Question: My name is Hunter.  I'm a sophomore at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island.

My question is, why was there such a huge concentration of intellectuals and heroes, and true Americans centered in time around the founding of our nation? What happened to that?

A couple of things about that: If you could touch on, how the populist mentality affected Jefferson, and things of that nature? And how that sort of brought the degree of heroism down, I would appreciate it? And, further, when I mention "true Americans," I mean to say, "true United States of Americans"?

LaRouche: Well, the florescence of the United States, during the 18th Century, begins with the founding of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which was an enterprise, largely, of the Winthrop family in the 17th Century, and became a joint effort of the Winthrop and Mather families, into the 18th Century; typified by the case of Cotton Mather. For example, Winthrop was one of the teachers, or the great Classical humanist education teachers of that period. His work in geometry, in scientific education, for that period, is quite notable. The Mathers were extremely important, in terms of educational policy, in that period.

You had a similar development, that occurred in Pennsylvania, around Jonathan Logan, who was Penn's man in Pennsylvania. And the University of Pennsylvania is actually an off-shoot of the work of Logan.

Benjamin Franklin's development initially was associated with Cotton Mather, in Boston. And then he fled, and went to Pennsylvania, because what became the Essex Junto crowd in Boston made things hot for him, in Boston. And, he went to Philadelphia. And he came under the influence of people such as Jonathan Logan; but it continued his Mather background. Franklin emerged as a leading intellectual scientist of the United States, or America at that time. And became closely involved, especially from the 1760s on, with Europe.

Now, the interesting thing about Benjamin Franklin: Franklin was the one who started the Industrial Revolution in England. Franklin, personally, supervised, around the idea of coal, and, in the Midlands of England, the use of canals and coal, to develop to develop the industry: the industrial development of England. And, continued that role, together with chemists like Joseph Priestly and others, he was the one who sent Watt to Paris, to study under Lavoisier, to develop the Watt steam engine. So, Franklin, at this period, was the organizer of the Industrial Revolution of England--as an American. But he was a member of the British Royal Society, as well.

Franklin was also caught up in something else: In the early part of the 18th Century, there was a great fight in the Americas, between two tendencies. One was with the pig tendency, which was the followers of John Locke. John Locke represented, what we call today, "shareholder value." Pro-slavery shareholder value. It was typical of Anglo-Dutch imperial maritime philosophy, of the Dutch and the British oligarchy.

So, what happened at that point, was a great debate occurred, after the death of Leibniz, in North America, between the factions of supporters of Leibniz, and Locke. And, in the process, in 1776, under the influence of Franklin, the Declaration of Independence denotes Leibniz' "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," rather than the pro-slavery policy, which was later adopted by the Confederacy, as "life, liberty, and property"; or, what is called "shareholder value" in the Supreme Court today.

So, the conflict was over the nature of man: Romanticism versus Classical tradition. The Classical tradition, in the United States, was fostered from Europe, by a very interesting fellow-- Abraham Kaestner, one of the great scientific thinkers, and one of the great Classical thinkers, in art, of Germany. Kaestner was born in Germany, in 1719. He came from the same group of families, that Leibniz came from, from Leipzig, in that period. He was related to the famous banking family of Itzig, which was a relative of the Mendelssohn family--also of Leipzig. He was also the doctor-father of Lessing, the great dramatist. Kaestner, who was dedicated to defending and promoting the ideas of Johann Sebastian Bach and Leibniz, against the Wolfian and other influences in Europe; who organized the German Classical revolution, of the late 18th Century.

This German Classical revolution spread into England, through rather a diluted form of lake poet such as Wordsworth, but more specifically, Keats and Shelley, who epitomized the Classical tradition, which is spread, from Germany, back into England. For example, Shakespeare (as studied and interpreted, ed.) was a piece of garbage, at that point, in England. It was Lessing, who, together with his teacher, Kaestner, organized the study of Shakespeare and other writers, which created the German Classical dramatic tradition, based in part, on both the Greek Classic and the work of Shakespeare. So, we have Shakespeare, in the English language today, as a result of a German, Kaestner, and his student, Lessing, in Germany in that period.

So, this period, from about 1763, is when Europe began to unite in defense of the American colonies' freedom, against the attack on the American colonies by the British monarchy, at the end of the war between Britain and France. At that point, the British, no longer needing the Americans to deal with France, turned on the Americas, and began to loot us, and destroy our liberties. So, a great struggle over the question of liberties, arose in 1763, on the basis of the British Empire's attack, on the rights of the colonists in the Americas. Franklin became the leader of this; in that period and later, made large, direct connections into Germany. And people from Germany and elsewhere came into the United States--a whole array of them. And the American System was based on Leibniz, the influence of Leibniz and related things, on German Classics, on European Classics, from that period between 1763 and 1789, when the catastrophe struck.

So, we had Jefferson going to pieces, in 1789-90, over the issue of--as all of these leaders, went crazy--over the issue of, what had happened with the French Revolution? Here, they thought France, with all its weaknesses (and they were not indifferent) [audio loss]... friend of ours turns against us, in 1790-1791. They went crazy; Jefferson, in particular, pro-French, went crazy. Later, Abigail Adams went a little bit crazy, became pro-British, though her husband, John Adams, the President, did not quite go that far.

What happened then, you had this division among populists-- for example: The French organized, with some knowledge of Jefferson--Jefferson was never a traitor; Jefferson was a confused man, who made a lot of mistakes; but he was never a traitor, as we saw in the case of the Louisiana Purchase, and things like that. But he was a confused man. Without Benjamin Franklin as his mentor, he was not controllable. He went wild. John Adams became largely disoriented. John Adams was weak, because John Adams had Physiocratic tendencies, which had not enabled him to understand economic issues; though some other issues, he understood very well. John Quincy Adams developed.

It was not until 1812, approximately, when Mathew Carey wrote The Olive Branch, summarizing key features--remember, Mathew Carey was designated by Benjamin Franklin as his heir, to the publishing empire of Benjamin Franklin. So, Carey wrote this paper, which became an expanding book, called The Olive Branch, in which he said, the Republican Party, that is, the party of Jefferson, and the Federalist Party, had both decayed: hopelessly, irrecoverably, destroyed, internally, by self-destroyed, largely by the Essex Junto, and the reaction of the populace. The Essex Junto, the so-called "high Federalists," or the drug-runners at that point. It became a hopeless problem. The Federalist Party did not really exist any more. It had been fragmented, because of this "high Federalist," this Junto drug-running crowd, as opposed to the others. The Republican Party was a mess. Jefferson, Madison, were absolute messes. Both were controlled, in large degree, by a British agent: Albert Gallatin. A real pig.

So, in 1812, as this was coming on, you had the emergence of Henry Clay, who was actually a Virginian, but who had settled otherwise, and suddenly, on his election to the Congress, became the Speaker of the House. And this alliance of Clay and Mathew Carey set into motion, what became known as the Whig Party. So the Whig Party's development, of which John Quincy Adams became a part, the Whig Party's development became the attempt to have an intellectual renaissance in the United States. But then, under the conditions of 1815, the Vienna Congress, the British were our enemies, and continental Europe were our enemies. Again, the same problem: The British reacted, with the Spanish and others, to build up slavery, in the United States, in an attempt to bust up the United States, into a bunch of quarrelling, feudal baronies.

Lincoln defeated that. Lincoln was actually one of the greatest geniuses in our history. A real, genuine genius. Lincoln was shot, because he was a genius. And that was done, to disorient us some more. But, then we had this Whig tradition, which was maintained, which was cut off--again--by the successful assassination of McKinley, who was not the greatest man in our history, but he was a solid man in his own way, with weakness and whatnot, and difficulties.

So, we have a period of the destruction, the real destruction, under Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Coolidge: The first 30 years of the last century, were largely a catastrophe, a cultural catastrophe, a moral catastrophe, for the United States. Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, in a sense, saved the United States, and created the impetus, which, if continued, could have restored the intellectual tradition.

If I look at some of the best writers of the 1930s and 1940s, historians and others, like Samuel Flaggbemis,  who is not perfect in my view, but is another, highly respectable historian, who influenced Franklin Roosevelt. These fellows were intellectually serious. They represented an approximation, at least, of the kind of intellectual integrity and genius that was shown. But, what Roosevelt did, in using people like Harold Ickes and others, with these great projects, was an example of the great mobilization, remoralization of the American people. If that process had continued in the post-war period, we would, again, had a great intellectual tradition.

We just haven't had it. My view is, we need it. So, let's create it. [applause]

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