Question: Hello. I'm here working full time, deploying full time in Mexico City. We had a class yesterday which was very interesting, I thought. Except one idea was not very clear to me, and I'd like to see if maybe you can help me out. Between the classes yesterday at the cadre school, and Marivilia gave a class on the sublime from the standpoint of Schiller, and yes, LaRouche, they were quoting some parts of Schiller where he speaks of when, technically speaking, in a crisis, there was something that lifted people from that crisis, so that they could overcome and achieve something greater. And it could be explained or defined as the sublime. I had a doubt there and we discussed this for a while. I tried to compare it with what Roosevelt did with the economy in the 30s, which was he took it to the limits of the overall, off-the-shelf industrial capabilities, and what happened was that a breakthrough was made. These limits were overcome and things went further, quite opposite to the idea that when pushing to the limits, things could break and collapse. So, I'm not sure if this is exactly the principle that is referred to, whether this is a correct comparison, but if so, my question would be: this issue of facing up to the crisis at this time, where it's fairly apparent among youth and society at large, but mostly youth, you must face up to the crisis in order to make that breakthrough. But since it is more than apparent, what would it be, a matter of bringing it to self-consciousness so that they face the crisis and then we help them to break through, or how would it work? What do you think about this?

LaRouche: It's fairly simple. You see, I have the advantage of having lived through the entire period you've referred to, the 1930s, the 1940s, the post-war period, and I saw exactly how the degeneration occurred. This is now a lawful process, in the sense that it had to happen that way. Roosevelt died and the enemies who he had fought all his life were able to move in and take over. Now, there were reasons for it. Part of the reasons were that this is not a great society. Most of the people of my generation were extremely backward, morally. The 1930s was not exactly a good time to live. It was a decadent culture. Remember, the United States had been in a decadent culture since the successful assassination of William McKinley. McKinley was not the strongest person in American history, even though he had essentially a good commitment, but there were terrible weaknesses in that time, in that administration. So, it's not quite that simple.

The good comes not by trying to find a magic formula, for how to you orchestrate success? The problem is people look for magic formulas because they want to say, how can we be sure we're going to succeed? How do we know that our effort on this is going to be worthwhile? How do we know we're not going to fail, like so many have before us? Well, the answer is largely two things. First of all, you have to be determined not to fail. You have to have this sense of immortality, which I described. And without that sense, you're not going to succeed. I had people all around me. I'm a success, but all the people around me from that period turned out to be more or less failures, and what you're experiencing in society is just the result of the fact that most of them were failures. Most of the people with whom I was in military service were failures, they proved failures in the post-war period.

So you depend on people like me who are not failures, to get you through this period. Take the case of Germany, before Hitler. Now Germany was at a very high level of culture, but unfortunately had never overcome the fact of having a Kaiser, which is a very backward kind of institution, to have that kind of imperial conception. And the Germans wreaked its own death, by refusing to coup, when they should have couped. Not waiting until 1944 to try to do it, until the British would betray them. And they brought upon themselves their own destruction in that way.

So, the secret is one of leadership. It's called quality of leadership. Roosevelt was an exceptional quality of leadership. If Roosevelt had not succeeded, the United States would have become a fascist state, as Germany did. It was Roosevelt's ability, his development of the qualifications to make that revolution, which caused it to occur. And once they got rid of Roosevelt, the revolution collapsed. Not entirely, because the effects were not completely wiped out immediately, but it collapsed, and I saw it. It was my generation that was rotten, and today, my unique position is being a survivor of that generation who did not betray that legacy.

Therefore, through my commitment to that at any price--I've always refused to compromise on this issue. And the fact that I've refused to compromise has given me the strength to deal with this kind of problem. Normally a society would say, no, it never works. And all the successes of society were successes of what might have seemed impossible to people at that time. Just like Roosevelt's success. It seemed impossible to people at that time, but he succeeded. It was not an ordinary success, it was not some kind of thing, some kind of recipe. It was a personal impulse, a personal commitment, a drive to succeed, and the knowledge to match it.

People underestimate Roosevelt. They underestimate his knowledge. He understood the American System, which is the finest, highest level of development of economic thinking in the world today. There's no society on this planet that has matched the American System in terms of economic thinking. That is, the American System of Political Economy. Nothing. The American System of Political Economy was the basis for most of the great successes in the Americas and other states, especially after the success of Lincoln to develop in that direction. And the idea of the United States' method of economy, the heritage of Lincoln for example, was one of the great inspirations for the development of the nations of the Americas.

So, the thing to look at is not some system, it's not some systematic thing. It is systematic in the sense that I've said, but what determines the success or failure of society in any time of crisis up to the present, is the presence or absence of exceptional individuals who represent the quality of leadership which, in a simple way, Joan of Arc represented in the history of Europe. Without such leaders on the scene, society will go to hell. It may come out of it later, because human beings naturally have this gift which enables them to recover, but the general tendency of society will be to go to hell, every time, without the exceptional leaders. The only thing that saves us is that society does tend to produce, in a most remarkable way, some exceptional leaders, and because of that, society has survived.

But many societies have not survived. Many cultures have not survived. They were decadent. They were not capable of generating survival. What worries me today is that it's possible that this European civilization might not survive. It might not make it through this period of crisis. That's a possibility. A very real possibility. I think that we can save it. I know that potentiality for saving it exists. I know that I have the ability to lead that kind of process. I understand it. Therefore, I have confidence. If you don't have the adequate basis for confidence in that kind of process, you can't succeed. You need that. Fortunately, I have that, and I have it for only one reason: because I've stuck to this devotion over so many decades. People said I was wrong, but now it all becomes clear. I was right all along, and therefore, I think that I'm qualified to say, we are going to succeed.

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