeah, but, 70 million people, that's partly the thing that keeps being thrown around. Now, they've got the problem that, apparently God ordered torture in the prisonssome of them may get turned around!

Q: [followup] I think people actually see this as necessary, for the war. It might be evil, but it's the greater good.

RUBINSTEIN: No, I think that's why you have a lot of the military guys saying "forget it." This is what Lyn organized. So, I think you can turn these people.

Anyway, next. Ken.

Q: You raked over a smoldering coal, to get a little fire, back in me, around 1982-83, when I didn't know you. But, I got very discouragedI had hope in the Reagan campaign. I thought it was something that was going to be good. And then, when it began to unravel soon thereafter, as far as my interpretation was concerned, I got really discouraged, and I said to myself, "How do I have a right to second-guess what a President is doing? Maybe I don't know enough. Maybe he knows things I don't know, so I need to know enough to be President, before I can, as a citizen or voter, really make a decision that would be effective, if everybody else knew this truth, that I'm looking for." Well, then that means I've got to work myself up to the point, where I can be a President!

So, actually, I pursued that idea, generally, in my own research, my own readings for a long timeand I'm talking about years. And, before I went back, and I thought, "Maybe I need to look a little bit at the Presidents, then, what they did"and I got very discouraged then, because they didn't act like Presidents!

So, this has kind of smoldered. Then, one day I met Leni Rubinstein, Elliot Greenspan, Webster Tarpley, John Basar, and people this, and what they were saying was such a concentration of some of the ideas that I had been unable to express well, in meeting with people, in such a total concentration; and use of these ideas critically, at the moment that they're interfacing with me. And it stirs up something else, and so this is my question: And that is, I feel this need to be able, when I'm talking to people as an organizer, there's so much that can be saidyou can talk, and talk, and talk, and talk. But, the thing is, there's something that's crucial, at that moment in time and that place, of interface with this personand this is so true of this campaignwhere you need to say the right thing and you need to be doing that consistently. And I have so many other things I do in my work that are really distracted, that I think I need to do it in order to keep living, see?

And so, the trick is, that I find myself really straying, and so I have to, suddenly, have something I come back to, to look at that fire"okay, there's the message; now, that's what I need to say to those people." So, what I'm really asking: What are those things? How do I keep myself in that state of action?"

LAROUCHE: I've read a lot about this, as you probably have noticedjust exactly this problem. The basic education for citizenship has been provided to us by Plato, with the Socratic dialogues. Because, this contains a panoply of kinds of topics, which enable you think about a society as a whole.

I mean, you start with a question of immortality, which is what the dialogues start with, the nature of immortality: which is argued on the basis of Socrates' death. But, then, everything is in there. How does the human mind work, in general? What is politics? What is religion? All these things are in there.

Now, you could go at this two ways. You could say, "What's a list of things I should know, as a repertoire of things I could react to as appropriate to a situation?" Or, "Can I start from the top, and look at society from the top, that is, the top of the issues? And then, recognize the place on the map, where something that comes up, fits?"

Now, we try to do this with this youth movement, which is an attempt to revive, from the youthyou know, they've got energy and time: They will go on for 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning, thrashing out discussions. And it's normal. I mean, this is what we mean by "higher education": You have people, 18 years old, approximately; they've come into a time where they've passed from adolescents, where they think of themselves as something still between children and adults; they now think of themselves as worried, young adults. Worried about the future, about their future. And they are delighted to have the opportunity, to spend some time, a few years, developing themselves as adults. They have adult emotions, adult feelings, adult insecurities, and so forth. And they work through this.

If they work through it, with a method, which is the Socratic method, which I've saidthere's 15 to 25 people in a group working together, as like a class-group. And, you're dealing with paradoxes, not doctrine, so the people are making discoveries of ideas, they're not trying to learn how to "repeat after me" something or other from a textbook. In this case, you develop a state of mind, which requires a lot of work: Young people at a university-age, if they're serious, are going to work pretty much around the clock. They're going to work intensely. They're not going to work in isolation. They're going to work, often, in groups of this type, this 15 to 25 group. Which is why I insist that our education policy, for secondary schools, especially, and for universities, must be based on 15 to 25 persons in the classno more, no less.

Because, if you have too few, and you try to get a discussion going, you may have too few people; you don't get it started. If you have too many, you're going to exclude people, from participation, who come into it more slowly. So therefore, you want a size of group, where you get this kind of interaction.

Now, what you need, therefore, is a society, or a movement in which this is going on, among people in that age-group. And the spillover of the discussion occurring in that age-group, becomes a sort of remedial approach to the kind of education we should have had in society all along. And they'll do it. They'll do it, not by some programI tell people, "Keep your hands off it. Don't try to direct these guys. These young guys. Don't try to over-direct them. You've got to let them develop themselves. And they've got to develop themselves, from what they are, not from some assumed model. You've got to intervene to help, but don't try to sit on top of them. Don't suppress them. Don't try to over-control them."

Then, you get, as a reward, they're the ones that go out in the streets; they're the ones who go out and do the activity; they're the ones who work around the clock; they're the shock troops, that stir society up. And, it's the fact that their impact on society enables your generation, and mine, to intervene. Because they have stirred up the dust. And now, we've created a situation, where people say, "Hey, these young guys around herethey drive me crazy! They drive me crazy!" Right? And that's the way it works.

And therefore, what happens, what I try to do, in my role, is to focus on those issues from the top. Deal with the problems with society as a whole, from the top. And, of course naturally, because I'm an expert in economics, I do a lot of work on that direction, as well as the political-strategic things.

But, my view, is the way we get to be effective is to build youth movements, of this type, in a very natural, organic wayand lots of them. And that is going to transform the country. If you can get 5% of the U.S. population of that age-group, involved in this kind of thing, you can change the country. And it will be better for us allincluding you. [audio break]

RUBINSTEIN: ...is that reasonably accurate?

LAROUCHE: Well, I would just say, I'm very much among them. But, as a matter of fact, there's only Kerry and I left. [general rolling laughter] We're down to one or two. And Kerry doesn't function. His batteriesyou know, he has to have his batteries replaced or something. You hear theclickslowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slow... The kind of toy that's running down, the batteries're running out?

No, I'm one of the one or two. That's all that's left. The others are all gone.

Q: Mr. LaRouche? I have this question about the current 20%, that the current Presidential candidates are speaking to and for. And with all the outsourcing of middle class jobs, and industrial and manufacturing jobs, I've been wondering over the past few years: who's going to be left? To even make up that 20% to maintain this country? I don't see how anyone's going to have any money, because we're not going to earn any money; and the outsourcing is really inroading into the middle classso how much of a percentage do you think is going to be left in this country, that's going to have any money?

LAROUCHE: We're headed for a breakup of society. What we've hadremember, this was the 20% was the characteristic of the Clinton years; in which Gore, from Michael Steinhardt's organization, the Democratic Leadership Council, moved in to take over the Democratic Party.

Now, this is a process, which actually was older. It started from London, and became the Project Democracy. See, go back a bit further: Go back into the 1970s, you had this fascist, Samuel P. Huntington, wrote a book called Crisis in Democracy, a paper. Together with his Clash of Civilizations paper and some other things he did.

So, there was formed, under British direction, in the United States, in 1982, the Project Democracy, which became the National Endowment for Democracy, and became the thing that runs the Congress. That is, you have Project Democracy essentially runs the Congress. It is actually run from England, and it is run by the circles which were associated earlier with Margaret Thatcher, but also the British Fabian Society, and then, of course, with Tony Blair now, and the circles around him.

Their idea was, is to control society through an upper 20% of family-income brackets. This was called, ultimately, the "suburban policy." It was a complement to the "Southern Strategy" of Nixon: Nixon went down to Biloxi, Mississippi in 1966, and met with the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, and formed the Southern Strategy. He got all the racists out of the Democratic Party to join the Republican Party. That's what happened then.

Then, you had a similar movement, which was started by Michael Steinhardt and company, which became the Democratic Leadership Council. And this was what Gore was part of, and Hillary jumped into this thing at a later point. But, it came out of England.

So, what this means, essentially, is, look at what has happened to the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, over the past period: It's not just money. It's conditions of life. How many jobs in a family? What kind of standard of living does this represent, physically? What kind of education? What kind of neighborhoods do they live in? What kind of schools, what kind of hospital care, do they have?

So, you had a declivitythe idea was to take what was called the suburban group. Go out from the cities. The same thing in the South. Example: In the Southern states, you go into these things that were cities; you go into Little Rocknobody there! In the state capital, except when the government is in session. You go into areas like Montgomery [Alabama]: What's happened? Over the South, the persons of African descent control the cities, but the cities are being destroyed. All the white racists, have moved to the countryside, right? Around the cities. In other words, you got a hotel downtown, as we had, in Montgomery, it's a pretty broken down operation. If you want to find a "nice" hotel, so-called, good restaurants, and so forth, go outside to the suburbs, where the Klan eats!

You would take the case. Then, you have Detroit. Detroit downtown, any day of the week, is a ghost town. Where'd the people go? They went outsideagain, a typical racist phenomenon: went outside into the suburbs, where the people now live.

This is true all over the country. This is what the meaning of the "suburban policy" is. Concentrate the power of voting machines, in bases which are selected in the suburban areas, where people have houses which are mortgaged at more than $400 to $600,000. Look for the million-dollar, $800,000 mortgage. The fat-cat area.

All right. The idea was, then, to manipulate the politics, so the people in the lower 80% would not have access to control over the political machinery. But would be given agendas, which are prefabricated agendas, like these crazy things, like this 70 million, he was talking aboutthe so-called Christian fundamentalists. They were neither Christians, nor very fundamentally sound. But, they are the sheep, who were herded, by people like Tom DeLay, and Tom DeLay's masters, racist sheep, who are herded to control politics. The way they control the mass of the population, the lower 80%, is with so-called "wedge issues." You take "wedge issues": "I had an abortion. You didn't have an abortion." That's a wedge issueyou divid it on that basis. So, that's how the operation works.

Or, the other side, is that, "I have to be concerned about my local community. I have to be concerned about my neighborhood. I have no time to worry about how the country is being run, or economic policy, or any other policy. I have to be concerned my conditions, in my neighborhood."

Wedge issue. You now think in the small. You don't pay any attention to what's going on in the large. The major policies, the major economic policies, budgetary policy of the nation, economic policy of the nation, science policy of the nation, foreign policy: That determines what happens in the local community! But, you take away from that. Stay out of that. Concentrate on the local issues. You're looking at the effect, not the cause. So, you're trying to govern, by complaining about the effect, while somebody else is governing, actually, by controlling the causes of those effects. Hmm? So, that's the way it works.

Now, what that means, is this: That means, that we are on the verge of the destruction of the United States, the internal destruction of the United States, because you can not have this division between an upper 20% and a lower 80% going the way it's been going. For example: Power. We are losing power. We're losing the generation and distribution of power. We're losing water management. We're losing every kind of public institutionhealth care, so forth: disintegrating. The death rate is going to increase. The disease rate is going to increase.

And, people are going to complain about it, and negotiate about it. They're going negotiate"Well, I can get this amount of health care, if I can take it from somebody else." You have a conflict of younger people now, that is the "Tweeners" are now trying to save their health care, at the expense of their parents. They're saying, "Mommy and Daddy, look, you had your run. [pause, laughter] Move over!" That's exactlythis has become a characteristic.

So, that's what the problem is. This is not a system, which is designed to succeed. It's a system which is designed to destroy us. The intent is to eliminate the nation-state as an institution, and to set up a Roman-style empire, globally. A globalized system. That's what he was referring about, from the teachers coming out of Guyana. The same kind of the thing. Globalize the system. Cheapen labor. Reduce the population.

One other example. You destroy the nation-state, what happens? If you destroy national culture, if you destroy the commitment to development of a national culture, what happens to you as a person? You're no longer capable of conveying ideas, because you're in a kind of situation, where you're thrown from one part of the world to another oneand you have no roots! You have no roots in society. You're a rootless bunch of wanderers, on the landscape, with no place that is yours. With no real identity. A globalized society.

Look at the case of the Mexican cheap labor. People coming out of Northern Mexico, coming into the United States: Why do they come into the United States? Because U.S. employers want the cheap labor! You design houses, which you now mortgage at $400 to $600,000 a piece, which are produced by cheap labor, largely from Mexico and Central America. They have virtually no skills. So, how do you put up the houses? You design the houses to be put together by unskilled labor! And you get trash. That's what's happening to us.

So, the process we're dealing with, is a deliberate destruction of the sovereign nation-state as a form of society. So, what has been happening in the meantime, is, we are being self-destroyed, by not paying attention to business, and not fighting for what we should for. We're fighting about little issues, rather than fighting about the issues which determine how the nation goes as a whole.

That's the problem. So, don't look fordon't try to say, "How can the system work?" It is not intended to work.

I'll give you one example: 1917-18, France and the United Kingdom were bankrupt as a result of a long war. Germany was also bankrupted, in part, by a long war. So, they devised what was called the Versailles monetary system, which was to maintain the British pound-sterling system: This system was based on the assumption that Germany would pay war reparations debt to France and Great Britain, in particular. This would thus bail France and Great Britain out of bankruptcy. This would also enable France and Great Britain to pay its war debt to the United States, the New York bankers. So, the entire world system was based on this idea, that the German reparations payment, would support the system.

Now, when the system was installed, the Versailles system, it was already understood, that the system would fail, would collapse. But, the people who designed the system, a system of bankers, intended to replace civilization by fascism. The group that did this, is called, the bankers were called the Synarchist International: They put Mussolini into power in Italy in 1922, and so forth and so on, all the way to 1945. By the time the war had ended, all of Western continental Europe had been taken over by fascist organizations, and governments.

So, the intention was, in that case, was to destroy that. It went beyond that. The intention was, since Hitler was going to be crushed, as they knew in Germany in 1942, after Stalingrad, and after the U.S. victory at Midway in June of that year, that the Nazi system was finished; it was defeatedjust a matter of time. So, at that point, people inside the Nazi system decided on a plan to keep the Nazi system alive, after Germany was defeated. This became known as the Truman Administration in the United States. Which gave us the horrors of the past period.

So, this is the way things work: These guys think that way. They set up operations, which they tell you are for one purpose, or seem to be for one purpose. You say, "But, that won't work!" It's not intended to work! The Versailles system was not intended to work! It was intended to be the clearing house, for setting up a permanent Roman Empire on a fascist model. It didn't work because of what Roosevelt did, in leadership against it.

But, again, we're in the same thing today: The same bunch of guys, the same people who brought Hitler to power, in New York and elsewhere, who financed Hitler: including J.P. Morgan; including Harriman, Averell Harriman and company, who was the controller of the Truman Administration; including du Pont, Mellon. These guys put Hitler into power in Germany, in 1933, at British instruction.

The same kind of interest, today, is up to the same kind of thing, today. And what you're seeing with Cheney's policy, is not an issue of Iraq. The issue is, Cheney does not intend to attack Iraq: He intends to attack Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, North Korea and so forthwith nuclear weapons! It's an imperial scheme. So, don't get deceived, into assuming that something is on the surface, what it says on the label on the package. Look at what's in the package, not what's on the label. And the idea, is to use the upper 20% of family-income brackets, as suckers, as a force, a political force, to prevent a party system from developing, which would fight to defend U.S. interests. That's our problem.

And the problem is, people don't like to think big. They like to think small. They like to think that if you can deal with little things, and solve the little problems, one by one, you can work your way up to the big problems. I say, that never worked in history. You have to go from the top down.

Q: I got a couple questions. That tradition you described, of the evil side of thingsthe British East India Company, now they're up to this, they're up to this; they do this, they do that: Doesn't that ever sometimes get boring to you? Because it seems so predictable?

LAROUCHE: Well, I'm a warrior. That's my enemy. So, that's my source of employment!

Q: [followup] It just seems it's just repeating itself all the time.

LAROUCHE: It's not repeating itself. It's developing. And we're doing better.

Remember, the human race now has over 6 billion people. If we were the monkeys that Cheney pretends to be, we'd have only 3 million.

Q: [followup] The other question I had, was that, on the East Coast in the youth movement, a lot of times you get this idea, that you've got an obsession with winning. You know, "push, push, push, push, push, push." Sometimes at the sacrifice of some of the intellectual work. And some of the members would actually say, that that's a necessary sacrifice. If someone were to get Gauss a little less faster, that's a sacrifice we have to make for this political fight.

LAROUCHE: No, no, no. See, the basic principle in warfare, is strategic defense. Now, you, like us here, like most people, we don't have the overwhelming power to go out by sheer will, and impose our will on the course of mankind. We are people who are working from the underside, in terms of power. The other guys have the big bucks, the big cannon. We don't. How do you win a war against the big guns? It takes a special kind of nerve, a policy of strategic defense.

Take the case that Helga reports upon, on the case of Russia: Napoleon's Grande Armée was about to invade Russia. So, an in-law of Friedrich Schiller, who had studied Schiller's writings, devised a policy of strategic defense, which was adopted by the Prussian command, recommended to Czar Alexander I of Russia, and was used to destroy Napoleon. They led Napoleon in; they said, "Don't try to win the battle with Napoleon at the border. Draw him in. If he goes to Petrograd, draw him in. If he goes to Moscow, that's better. Draw him in." So, bit by bit, by only delaying action, Napoleon got to Moscow. He got in there. The place was mined. It blew up around him. He now had to retreat. So the troops, the Russian troops that had been conserved, at that point, fell upon Napoleon. And by the time Napoleon's rearguard got back to Poland, with Marshal Ney, the commander of the rearguard, Napoleon said, "Where are your troops, Marshal Ney?" He said, "I am your troops." The rest had been wiped out.

The way, often, in history, the way you fight a battle, is by a policy of strategic defense. This can be in politics, it can be in other things, as well as warfare. Don't assume that you have a master plan for going out with a big fist and winning, when you don't have the big fist. What you have to do is say, "Now, how are you going fight this?" because we're.

See, the other thing is, don't get so obsessed with your own mortality, that you say, "I've got to get the juices of pleasure in my lifetime." Many of the best people who have made the greatest contribution, did not realize their goals in their lifetime. But they did things that made those goals achievable, afterward. So, your purpose in life is to do something good for humanity, not to come out with glory.

It's like parentsyou know, parents in this country used to raise children. Immigrant parents. They'd come in poor. They'd put up, they'd suffer, to raise children. To help make grandchildren possible. The victory was the success of the grandchildren. And the struggle they made in their own lifetime, to make the success of their grandchildren possible. You always have to think like that.

Our policy is to bring about these changes. But, when they're going to come? Don't expect a reward. Don't expect God to come down, and give you a gold plaque. You're doing what you're here to do: You're here to do, in your lifetime, something good for the future of humanity. Let's stick to that. And, don't have any ambition to go any further than that. And, you might get an early success. It sometimes happens in history. But, more often, you don't get an early success. More often, parents succeed in their grandchildren, what they failed to succeed in their own life: But they make it possible.

That's the way to look at it. [applause]

Q: I would like to know, what it is that you would describe as our national culture?

LAROUCHE: Well, our national culture, is, number one, when we're good: We don't believe in race. We don't believe there are races. There are only human beings. And we know, especially from education in science, they're all the same! There are no biological, or considerable differences, in terms of their function as human beings. They're all the same. Same ideas, same mental capacities. The only difference is, development, which varies with the individual. It varies as such. And the idea that we are the same, has been the driving force which made this nation, as a melting-pot nation, that we are not a race! We are a people! We are a people, brought together in a voluntary way, a melting-pot country, of people from all over the world, each of whom contributes something to the pot of the cultural pot, that we've taken from the world as a whole. It's good! There is no race. That's an illusion.

It's a trick of the slaveholders, to try to convince us that some people, because of their biological ancestry, "well y'know they're inferior, they should be" you know. This sort of thing. Or, "they're different. They have different needs." We all have the same needs. We may have particular kinds of expression of the same needs, but they're the same needs. We're all human. We're not animals. We think of ourselves as immortal. Not immortal in a biological sense, but immortal in a cultural sense. We are born, and we die. And we know we're all going to die, as we are all born. We think about, what should we therefore do, with our lives, while we have it, since that's the case.

So, you try to find a purpose of your life, which will contribute something to humanity, which will live after you. A benefit for future humanity. And you can die with a smile on your face. That's the purpose. It's what Leibniz calls "the pursuit of happiness."

The function of the United States, as enshrined Constitutionally and in Declaration of Independence, is the "pursuit of happiness": To create a society in which every person has a right to pursue happiness. And pursuit of happiness is the right to die with a smile on your face. That is, the right to pursue a life, in such a way, that you can make a personal contribution to humanity, which will live after you. And to smile, to die with a smile on your face: Because you know you have been good. You have done good. Which is what Cotton Mather said; what Benjamin Franklin said: The purpose of life, is to do good.

And that's the answer to this insanity. We find our purpose in the sense of commitment to do good. And we do it, together. And the fact that some of us seem different than the others: that's good, too! Because, that gives you a different slant on things than you would get in a society.

We are the best, as a nation! Because we are a melting-pot nation! We bring together the people of the world, in one nation, as one culture; as one purpose; as one mission, one law. We are the best nation on this planet, for that reason. We just have to live up to it.

RUBINSTEIN: Let me just say, that probably, due to travel schedules and related matters, we'll have to take the last question at 3 o'clock, so that's about 15 minutes from now. Okay, now we gets some hands up here!

Did you have a question already? No? Okay, go ahead.

Q: Mr. LaRouche, I am a Democratic county committeeman. And I would like you to speak on the Voting Rights Act. And also, the exclusion of you in the upcoming primary elections.

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, the Democratic Party repealed the Voting Rights Act. The Democratic Party leadership, presently, is a racist leadership.

The Voting Rights Act was a result of some things, including my dear friend, Amelia Boynton Robinson, who was clubbed almost to death, in crossing the Pettus Bridge from Selma on the way to Montgomery. And this event so shocked the nation, and Amelia had fought for voting rights long before most of you here were born, even those older ones, right? So, Johnson was shocked, and the nation was shocked by this. And Johnson pushed through the Voting Rights Act of 1965. In 1999 and 2000, the Democratic Party sought to nullify the Voting Rights Act and violated it.

And when they did, is they got a crooked judge, Penfield Jackson in Washington, D.C., [the U.S. District Circuit], and used that to nullify the Voting Rights Act. The principle that was used, that was supported by the court, and would have been supported by the Supreme Court, had we made the appealbut we knew it was a lost cause: The five justices who dominate the Supreme Court are Southern fascists, deep-dyed, we hadn't got a chance there: Rehnquist, Scalia, of above. The doctrine they have is so-called "shareholder value." Shareholder value says, that the Democratic Party is a club! It's a private club. Therefore, the officers of the private club can do whatever they damn please. This is exactly what the Democratic Party was, before especially in the Southern statesbefore the Voting Rights Act was enacted.

So, what happened is, the Democratic Party effected a nullification of the Voting rights Act of 1965, and is enforcing that, to this day. So, the Democratic Party leadership, including Terry McAuliffe, is an out-and-out racista person who lies and so forth, consciously, in support, in furtherance of the nullification of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

In the United States today, and in the Democratic Party, no one has voting rights: They have been nullified, on the initiative of the Democratic Party's National Committee.

That's our situation.

Now, on the primaries that are coming up: What can happen is this, Kerry is going to the point, that people are going to say, "John, you know what you ought to do John? You ought to free all of your delegates, to vote their conscience on the first ballot." Why would they do that? Because they know that John is a big loser, an incurable loserand even Bush could beat him.

SPEED: Do you have a question? We'll go to the super-youth movement here.

Q: [elementary school student] I want to ask a question about Socrates. I'm learning that in social studies. And I want to know what you think about Socrates, when you said that only people who were like the wealthy, and get paid, and high-class citizens should be able to vote? I want to know what you think about that?

LAROUCHE: No, no. You have to be careful about these translations of Plato and stories, because a lot of these stories about Socrates in schools today, are not true.

Socrates' conception of man, was a conception of man as we've defined manthe individual. Now, what has happened is, what he talked about, is the nobility of the individual, but that's the character of the individual. The people who were opposed to Socrates, were the so-called Democratic Party of Athensthey were called the Democratic Party of Athens, at that time, and they're almost as bad, or worse, than the ones we have today. They were called the Sophists.

Now, we have Sophists in the United States, today. We are a sophist culture, today. People in the United States, usually lie. All kinds of people, usually lie. Because, the way it's done in the United States, is you twist the words: It's called "spin-doctoring." You twist the words to give a meaning which is convenient to your argument. Your argument is totally irrational.

Now Socrates was a victim and opponent of the Sophists of that period. And the Democratic Party, today, leadership, are the Sophists of today, just like those who committed a judicial murder of Socrates. Those who try to defend the Democratic Party of Athens from that period, will try to say that Socrates was a proponent of the rich. That is a lie. It's a false statement, but it's widespread in teaching. [applause]

Q: Lyn, I have a question on the financial crisis. I've been reading your writings, and before that I've been a gentleman called Robert Factor [ph]. He writes about little bit of theory about the financial markets. And whenever I tried to follow the market timing, or how the market is behaving, how it's supposed to crash; and I'd like to relate a personal story. Because, all those forecasts seemed logical, make sense. But, whenever I tried to follow that, I always lost money. For example, in 2023, after the market had come down quite a bit, I had not participated in the previous ride in the market, believing this was phony, so I didn't make any moneyI didn't lose any, but I didn't make any.

But, 2023 toward the end, August-September, I invested some money, about $150,000about three, four months, by Decemberbecause I started from the bottom, I made about 50%; and now, seeing and looking at those reports, and the analysis that it's just a fake, I got out. I didn't lose. I made some money, about $60-$70,000. Now, had I not followed the policy, and just tried stay in, see what would happen, the trend, I could probably have parlayed it to $3 million, you know, looking back what I did.

So, I'm just amazed, how the market keeps going and going and going, and defying all those logical explanations, which other people have, and which you have. I'd just like you to say something about that.

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, this is not real. It's artificial. What you're talking about, is not a market of investment in production, or investment in assets: You're talking about a purely financial bubble. Now, I just tell people, stay out of the market altogether. It was always my advice. Don't tryBecause the thing is totally manipulated. It's fraudulent. And, unless you're an insider, you don't know how to handle it. You may or may not. Because, this whole thing is orchestrated. It's completely fraudulent.

And the whole thing is run through hedge funds. So, when you go into the market, you are the hedge-fund speculation, whether you know it or not. So, I just say, "Keep out of it." Because, my view is, like I said, like strategic defense: The system is coming down. It's failed. Therefore, if you're not going to get in profit next weeklike gambling profits, is what it's like, then you're have to look for the wrong term. What is the policy, that we should have as a nation? The policy is, this system is coming down. It's finished. It's just a matter of when. And when, is the near term. The financial bubble is about ready pop. When it pops, nobody can tellbecause there's a voluntary element, in the sense that they can keep pumping inflation up to a certain point. We've come to an asymptote. It won't grow any more, but they can keep pumping the inflation, to keep it alive, for X number of days or weeks. But, it will never grow again. This thing is going to crash

So therefore, the policy is, is a political one: Is to destroy this market, by putting it into bankruptcy reorganization. For example, you have several tens of trillions of dollars a year of world net product, output. You have quadrillions of dollars a year turnover in financial derivatives. Which means the intrinsic ratio of your economic basethe actual production base, the actual GNP base, as opposed to the turnover of financial derivativestake right now, for example, oil prices: Petroleum prices are not determined by OPEC. The Saudis have just, in the past couple of days, pushed for a 2 million barrels a day production, by Saudis alone, increase. The purpose is not to protect the price of oil, in terms of market relationships, normal market relationships, because there's plenty of oil on the market.

As a matter of fact, this is not the reason for the price rise. It's not an oil shortage that's caused the price rise. It is, financial firms are speculating, through hedge funds, in gains in the oil price. In other words, if you can drive the petroleum price up, then everything gets leveraged against the petroleum price contracts on the London market, now becomes a multiplier of the hedge-fund mechanism of the financial market in general.

And so, that's what's going on, so, the Saudis are trying to sabotage this hedge-fund game, by flooding the market with so much oil, that will force a bankruptcy, put some of these speculators into bankruptcy. And they succeeded in driving the price of petroleum down about $1 a barrel, on the New York market yesterday, with that kind of trickery.

So, that's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with a fantastic system which is about to collapse. My view of this, is not try to make money in the system. My view of this is

Q: [followup] But, how would we try to keep our heads up, you know, alive. And make them working in the sense, rather than going backwards. One at least has to strategize, you know, how to keep your financial health in the proper order, while you're trying to survive and in the business.

LAROUCHE: What I would say, is, I would invest only in things that I control. Or, that me and a couple friends controlled.

Q: [followup] For example?

LAROUCHE: Well, say a business. I mean, a real business. And, if you control the business, you know what the market, you know what the factors are, then you can have a calculated risk. You can operate on the basis of a calculated risk.

But, if you're investing in somebody else's market, trying to get a profit on their market, I think that's gambling.

Q: [followup] What about real estate? You would see the same gambling?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, it's alsoreal estate right now, is really gambling. Because, smart people, who think they're smart are trying to sell their mortgages now, because they know the market's going to collapse. That, all it would take is, you know, a 4% prime rate running loose in the economy, and the real estate market would collapse. A real pop-out.

And, besides, all the bankruptcyfor example, you look around Northern Virginia, what's holding that market up, is Homeland Defense. People are buying into houses, on mortgages, that they can't afford, because they're working for the Federal government, in augmentation of Homeland Defense. So, now they're out there buying these shacks, at $400 to $600,000 mortgage. They can't afford that! They're government employees, at the lower level. But, this thing, when that pops, it's going to go! It's going in California.

Also, the real estate market in Britain, is about to collapse. It's a bigger risk in Britain, right now, than it is in the United States.

So, real estate is extremely dangerous, explosive. So, some people are actually selling their houses now, while the market is at the peak, in order to let somebody else eat the loss. Then, they'll buy it backat a later point.

Q: [followup] What about gold?

LAROUCHE: Gold, is, not because you make money in itI often told people in the recent period: Don't try to make a profit; try to defend yourself, have loss-minimization. And gold is a loss-minimization holding. My general thing is, people shouldyour basic policy is loss-minimization. You have to get by, you have to livebut, loss-minimization.

And, you know, government bonds, U.S. government bonds, are still, even despite the fact they're in disgrace, they're the one thing is the last to be unpaid, in the pecking order.

RUBINSTEIN: I think we can two more questions. We'll take a question in the corner, here, and Helene [ph]. Those are the last two questions.

Q: I would like to hear your point of views about the greater Middle East; and if that's worse than a help to the United States, or no?

LAROUCHE: It would help the United States

Q: Basically, the economy, maybe.

LAROUCHE: This is where my role is key, because fornow, it's 30 years, that I have a record in that region, which has become stronger and stronger. I'm probably the only leading American, who can probably bring it off, if I was personally involved. I'm getting a lot of response from the Arab world, and others, on this.

But, you have Southwest AsiaI don't like "Middle East" because that was a British imperial term. Southwest Asia is a region of the world, which we know very well. It's actually the world that surrounds the Arab "Middle East" so-called. Turkey, as I know. Armenia's crucial on the flanking situation. There's people trying to do things there, that [will help with] us now. Azerbaijan is crucial. Iran is crucial. Syria is important. Egypt is crucial.

Now, these countries are concerned in generalputting the Israeli question to a side for the momentthese countries are concerned with a threat to their securityas statesof the present trend in the situation in that area. The Saudis are concerned about that. All of the smaller countries are concerned of the Gulf and so forth, are concerned with this sort of thing. Jordan is concerned with this. They're afraid that the whole area may blow up, in chaos, now.

So, Egypt also shares that concern, and Egypt is a key spokesman country, for this purpose. Turkey is extremely important for this, as a stabilizing country. If Turkey agrees, that's a big help. If Iran agrees, that's a big help.

Therefore, you say, "We want a mutual security agreement, for the entire region. Southwest Asia." The United States has an interest in thatnot that they are interested in owning any oil, from that area. But, the point is, we do not want instability in the entire world system, as a result of throwing the whole region of that areathe Gulf area, northinto chaos. Because we have, the Gulf area contains, for the next 80 years, the cheapest and greatest supply of petroleum on this planet. And we have made ourselves totally dependent upon the use of petroleum as a fuel source. The planet has. This is insane.

But, therefore, we have to ensure that this region of the world is kept stable. It has to go through, also, a transformation. The transformation will require a large use of nuclear power. Because, what we need in the region is: water, and power! We need to turn the desert into an area of prosperity. It takes time. It takes two generations to do that: To turn yellow land, into brown land, into black land. Which can be done.

So, we have to think about a long-term development situation, in which these countries can work out their futurewith security; without mass bloodshed. The danger is, now, this thing could explode into mass bloodshed in the whole region.

We all have an interest in that. Actually, Israel has an interest in cooperating. The only way this could happen, however, especially dealing with Israel, is the United States would have to take full responsibility, for supporting a security policy for the region. Under those conditionsfor example, there's some hope in this thing: You take some of the top people in our military, our intelligence services and so forth. They understand this, in some degree. And around the world, key people around the world have agreed with me on this. They say, this is the only thing that'll work. And that's why I'm doing it. It's the only thing that'll work.

We understand, that the United States must have a commitment to ensure the security of Southwest Asia. This is essential to Europe, that the United States take this position, because Southwest Asia, is a vulnerable point of the whole region. It's a vulnerable point for the Eurasian cooperation; it's dangerous now. The cooperation, between Western Europe, and China, and India, and so forth: This can only happen, if we prevent destabilization in Transcaucasia, and this Southwest Asia region.

So, the United States has to take that view. There are people, in the United States, in the system, in the Executive branch apparatus, who understand this. If we can get something started, we might even be able to force George W. Bush to issue an Executive Order, upholding what I proposed. [applause]

Q: Mr. LaRouche? To develop our economy, and to develop these nations, you have referenced the Treaty of Westphalia numerous times. So, I've studied the idea of the "advantage of the other," and I was trying to understand the idea of the "advantage of the other" and the relationship of the function of free will. Do you have anything to say on that?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure. Well, first of all, see, the stupid idea, the evil idea, which has been promoted, is the idea that nations are naturally adversaries. This is not true. This idea of the nation is naturally an adversary of other nations, and must think in those terms, in adversarial terms, is a product of a very specific influence to try to destroy the idea of the nation-state. These are the ideas of Hobbes, the ideas of people like that.

Now, what is ignored is the role of culture. What's ignored, is typified by Classical art, typified by sciencewhich is not explicit words, as defined by a dictionary: The essence of culture, including in the use of language, is irony. It's to be able to convey ideas for which there are no words, through the use, for example of words, as in poetry. You want to convey an idea, for which there is no defined term, a concept. You do that by methods of irony, which is what Classical poetry does.

You need, therefore, a culture is a medium by which a people is able to transmit ideasnot just words, in dictionary definitionsideas from one generation to another. Therefore the language-culture, the development of a national language-culture, in a shared culture, is the essential thing to bind a people together, to develop individuals, who can communicate ideas with one another.

Thus, the nation-state is needed, there's no substitute for a nation-state. Empire is bad. We must have cultures, autonomous cultures, which have this characteristic: using language as a medium of conveying actual ideas. Which can not be done by dictionaries.

Thus, humanity requires a system of sovereign nation-states of this type. Humanity must, therefore, cooperate among such nation-states, to common ends of humanity. The key thing, is to define a common end of humanity. How do you do that? The first thing, is as the Treaty of Westphalia defines itMazarin was a genius of this: was to say, you have to think about humanity as a whole. How do you think about humanity as a whole? Be the giver. Be the giver. Be the person, who gives to the other, that which they need. And, agree to live on that basis. So, each nation gives to the other, the opportunity, for its own needs to be filled. And that kind of mutual dependency, of sovereign nations, of sovereign nation-states, and sovereign cultures, this is what combined humanity together.

It's like this whole thing with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: It's the only way that can be addressed. These people have been killing each other for what? For how many decades? How many generations? You're not going to make that go away with some kind of a contract, with some kind of negotiation. You're going to have to go to something much deeper: You're going to have to get to the soul of the individual. And it's going to take a lot of pressure, from other people in the Middle East, to bring it off. But, the United States must be the absolute guarantor of it. We must commit ourselves entirely, to settle that question, now! Not to dictate a solution: But, to bring the parties to the table, where they do settle itand make sure it sticks. And get the common interest of the nations in region to join us, in doing that. Say, "We're going to end this nonsense, once and for all." We could have done it before. We have not had a government with the guts to do it. Clinton came about as close as anybody did.

Q: Thank you sir.

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