Question: Hi, Lyn, I'm from Philadelphia. I'm a student at Temple University, and I've interned at two major network stations... Anyway, you were elaborating earlier on how countries have their separate cultures, and sovereign nation states, ... just for clarification, are you trying to elaborate that there'll be no more integration of cultures, like, for example, imperialism, Americanizing their countries, like it is now, and the media and everything... Would you just elaborate on how to be truthful, and not kiss ass and whatnot?

LaRouche: The problem you've got now is this. Look at the world realistically. Is there American imperialism, and if so, in what form does it exist?

There is American imperialism, Aunt Mamie. It's there. It's called fear of the United States. Fear of the power of the United States, and a sense of impotence on the part of other nations which might otherwise consider themselves independent and rival. The lack of a sense of true independence among nations, is the problem.

There's more to it than that, but that's the first level of it.

So, therefore, you can't talk about independent states around the world today, because they don't think independently. Their behavior is not independent, because they don't think independently. That's our problem. That's the first problem I deal with all the time.

Therefore, what's the answer? The answer is, as I say, "I am the smartest guy in the most powerful nation on this planet, the United States." It's a piece of junk, I admit, but it's an empire of fear. And it's an empire of fear, which has a certain degree of self-confidence in itself, because everybody else is afraid of it. And therefore, if the people of the United States, express to the world, ‘Well look, we don't want you to be slaves. We want you to be independent nation-states. We don't want you to be our slaves, we want you to be our partners.' The other nations of the world will say, ‘Huh? Hey, that's a good idea. You really mean it?'

And that's the first way you have to think about with this problem of culture, and so forth, in general. People around the world will tell me, "Yes, but.. yes, but.. yes, but we can't do anything. We have to keep our heads low. We have to duck. Duck and weave. Because we can't do anything about it. We can sometimes make noises of protest, but we can't actually do anything about it."

No, we in the United States, we can do something. We can at least express the will to do something. And I'm great at that. I'm very confident about expressing the will to fix some of the problems of the world, at least insofar as the United States relationship to the world is concerned. I've got the guts to tell the world that we want you to be partners, not slaves. But that means you have to act as partners, not act and think like the slaves you have accustomed yourselves to becoming.

That's the problem we have. And that's the function I have. So we do have an empire, it's the world empire, it's the U.S. empire, it's based on fear of the United States. The United States is bankrupt! It's not the world's great economic power. Its economic power only exists to the degree that other nations will bend down and kiss butt, and fork over the money. It's that kind of power, the power of the gangster who doesn't produce anything, but he collects from the entire neighborhood, because he breaks windows, and ruins the laundry, and collect his vigorish. That's the kind of power the United States represents, gangster power. And we've got a bunch of gangsters running the government to prove it. Fascist gangsters, even.

So, the problem is, is that we in the United States, and I in particular, have a special moral responsibility toward the world in general, to say, "Hey, slaves! We're going to free you. You're going to become partners."

Under those conditions, you will get a change in cultural orientation. But you'll also get some funny reactions. Some people are so accustomed to wearing chains, they think of chains not as a thing that enslaves them, but as ornaments. You know, a guy wearing chains in prison for a long time -- he wants those chains, that's his ornament. That's his ego. That's his beauty object. Like some crazy tattoo that people put on their bodies. It's ugly, but they say, "It gives me a sense of identity." Huh? In other words, destroying their flesh, destroying their image, destroying their body, distorting it, making sort of a signboard that people scrawl messages on, as their body, they treat that as actually a sense of beauty, or sense of an ornament. An item of prestige.

It's like prisoners in prison, who sometimes get these kinds of fads. That their body ornaments, what they do to themselves, becomes then a mark of security. You say, "Let's free you." And they say, "We don't want to be freed." So, the gold fish, the legendary gold fish, at least, when freed into large pond, continues to swim in the small circles of a goldfish bowl. So, we also have that problem.

But the essential thing is, my job is to tell the nations of the world, "Hey, boy, you are no longer a slave. You're now a partner. And act up to it." Then we're going to have the problem of getting them to think like partners, but at least we're half way there.

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