Question: Hi, I want to ask whether we can survive. What are the answers? What are the answers, that we can survive somehow?

LaRouche: Well, I'm trying to do that, exactly. It's time for humanity to grow up. And it's to stop thinking about which popular opinion is right, and to recognize that all popular opinion is wrong, because it is popular opinion.

So, rather than quarrelling about what popular opinion should be, why not say, "It shouldn't be"? Hmm? "To be or not to be." And, it shouldn't be! Reason has to prevail. And reason means, in a sense, a Platonic standard of reason, as I've done a great deal to define this. That's why I've emphasized among the youth, the importance of using Gauss's 1799 exposure of the intrinsically fraudulent character of the argument of d'Alembert, Euler, and Lagrange, which many people, who study science today believe in, the damned fools. That, one has to free oneself of this popular opinion, this cult of popular opinion, and instead, understand that reason, the ability to know the truth in the Socratic way, must be the standard of leadership in political behavior.

We must, also, as I've emphasized in addressing this question of youth and leadership; we have to recognize that one of the great problems, of the presently incumbent generation in power, is that they have created for their children a no-future society. They insist on gratitude, that what they've give their children is no future. But, they cling desperately to their pleasure, in what they are, and insist that society admire what they are: "You must learn from us! You must earn your laurels! You can't question us, yet! You have to learn from us, first!"

"Learn to do what? To destroy society? You already perfected that. We don't need to learn that any more. We have to replace what you represent. We have to have a society, in which we, and our children, can live. Not the doom, which inheres in what you bequeathed to us."

And therefore, what's lacking, the moral deficiency of the presently hegemonic generation, in power in most parts of the world, especially in Europe and the Americas, is, they have no concern for the effects of what they do, on coming generations of the world as a whole--not even their own nations.

So, therefore, what we have is a moral breakdown. And what we have to do, is recognize, first of all: That that is a moral breakdown; that that is the problem; and that some people, like the Christians having to face Nero and so forth, sometimes have to stand up for truth, and not try to accommodate popular opinion, as tends to be the case today. And, then you have a question--everybody faces the question: If we adapt to popular opinion, on the presumption that you must influence popular opinion, to succeed, then we shall all fail. It's only if we stand up to know, that our problem is, essentially, the moral and intellectual rottenness of popular opinion, that must be replaced, then we have a chance of surviving.

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