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Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed on January 28, 2023 by talkshow host Lee Tibler of KZNG in Hot Springs, Arkansas: Mr. LaRouche, thank you again for taking your time, and your busy, busy schedule, to join us here in Hot Springs, Arkansas. LaRouche: Well, thank you. It's good to be in Hot Springs. Probably the weather is more comfortable there than it is here. Tibler: We're looking for a very pleasant day, of around 71 degrees, and you might have heard me say there, we refer to this, affectionately, as the official front-porch of this area, and that's what it's here for. It's for us to come out here, and to do things that we just don't do enough of anymore, and that's communicate. LaRouche: Good. Tibler: So. I would like to open the proceedings by saying that I listened intently to your January 24th webcast presentation. In fact, archiving it later, and going back, it's ... you are still on the same role of providing information, and prognostications, which are unexcelled, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes to understanding economics on a global scale. And I think that's probably where we're going to go with this. Between the middle of November and the end of January of the previous year, we saw so many things happening. We saw a breakdown in the process of our elections here; and the inauguration of President Bush. And you made a number of statements, and forecasts, and characterizations on economic and related questions, and they have been right on the money, sir. Right on the money. And this is why I'm so thankful you're out here this morning. In some ways you said that your forecasts are on the table, they're on the line. Do you still believe that's true? LaRouche: That's right. That's the way life is. Tibler: Exactly. Where do you feel we stand at this juncture right now? LaRouche: We're in trouble. The President, of course, is in trouble. This is now, he's facing a re-election campaign implicitly in the year 2023, federal elections, in particular. And his advisers have told him, he's up front on the war against terrorism, but he's behind the eight-ball on economic issues. Tibler: Okay. LaRouche: And he's decided to escalate on the war on the terrorism, in ways that will not do the country, or him, any good. So, we're now in a little worse trouble, than we were, say, four months ago, or three months ago. Where he seemed to have his act a little bit better together. So, we're in trouble. And the problem is that the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party, have not, at least in terms of what's up front, presented anything which, to me, represents a reasonable alternative to what Bush is proposing. And it's just a dangerous situation. And therefore, I just stick to where I stand, and say what I know is going on, and what should be done, and hope that we'll get some response and relief from the present trend, in the meantime. Tibler: In terms of the Sept. 11th events, and their political-economic-strategic and I suppose historical background, what would have been the reaction if it had been, say, a Democratic U.S. Administration? LaRouche: If it had been Clinton -- unfortunately, that would have been impossible -- you probably would have had a more reasonable approach. I can't guarantee on Bill Clinton, because Bill Clinton is, as I think people in Arkansas know, was one of the brightest Presidents we've had in the past century, of his generation, and while he believed he should use power to do good, he often compromised for the sake of trying to hold on to power, rather than doing the good for which he was dedicated. And sometimes, he flubbed. As a matter of fact, he lost a number of opportunities that way. But he was not a bad person. He was a good person. The problem is, Gore was a bad person. And Gore would have had us in the depths of a war real quick. So that, on this one point, that Bush has, in a sense, been a fortunate choice for us, up till now. What he's going to be in the next weeks, and beyond, that's another question. Tibler: Do you think that George Bush is taking us down a reckless course of action here, or....? LaRouche: He's on a very dangerous course. George is pushed by a very powerful crowd in both parties, and in his own government, which is committed to a "Clash of Civilizations" war, which is typified by a war between civilization in general, and Islam. That's the most stupid thing imaginable, in terms of our interests. He has, up to a recent time, has been blocking that, and I think he was attacked, largely the reason the coup was attempted on September 11th, was to try to push him into it, or eliminate him, or one of the two. But now he seems to be capitulating to the pressure to go with a hard line, military aggression, in line with this war against Islam. And he's come up with a threatened budget, the biggest military budget in 20 years, in terms of increase. And this is, I don't think it makes sense, but I think the political realities, and given the fact that George is limited in his intellectual reach, and the pressure of his advisers, I think that George will get himself into deep trouble. Because this program he's coming up with, will not work. Therefore, it means a disaster. And I don't see the Democrats, so far, at least what's up front, putting forth any real alternative policy, which might push the President into improving his own postures. Tibler: Absolutely. I've been a student of, just for what it's worth, of the Executive Intelligence Review for about 5 or 6 years now. And I daily refer to it in many ways, out here on this front porch, in so many ways. Some folks, you know, viewed me as a bit of a prophet on occasion -- which, all I've done is I've taken forecasts and predictions that I've gleaned from EIR, and brought them here to the community. And more often than not, they have been correct. Your particular take on September 11th, as a possible coup d'etat, or a likely coup d'etat, is a position that I can totally relate to, in understanding, yet I'm surprised that so many members of the media have not bothered to even view it from that standpoint. What's wrong with this picture here? Because the way... LaRouche: You get that internationally. For example, you had two people from the establishment of Germany -- both of them, one is Andreas von Buelow, who was formerly a defense minister for an SPD government, who comes from one of the families that was famous for its role in the resistance to Hitler in July of 1944. And you had also, then, another person from the same group, that is, the same families, also speaking to the same effect. And von Buelow essentially said things that concur exactly with what I've said. There are also people in Germany who concur with that. There are people in France, in leading circles, in the government, in the intelligence community, which have said things which bear on the same thing. There's a view of this in Italy, and the Vatican, which goes in a similar direction. Not the same assessment as such, but in terms of a policy direction. And you find out, throughout much of the intellectual Arab world, Egypt, etc., that is responsible countries, who are opposed, of course, to bin Laden, and what he represents, that these people tend to agree with what I say on this question. And then if you look at the website, if people would actually look at some of the websites which are there, which detail and document the sequence of events on September 11th, if they would just jot down the notes of what time the planes took off, what routes they took what their targets were, what three of them hit, and the way in which they turned from their course to make the attack on the next target in the sequence, minus this thing that crashed near Pittsburgh, and you get a picture which says that this is no amateur night; this is nothing except somebody who had the inside track on details of the U.S. security protection. And on things that should have worked, that didn't work; things that should have been done, that weren't done. And you say, this is an inside job. Now, obviously, since they targetted the President of the United States, George Bush, he was not one of the people behind this operation. And I doubt that Cheney, who was also in the target area of one of these planes, was exactly pushing that, or Rumsfeld. And certainly not Powell. Powell probably played a very good role on the matter of this crisis, at that time. So, it's an inside job. And then when you look at what's coming out of this, the Clash of Civilizations crowd, the Middle East crisis, you see that these three things go together -- they're one and same thing: the operation of the 11th, which was a provocation to try to force the United States, to panic the United States, into a reaction of the type they wanted; then the reaction is the Brzezinski line, the clash of civilizations line, and you've got a lot of people inside the Administration, like Wolfowitz, and Richard Perle, who's an adviser there for the Defense Policy group, and so forth, they're very much for this. Then you have those in Israel, who are warning about the danger of what the present Israeli government, and military, are doing. But then you have the hardliners in the military in Israel, going on the other line, against the former Prime Minister Rabin's appreciation. And getting right into the middle of this things. So, you see a confluence of these developments in the midst of the worst financial and monetary crisis in modern history, all coming together, and it's a very worrisome thing. When you see that, you either lose your nerve, and grasp for straws, or you say, we've got a problem. And because of my background and experience with these things, I don't generally grab for straws. I'm of a fighting disposition, and therefore I decide, who do we have to punch in the nose, rather than who do we run from? Tibler: That's one characteristic I've always admired about you. And I mean that sincerely. So we have this clash of civilization. I have trouble trying to rationalize this type of logic. I think Americans by and large have trouble integrating that into their thinking process as well. How can there ever be a rationale for the complete clash of civilizations? LaRouche: We had this memorandum, the famous Fulbright memorandum which was written from Washington, not from Arkansas. Fulbright is well known, his files and papers are accessible and well known, and he wrote this memorandum, as internal to the Administration, on what he perceived was a pattern of problems. Now you look at this information and you look at the writings of people that I've documented, my friends have also documented, the writings of people like Samuel Huntington, Brzezinski, his side-kick, the H. Smith-Richardson, other foundations like Mellon-Scaife, which is not unknown, has an operational capability in Arkansas and others, the Olin Foundation and so forth. You look at these people and you realize that there's been this anti-Eisenhower, anti-McArthur policy, and actually the whole tradition of U.S. military policy in the Post-War period, which come up from a group which we called during the 1950's and 1960's, they were called the Utopians, the crazies. The Utopians were the word for crazy. But these people believed that the United States military policy should be based in point of fact on the study of the ways the Nazi Waffen-SS, as military operations, functioned. Now the Nazi Waffen-SS itself, was a Nazi imitation of the way the Roman legions functioned during the declining period of the Roman Empire, just going out and killing people, trying to control them, like herding cattle and hunting down wild animals, and this is the kind of policy which has developed within the United States around these circles. It started in part, in practice, with the firing of McArthur by Truman, which set into motion a protracted war. That is a no win war. You just keep going at it until you quit. You don't really win, like in Korea. Then in the 1960s, of course, we had the second phase of that type of warfare in Indo-China. We just got into a war with no prospect of actually winning a war in a traditional sense of winning war. But just drawing it out as indefinite bloodshed, which probably did great damage to our internal institutions and to the moral of our people, as well as it just used things up. Anytime you run a war for more than two or three years, the effect of the attrition caused by that war is a hideous damage. It's something you want to get over with a successful peace as quickly as possible. This was not the way McArthur tried to do in the Pacific with his operation. It's this kind of mentality which is all over our military today. Tibler: Moments before we got together here, near the eight-o'clock hour on the show, a few of our callers and I were discussing the ethereal quality of this current war. We wonder if that is correct terminology. We have all this debate of how we should refer or treat, we refer to the "prisoners," are they "prisoners of war," are they "detainees"? All these questions were, in fact, raised by many of us out here in recent weeks, are coming to pass. There is no understanding here. We are not at war with the nation state. Now doesn't that make this whole situation really quite different, in terms of our historical understanding? LaRouche: Now if you go back to two models, which are well known models, from the standpoint of students of history, students of military history. One is the Roman Empire. What was the Roman Empire's definition of a war? Now sometimes they had a campaign against some targetted nation or group. They had a war against Christianity there for a long time too. Tibler: That's true. Yes. LaRouche: Then you had, at a later point, you had this imitation. In part, this was what Napoleon Bonaparte's military was, the Grand Armee that invaded Russia and was defeated, by getting itself buried in there. That's a model of the Roman Empire method of military policy, perpetual war, which is directly opposite to the conceptions of warfare which were established by the American Revolution, by the example of Lazard Carnot, who was the general who saved France from dismemberment between 1792 and 1794, and by the founder of German military policy, Gerhardt Scharnhorst, who was, in fact, a student of a program set up by Moses Mendelsohn. Now these figures established the idea of modern warfare as, in a sense, as Machiavelli talked about this in his work on military policy back in the sixteenth century. The purpose of warfare is to bring about, from the standpoint of a modern nation state, is to bring about a durable peace for all of the warring parties, including the victors and the defeated. Not to have a perpetual war. Not to try to exterminate somebody or to obliterate them, but to bring about a post-war condition which will be a durable and just peace. That was the policy which was consolidated by the American Revolution, by what Lazare Carnot did in the defense of France in that period and afterward, and what Gerhardt Scharnhorst established as the German policy. An example is that German policy what these guys say it is. German policy is what is called Auftragstaktik, which is a much more democratic army then what you would get say, out of our Marine corps, for example. The Marines, they break people down, and try to make something out of the mud that's left, by training it. In the German Auftragstaktik policy, which is no longer German policy, it was killed in the recent decades, but the idea was that the soldier faced knowing he had a mission, when the non-com or junior officer would have the responsibility of actually deciding what is the correct way of carrying out that mission based on the situation on the ground. And the reason why the German was so relatively successful in performance was this kind of training. But this was based on this tradition in the German case, the tradition of Scharnhorst, of this idea that it was the people, as a reserve army, which defined the ability of the nation to bring about a victory which is necessary for the people who are represented by the reserves. And that was our policy in WWII, we weren't the greatest fighting force, per capita, in the world, but, logistically, we were the best. We had our own kind of Auftragstaktik in the way that people would use their skills, their engineering, their manufacturing and other industrial skills, like farmers do, use their natural skills to create the logistical circumstances under which you can win battles and so forth. So that was the tradition and this stuff is just plain a copy, of people who don't like the nation state, who don't like the American system, and who want to establish something like a Roman Empire or a fascist system. It's called actually, universal fascism is the technical name for it. Tibler: Is this term "new world order" synonymous with this concept? LaRouche: In some people's mouths, that's what it means. Tibler: So, it's essentially the same thing. But again, with the historical background, it does make sense. I agree, sincerely. Ladies and gentlemen, our guest this morning, live from Germany, is Democratic pre-presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche, and again, thank you for joining us this morning. You are indeed a candidate, correct? LaRouche: Yes, I am. Tibler: Arkansas has the dubious honor of having thrown out, I guess, 100,000 of your votes, or so, in the last election? LaRouche: Oh yeah. That was Al Gore. Al Gore didn't think he could stand up to me in a fair fight. Tibler: I've forgotten the number, sir. It was over 100,000 votes, wasn't it? LaRouche: Yeah, right. Yes. Tibler: Pardon me? LaRouche: Yes, I didn't get the exact count, but I got the count from there. It was fairly impressive. It was about 20 odd percent of the vote. Tibler: That's when Arkansans, by and large, discovered that the Democratic Party here is a club, essentially. Essentially, that was the definition that came out of it. LaRouche: Well, the definition came in part from Scalia, the leading, the actual leading political force in the majority of the Supreme Court. The shareholder value. His argument was, that he's upheld, is that the political parties are not parties of the people; they are private clubs. And the people who control those clubs are shareholders, and therefore, they can do pretty much what they please as a corporate entity, as the ownership of a club. And the people don't amount to much. Tibler: So, as a Democrat, how do you plan on overcoming these types of arguments? LaRouche: Well, this present Democratic Party organization is not going to work. This thing is going to come to a shambles. The Democrats had a chance at the beginning of this past year, when I was actually in a somewhat intellectually leading position in the Democratic Party, because the rest of these fellows were all so distressed by what had happened with the election and the inauguration. And I'd raised a number of issues such as the Enron issue, which I raised nationally, as well as in California-- Tibler: This is correct. LaRouche: ...health care, and so forth. And, at that point, up until sometime in March, the Democratic Party leaders, those that were moving and viable, were generally responding to my leadership on these questions. Then, when the Democrats got control of the Senate, and you had this meeting between Daschle and McCain down in Arizona, then another agenda went into place, and the Democratic Leadership Council, which was the outfit behind Al Gore, sort of took over the Democratic Party. And you see that, since that time, the Democratic Party in the Congress, both in the House and in the Senate, and the Republican Party in the Congress, is not worth a hill of beans. Here we are with the worst financial crisis in modern history; here we are with this terrible crazy war going on, spreading around the world with no clear reason for it; you have this tremendous distress and fear and anxiety in the population; and you've got these fellows who, presumably, are the Congress, are the legislative arm of our government--they just don't function. So I don't think that these parties are long for this life--in their present form. My shot is that this is going to fail, but intelligent Democrats and intelligent Republicans are going to come out of the woods, and begin to provide leadership, not necessarily with the existing party framework, but as Republicans and Democrats, or independent Republicans, independent Democrats, saying we're Democrats or Republicans, but we don't necessarily go along with the present machine that's running the parties. That is my hope. Tibler: And, from my perspective, I have to agree with you, because I'm beginning to see--I don't know what to call it--perhaps a LaRouche faction, but I'm hearing more and more Senators and Congress-people quoting you, very often now. So, this is suggesting to me that your leadership role may be coming to the forefront much more quickly, out of necessity. Again, necessity is the mother of invention, is it not? We need to take a brief break here.... Mr. LaRouche, when we get back, can we directly address your prognostications on the financial system? You have said that the financial system of the world is in the process of disintegration. Correct? When we get back, can we explore that, please? [station break] Tibler: You have said that the financial system of the world is in the process of disintegration. I, for one, don't need convincing, but so many of my fellow neighbors and friends and listeners have difficulty grasping what that actual phenomenon [is]. But, you have--there's a science behind it, which you have helped to craft and create, really does lend us many explanations and predictability, and you've been right on the money for quite.... [tape break] Okay, what happened? Were they on the right track when they were trying to tell us something--? LaRouche: Well, they didn't exactly have the right policy, but they had the right issue. The issue was the country was being destroyed by existing IMF policies. And one would hope that a country in that situation, since the entire hemisphere, the Western Hemisphere, is an area of some concern and interest to the United States, that the United States would act sensibly under such circumstances, and would support any reasonable approach proposed by Argentina. Because we're looking at a meltdown of a country. That's what the issue is. And none of the policies which are presently being imposed by the IMF could lead to any result but a meltdown of that country. Now, that's [Argentina] not just an isolated country; that is a country which, if it goes, the rest of the hemisphere pretty much is going to go with it. You have a difficult situation in Brazil; you have other countries in South and Central America which are virtually non-existent--they're hanging on by a thread, ready to collapse. And you would think that a wide-awake, alert U.S. government would recognize that fact and say: "We cannot have the governments of the Western Hemisphere, the nations of the Western Hemisphere, disintegrating before our eyes." Because: Where is our national security, if these neighbors of ours are going under? But, unfortunately, the Bush administration did not take the kind of response which was required; other forces got into the act; it got very nasty, and the government was overthrown, that is, the government at that time, that had made the proposals, was just literally overthrown. The President of Argentina, the pro-tem at that moment, just skedaddled off, and ran away, back to his home base for fear of his life. That was how nasty it was. And we in the United States didn't do anything about it. Now, that's not going to go away. We're at a point where the entire system can come down. It will come down in some form or the other, but the option is, that we in the United States: We've been through crises somewhat like this in the past in our history; other nations have. And there's no reason we couldn't apply those lessons of experience to the present situation and come up with a plan, and recognize that a monetary system and a financial system is not the be-all and end-all of an economy. The be-all and end-all of an economy is a functioning nation, which is able to produce what it needs, and to produce it in adequate quantities to keep the nation itself functioning. And in international relations, you want to enter into cooperation with other states, so that as a combination of states, through your trade and cooperation, you are doing the things [so] that each of you will be able to stand up against the situation. Under those circumstances, your option is to save the economy, essentially, the physical economy: to keep the farms functioning; to keep the infrastructure functioning; to keep the industries functioning; to keep the schools functioning; to keep the health-care systems functioning; to maintain the infrastructure generally. And that's your objective. Now, what happens--you've got a different view among some people who, I don't think remember what reality is. They think that the money you make as a shareholder on the financial market, as in Wall Street, is a determinant of the well-being of the country. And you believe that everything, including your neighbor's children, or your elderly parents, should be sacrificed as a money-saving proposition, in order to maintain that Wall Street market. Whereas, others have said, as Franklin Roosevelt said: Well, Wall Street is not the United States. Wall Street is simply an aspect of the U.S. economy. And when push comes to shove, it is the interests of the United States as a whole, that must be served, not Wall Street's. And some people around Wall Street don't like that. Also, the United States would say, as Roosevelt said with his Good Neighbor policy toward the Americas, that the well-being of our immediate trading partners and neighbors is extremely important to the national security and economic security of the United States. But we do not have that view at the present time. Now, you can't forecast events, not in economics. Sometimes you can, in effect, forecast an event, but that's not because you're forecasting an event. You're not trying to figure out which horse is going to win the race; that doesn't work. What you can forecast is the condition. And the purpose of forecasting is not to predict which horse is going to win the race, but what are the conditions we must expect, and what must be the actions we take in response to those conditions. We're still in the same soup that Argentina represented with these events. The problem has not been solved; nothing is settled; the IMF has accomplished less than nothing with what it's done, and the thing's not going away. We now have--Germany is part of the collapse now; the new currency called the euro is not going to function in its present form, because we're going into a deep depression. These countries are already in a depression, a physical depression. They will not come out of it without putting credit into restoring economic levels of activity. You can not do that under the Maastricht agreements in their present forms. So therefore, there's another crisis. Poland is about ready to go under; Poland is in worse condition, in some respects, than Argentina. Yugoslavia is about to blow. Turkey is being kept alive--it's in terrible condition--only for military reasons, involving Central Asia strategic policies. Japan is about to go, and when Japan goes, in one form or the other, the U.S. dollar will go. So we're not looking at an Argentina crisis; we're not looking at a this-or-that crisis as such; we're looking at a buildup of a condition to which we must respond in a certain way, or we can go down the soup. Tibler: I understand that precisely, and again, sometimes I almost would like to see it speed up a little bit, so we can finally plug in the correct solutions, which we know are available, and that you are well appraised of. The IMF wants to come along, and is constantly suggesting that we should cut, cut, cut, cut, whereas you're speaking of the rebuilding and the restructuring of infrastructure to solidify us, to become productive once again. Is it in fact what I'm hearing here, the remedy's not to cut credit, but-- LaRouche: No, the problem is: You must have a regulated economy. Tibler: Yes. LaRouche: This free-market thing is a British idea; it's not an American idea. It has nothing to do with the ideas that inspired the founding of the United States; it was never the idea that caused a recovery of the United States from a protracted downturn, or an actual depression. What worked with our system--and our system is somewhat unique among those of the world, that is, our Constitutional system--our division of labor: the Executive branch, the Legislative, and Judicial branches--if they're observed, and they should be observed, asserts that the Executive is responsible, directly, for action to defend the General Welfare of the nation, for the present and future. When you get into a crisis, the overriding principle is that everything gives way in order to ensure the General Welfare of present and future generations. That's the responsibility which much be taken as a leading responsibility by the Executive branch, and by the President himself. An example of that is what Roosevelt did in 1932 and '33, as a candidate, and as inaugurated President: He responded to a crisis which threatened to destroy our system of government; that's how serious it was. But he reacted to mobilize people by mobilizing what he said in West Virginia in his campaign speech in '32: "The Forgotten Man." That the 1920s had forgotten the average man in America, or the average person, and that the policies of the United States had returned to its concern for the welfare of the common man, the average person, as a marker, as a standard of measurement of how well the nation as a whole, and its policies are performing. He was elected on that basis, contrary to something like we're hearing now, from the Hoover campaign: "Prosperity around the corner," "pot in every chicken," or something, eh? And when he became President, he took emergency measures, within the Constitution, under the provisions of the Preamble of the Constitution, the General Welfare clause, to keep the nation alive. And with all the hits and misses, it worked. That's what we have to get back, in a sense, to thinking in terms of now. My approach, in everything I've been doing now, is to say: Yes, there are things that Roosevelt did which do not necessarily apply to the present situation. We can't simply copy what Roosevelt did for the last Depression as an adequate solution to the present. But, we must study two things: We must study what Roosevelt did, and why it worked. Secondly, we must look at the period from 1945 to '63 or '64, when we had a post-war reconstruction system, a recovery system, in the then-Bretton Woods Agreement, which also worked. There were injustices, there were mistakes and so forth, made during that period, that period of about 20 years, but the system worked. Whereas the system which we've had, especially since '71, the world system, doesn't work. So therefore, the question now is to recognize lessons from the past, which help us to understand what things worked, and didn't and why, and to apply a study of those lessons--and it has to be a quick study now; the crisis is here!--and to apply those lessons to defining new policies. That is the kind of thinking that's lacking right now in Washington. And that's what I'm trying to do. Tibler: It seems so simple on the surface. We've had a very enlightening hour, well, two hours with Harley Schlanger last Thursday, and picking up on what you just said here, he gave us a great presentation to understand that where the credit goes, where it's routed, is critical to this process of rebuilding our productivity. In other words, credit's good, but routed to the right place, for productivity. Correct? LaRouche: Yeah, well. The key thing is we have to have a basic interest rate--. Look, we have bankrupt banks. If the Japan system goes, which, it is ready to do--then you'll have two or three or more of the major banks of the United States will go too. And the U.S. dollar will go. That's the end of the system. Now, what's the President of the United States supposed to do when that happens? What would I do? Well, first of all, we can't have banks collapsing--they're going to have to stay there, stay on the job. We'll put them in bankruptcy reorganization, a Federal bankruptcy reorganization, through the Treasury Dept., the way it's been done in the past, the way it should be done under our Constitution. But, we'll keep the banks functioning; we'll keep their doors open because of the essential social, economic role the bank serves for the communities that they serve. In other words, you need someplace for deposit, you need a place in which to conduit loans to keep the community going, that sort of thing. So, but the problem here is: We need an interest rate, a basic government-determined credit policy, of a basic interest rate of between one and two percent. Because only at that level of borrowing cost, can you actually initiate a serious recovery under the kind of conditions we have now. But you can't have that money going out into stocks and bonds and real estate speculation and so forth. It has to go into solid things which are not inflationary, and which will actually build the economy. So therefore, it means that you have to steer the credit through a regulated system into things like rebuilding infrastructure, putting people back to work in things they can do that are necessary for the future of the nation. Such as rebuilding the rail system, the transportation system, rebuilding the energy system, doing what Roosevelt did, for example, with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Rebuilding our water-management system, in order to transform the land area into a richer potential. We have to rebuild our health-care system. We don't even have the hospital institutions functioning today to maintain the standard of health care that we established during the post-war period, say, for the first 25 years of the post-war period. We don't have that any more. So, we have to rebuild that. We also have to rebuild entrepreneurial types of industries, not so much the giant corporation, though they have their function; what we really must build is the small entrepreneurial industry--like the farmer, like the small machine-tool shop--things like that, which are the essential technology-drivers of the economy, The big corporations are not the essential technology-drivers. They're these entrepreneurial industries led by some ingenious fellow, or a group of fellows, maybe with an engineering or scientific background, or a skilled farmer--these are the fellows that make things work. And the big corporations depend upon the contributions of these people to make things work for them too. So, this is the area we have to promote: large-scale infrastructure, employment of people--we can't have unemployed running around--we will have to have a structural change in the composition of employment to emphasize physical production; we have to also emphasize science, things like that. On that basis, within a 15-25-year period, we can really get this U.S. economy, and much of the world, growing rapidly. So, these are the kinds of measures we have to think of. We have to have a regulated system: trade regulation, exchange controls, capital controls, that sort of thing. We have to have fair-pricing policies, which can insure that we can build these industries; and of course, credit regulation, and international cooperation. What the U.S. government has to do is get into some long-term agreements with other countries, 25-year agreements on large-scale infrastructure projects, which will be the main driver for building up international trade in physical commodities again. Tibler: In terms of this plan--it sounds remarkable, and it gets back to our foundations, our roots, as you say, Constitutionally speaking: Will this require the wholesale discarding of things like NAFTA and GATT? LaRouche: Well. actually, we'll just override them. Tibler: Okay. LaRouche: We will simply reestablish--look, we're sovereign states. Every country in the Americas, every country in Europe, every country in Asia is faced with the same crisis. And all we have to do is that the government of the United States, as a sovereign government, together with sovereign governments of other countries, decide that there is an overriding condition in the world, a threat to the general welfare, which governments must address. If those governments agree to change institutions for that reason, they have the power, the authority, and the means to do it. Tibler: Remarkable. And again, it sounds to me as if you are putting a lot of faith in the individual states' rights here, as well. LaRouche: Oh sure. Well, look, the states are in desperate condition. Tibler: That's very refreshing. We don't hear that very often. LaRouche: No, I mean, the states are in a terrible condition. You find that, for example, the municipalities in Germany are in a similar condition to what you find in in an increasing number of states in the United States. The states are essentially bankrupt, are no longer able to meet their responsibilities, that are traditional responsibilities of the state. And therefore, one of things: The Federal government has to mobilize credit, because the states are not allowed to generate credit. The states are supposed to operate on a balanced budget. They're not allowed to implicitly print money. So, the Federal government must provide the low-cost credit for programs which are designed to get these states back functioning, back up to break-even. Tibler: I see. Mr. LaRouche, we have only four minutes remaining for broadcast time, this morning, and I feel as if I have not done the type of interview I'd like to have done. I'm partially awed this morning by--you're so eloquent and forthright. In the remaining minutes here, if there were a message that you wanted to leave in this community, this day, what would it be? LaRouche: I think that people should think about themselves, morally, in the deepest moral sense. The problem with the American today, typical American--and this goes for the political electees as well--is, they think in terms of "my community," "my personal and family interests," and in the fairly short term, in the narrow frame of reference. Now, we talk a great deal about religion in the United States these days--most of it, I think, comes toward nonsense, or evasion, or double-talk--because if you're talking about a religious belief, this should mean that you know you're a mortal creature, that you have a beginning and an end as a mortal creature, but you also have some other quality, which no animal has. And that is what's called a "spiritual" quality, or an "intellectual" quality to make discoveries and to implement discoveries, as no animal can. And therefore, if you think of your life, as a whole, and you think about the beginning and end of a mortal life, and you say, "Well, there's also something immortal." Which is the development and transmission of those creative acts which are essential to justify our ancestors: what they wanted to do, weren't able to do, which we must, in a sense do, if it's morally necessary. And what we leave, to those who come after us. And the problem with most politicians is they think about an appeal to the narrow impulses, the narrow appetites of their constituents; they organize political programs, based on that kind of appeal. They don't speak to the actual spirituality which exists in every human being, in the sense that each of us is mortal. And our most fundamental interest in life is what we take out of it. What we contribute, whether it's the development of children, the development of community, the development of scientific ideas: What do we contribute to the future, so that once we are dead, we have the immortality that what we have done, the spirit of us lives on, in terms of what we've left, bequeathed to those who come after us. And in terms of what we've done, in terms of love for those who came before us, who have no one but us, can justify and fulfill their unrealized hopes. Tibler: Incredible. And again, I want to thank you for being here this morning. This presentation this morning gives me strength. It reassures me that we can somehow find the sense of rationality in our government and sit down at the table, and address what we know is inevitable. LaRouche: Yup. Tibler: And I thank you for that. LaRouche: Thank you, Lee. Tibler: Thank you very, very much. Once again, ladies and gentlemen, Democratic pre-Presidential candidate Lyndon H. LaRouche. And I hope that we do have the opportunity to do this again, sir. |
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