Question: Good morning, Lyn. I have three questions, actually. The first question--I probably want you to answer the first question, before I give the remaining two. The first question is: For me, the idea of school for me, is to give a training ground to move one from one point of understanding, to one which is presumably a higher understanding. To get a person from a non-Classical to a Classical standpoint of education and understanding, how do we move them ahead without addressing that point directly. How do you move them from one point to the other, without going through that point that characterizes that mind--correcting it and aligning it, to conform to the overall Classical understanding? How do you move them ahead, but without addressing all the underlying problems that are there?

LaRouche: Well, the first thing you have to do is, redefine the problem. Don't accept the problem in that form--that's not the problem. There is a problem; what you described reflects a problem, but that is not the problem.

The problem is, that you're dealing with the same kind of problem we had to deal with this slave tradition, or post-slave tradition: You had the original freedom movement among Americans of African descent, was typified by Frederick Douglass, typified in the best way: Frederick Douglass's approach was to organize the freed slave, or the slave who was to become free, around the highest level of Classical culture in European civilization. That was the basis for the movement.

Now, what happened was, with the freedom of the slave, masses of people, including so-called "do-gooders," said, "Now, we're not going to educate the slaves the way Frederick Douglass demanded. We're going to give them education, which does not push them above the station in life which they must expect in adult life." So, you had a general tendency toward, what we used to call in the Kentucky hills, "blab schools"; or something converging upon blab schools--small classrooms in which the level of education was almost trivial. And they were turned loose to work as cheap labor for the former slave-masters, generally, under this kind of education.

Now, what happened is, that you had a reaction against this, in the sense of a defense of a depraved culture imposed on African-Americans, by this change in policy. Opposition, which you'll get to this day, in the struggle for freedom against the after-effects of slavery, of people who attack Frederick Douglass, as the enemy of the culture of the African-American. You will get the same thing, not only among African-Americans, but among many strata of American population. What you have to recognize, you're dealing with the fact that a person has been condemned, to be herded human cattle, is given a culture, a cultural conditioning, whose purpose is to condition them, not only to accept, but to defend the brainwashing they've got, as culture. This is the problem today.

Then, you have a second aspect to it: Not only do you have the educational problem, as such; but you have the popular culture problem, as typified by rock, etc., etc. These were forms of cultural behavior, which were intended to destroy the susceptibility of sections of the population to develop any cultural capability, any intellectual capability. You had, also, the counterculture--the rock-drug-sex counterculture, and related kinds of manifestations of the mid-1960s (which also had a precedent, but this was a mass form of culture), which actually told people to use LSD, to destroy their minds, in order to become college graduates, in effect--or college dropouts.

So, now you had this LSD-marijuana-etc. culture, the drug culture, the rock-sex-drug culture, which took over a large part of the U.S. population. And people to this day, defend that culture. You know, I had this question from Seattle, the first question [at the cadre school] from Seattle last week: What's my attitude about the freedom for drug use, drug policy? And, I said: You want our people to go through the program of drug use, which destroyed mind of the President? A President who is now destroying the United States, because he's got a destroyed mind? You want us to have that kind of policy?

But, that's what we have. We have a permissive attitude, about a rock-drug-sex counterculture, which has destroyed the minds of a large part of the population. And, as manifest by the rave dances, you have a large section of the population, which is absolutely destroyed, in its emotional and other ability to function, because of this subculture. These people, then, become conditioned to defend what was done to them.

For example, the case of early England, 18th-Century England: The British imported a cheap device called "gin." It was called "gin" because it was named for Geneva, as in Switzerland. It was originally called "gin" among the Dutch; so Dutch gin was then pushed into England, and used to stupefy the English population, to make it more controllable, by making it stupid.

The biggest problem we have today, is that form. And, at all levels. It's called "college stupidity": You have college-educated fools, who have been subjected to courses in existentialism and so forth. They come out of college--they're brain-damaged! I don't know whether it's biologically brain-damaged or not, but functionally brain-damaged. They defend that; they defend existentialism. They defend rock-drug-sex counterculture. They defend it. And they treat you, as if you're trying to change that, attacking that, as if you were somehow their oppressor! Their oppressor is the ones who conditioned them to be what they are. It's like the Dracula's flock are saying, "You're taking away our blood!" Or something like that. That's the kind of thing.

So, the key thing is, don't worry about it. Be aware of it, but don't worry about it. Don't be conditioned by it. The basic way to go at this, is, we have to go at it as a group--sometimes as individuals, it's tough to do. We have to say, "We want to free you from that. We want to free you from the habits of slavery."

Again, the girl was talking earlier about this question about feminism and language, which is very much a concern among many young women--has been for some time: What is the role of certain habits in society, in oppressing and depressing women? Well, it was true--it worked. The problem was not in the language, the problem was with something else--but it nonetheless, it worked, that's the problem. You have the same thing, the history of slavery, of post-slavery United States, of education. Of taking a large mass, of former slaves, and how to prevent them from developing intellectual capabilities of actually integrating into society; to keep them as virtual slaves, when they were rounded up, every time there was a harvest, the local sheriff would round up all the African-Americans--round them up, and put them out on chain-gang to do the work for the harvest period; that kind of thing.

So, this kind of thing. Then, what's been to the population generally, as  with the drug-rock-sex counterculture, to destroy the mental powers of that whole section of the population. And then, having these victims, of that abuse, turn upon society and say, "Don't try to take away our culture"; "our culture" being the habituated, self-degradation, which they had been subjected to, for that kind of intent.

So, we have to recognize that. And, having recognized that, then, we become the loving fellows: We're the ones who have to step in, and figure out, as pedagogues, how to structure educational and related programs, programs of educational effect (as opposed to strict education), and these programs which will give people an experience of the sense of the powers they have within them, and let it flow from there. But, I think, also, we have to be very, very plain, very plainspoken, about slavery. The way to free people from slavery, is to remind them, and convince them, that those things they're wearing are shackles. And, don't be afraid of saying, or attacking the shackles, for fear that they will react, and say, "Those shackles are part of our culture," because that's what's happening to a lot of our Americans, today. [applause]

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