Question: Hi Lyn, I think that over the next eight months, in the course of the Democratic primaries, we're going to organize the majority of eligible voters to case their votes for you. Now, in the past, where we've seen large numbers of people casting their votes for you in the course of the primaries, we've run into things like, evidence where maybe not all the votes were counted at the ballot box; and also, the instance, most particularly in Arkansas, where large numbers of Americans voted for you, and based on backing from the Supreme Court, the Democratic Party simply handed the votes to some other candidate--just refused to count them.

So, I would like to know what kind of measures do you think we should be prepared to take as a movement, to make sure that this kind of funny business is not allowed to go on?

LaRouche: I would say, first of all, if you want to get 50% of the vote, try to get 70. If you get 70, you probably will get 50. In other words, you have to go at this in a certain way: You have to mobilize, not voters; you have to mobilize a movement.

See, people often ask the question, “How can we get a certain percentile of the vote? What is the way to get a certain number of individual voters, in various categories, which will add up to a certain percentile?'' It doesn't work that way. That's the way it's said it works; it doesn't work that way: Because the factor is, is people walk into the polls, and most people, on the day they're going to vote, don't know who they're going to vote for. Because they change their minds! They will change their minds; after months of reflection, they'll change their minds, certainly on the day they go into the polls. And they'll tell you that. They do! "I was going in. I decided I was going to vote for so-and-so, but I got there; I'd made a promise and so forth, but I just couldn't do it."

So, what controls the vote? Yes, obviously, the result will be a number of votes cast. But what will determine the votes cast? Well, in anything but an irrational thing, it'll be a movement among people to bring about that effect. So, what you're out to do, is not to try to recruit individual voters, as such. Your object is to create a movement for that result, and the movement will recruit the voters.

The problem is, most recent campaigns have involved no significant movement. For example, we have one in Philadelphia, right now. You have a case of a movement, which our intervention intersected. You had [Mayor John] Street, and Steve [Douglas] was talking about it earlier: The last time you had a mobilization of so-called African-American voters, politically, that meant anything in Philadelphia, was against Frank Rizzo, the police chief and mayor. This is the first time, as Steve reported, today, this is the first time, you've had a similar movement. But, not just this--it's more: because, it's labor, and it's other sections of the population, who are now in a revolt, against John Ashcroft and what he represents. And, you have suddenly, a movement in Philadelphia. If this Katzenjammer is defeated, it will be the movement, that causes his defeat, not the number of voters that turn out--the movement.

So therefore, if you have a general movement within the population, where people are interacting and saying, "We, as a movement, have to bring about this effect," it generally can happen. It's when it's other than a movement, the vote is unreliable, and manipulable; and most votes recently have been manipulated votes. They are not really movements. They were anti-Bush movements, which got Clinton into office. And also, remember, it was Ross Perot, actually, who played a big part in electing Bill Clinton, and didn't get much gratitude from Clinton for that--it was a big mistake on Clinton's part, on NAFTA.

So, the way to control this process, is create a mass movement. As I said, if you've got a mass movement, based in the core of the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, we're addressing--. What I try to do, is I have these things which I present, which are necessary, but I always think about, how do we get those concepts into the minds of people who are influential within the ranks of the lower 80% of family-income brackets. That's why I did what I did on the 22nd, on health care. Take a very simple, clear-cut case: The first hour I'm President, in the office, I will issue a Presidential order, setting into motion, the immediate reestablishment of D.C. General Hospital, under the following conditions. At the same time, I will issue, to Congress, a Presidential directive, requesting the Congress to repeal HMO and restore the Hill-Burton law.

Now, this is something, which, in terms of its implications, most people out there, in the lower 80%, who are influentials--that is, thinking citizens among the lower 80%--understand immediately. The big problem, for most people in this country, especially people who are poor, people who are senior citizens, or affected with sickness--and that's over 50; if you're over 50, you are subject to this problem. Disease can hit you, in various sudden ways--normal part of the process. And, if you don't have adequate health care, or a health-care system, you can be dead, or several crippled. Therefore, do we have a system, which is capable of delivering a response by society to those threats to our citizens? And people in the categories in the lower 80%, or people who have serious health-care problems, people who are over 50, especially people over 60, or 70, these people become increasingly aware of this problem.

Therefore, if you want to talk to the majority of people, you mention health care in the proper way--not just, "Well, I got a plan for health care, you know; you can buy this cheaply, I can give you a good plan." Garbage! Are you going to deliver? You are government: Are you going to do what is necessary, to make a sudden change in the situation? Yes! What is it? Put D.C. General back into place; slap these guys in the face; put Hill-Burton back into place; cancel HMO. And take other actions of a similar nature, immediately, in the first hours I'm in office: No big plans. Very simple, broad, and sudden.

And that's what people want to hear. And that's the only kind of action that will solve the problem.

You have the same thing on employment. People talk [very whiny]: "What're we going to do about the jo-o-bs pro-o-blem?"

All right, look: We've got a lot people who are not qualified to work! Like the President of the United States, for example. So, what do we do with these bums? Well, if they're young, we'll put them in something like the CCCs. Or, we'll open up the military service ranks, for real training, of an engineering-oriented training; rebuild the Corps of Engineers. We're going to get the jobs immediately into works. For what? For things that are necessary! We've got water problems; we've got power problems; we've got all kinds of problems. We have to fix them, right now. If we can create enough jobs of this quality, fast enough, we can bring the national income, in the states, on the state level and on the national level, up to above breakeven, immediately: Depression is over! The effects of the depression linger on, but the depression, as a process, is ended!

So, jobs. What kind of jobs? How is the government going to provide jobs? Well, the government has to provide jobs. How about power and distribution systems? How about large-scale water systems? How about rebuilding the railroads? How about mass transit? You've got all these people spending their lifetimes, wasting them on the highways, in parking lots called "superhighways." Why not put in some more mass transit? Use monorail, other kinds of things that are mass transit, to enable people to move from the places they work, to where they live and so forth, without having to sit in a traffic jam, and spend their life in a traffic jam, breathing other people's auto fumes! And getting angry and wanting to kill the driver in front of you. Bad passions, bad passions.

So that's the way in which you can influence the voters, is by: Stop the crap; stop the nonsense about these elaborate, algebraic schemes, "I'm going to make a compromise with this guy, and this guy, and this guy. We're going to make this compromise, and we're going to come up with this bill."

And I think the American people, generally, are sick and tired of these damned bills! They don't mean anything. They're simply ways of saying, "Look, I did this! I gave you this bill! I helped you! You owe me, I helped you. I voted for this bill." And, what'd the bill do for you? Nothing. "But it was a good intention! I was warm-hearted! You gotta give me credit for that." So, that's the problem.

If we organize, as a movement, the other thing, the most important thing, which you can do, which you do with yourselves, which you do with others, is you have to make the person you're talking to, a better person. If you can make them a better person, or help to make them a better person, they will be part of your movement. Because that's what people want; that's what makes them happy, is to think of becoming a better person. That's what the Gauss issue means: It's a step toward becoming a better person, not wandering around in a fog, wondering about how all these numbers work! But being a master! Understanding this thing; understanding how it works. Being able to clarify other people's minds on this. Applying the same method to understand history. I mean, most people don't know any history! They think history is something that came out of a newspaper. They discuss current events: "How shall we interpret current events?" "Let's discuss current events, today, children. Let's take this newspaper clipping. So-and-so politician says this. And, so-and-so jerk otherwise says that. Which of these two guys do you kids think is right?"

Nonsense, isn't it? Why not take, as a great Classical dramatist, why not take actual history, as I've described some of this to you today--why not take actual history, and have young people live through the experience of actual history? What was life like in Europe, during the 13th Century? Do you know? What changes occurred in the 14th Century, which were considered a catastrophe, which provoked changes that were made in the 15th Century? Do you know? Do you know where the first nation-state was born? Do you know what the ideas were, that were involved? Do you know what the religious wars of 1511 to 1648 were all about, and who did it? Do you know how those wars ended? Do you know what happened in the 18th Century, how the United States came into existence? Who was involved, what the ideas were, what were the issues? Do you know why it failed in Europe? Why politics failed in Europe, after Napoleon, to the present day? Do you know why we got into these wars? Do you know where fascism came from? Not some cheap explanation, where so-and-so had this bad idea, or something.

So, to have an understanding, as a human being, of a sense of immortality, to have a sense that there's a sweep of human history; that European history, in particular, modern European history in general, is perfectly comprehensible, in general terms. And if you understand it, and you understand what the experience is, of whole generations, over successive periods, you have some understanding of what hit you. As I tell people, I remind them: I'm 200 years old! Because my culture, even in my family culture, at the family dinner table, goes back 200 years to a great-great-grandfather, who was born about the same time as Abraham Lincoln. And who was a rather notable figure, in his place and time. So, that's part of your culture.

Now, you go from that, from the family culture, the family/history culture, then you go to the broader environment. Like people in the United States, for example: People, I think some still today--more, say 20, 30 years  ago--would trace their ancestry back, Americans of African origin, would trace their ancestry back, consciously, to an ancestor they either knew, or knew about, who had been a slave; and knew the place, where this slavery had occurred. They knew it! They knew what the transitions were. How was it fought? What was the movement like, before then? Isn't that something worth knowing? Because that's part of your identity, is to find out what happened! Because, you know, in your own family; things came down, in your own family, the family circles, from one generation to the other, which have an effect on you, today! Are you able to understand those things, which have an effect upon you, today, from that experience? Can you understand other parts of society, in the same way? So, when you're looking at the face of somebody, do you realize that what you're doing face to face, you are representing a confluence of two completely difference histories, which have certain points of overlap. And that's all inside you, as transmitted from great-grandfather, to grandfather, to grandmother, to father, to son and so forth. It's all transmitted. Cultures are not things that simply repeat, according to mechanical laws: Cultures are processes of development, which go through successive generations.

And looking at it, only from the internal side, of European civilization--European civilization, which was actually a product of Egypt; Egyptian influence among the people called the Greeks, or the People of the Sea, goes back, in conscious historical European civilization, to about 800 B.C. Almost 3,000 years ago. That European history, as I know it, is a continuity, a cultural continuity, in which the experience of each generation, or each group of generations, throughout the whole history, has had an effect on the subsequent generations: Each of us, who have experienced European civilization, are experiencing the accumulation of those effects in us, today. The way we think, the way we react, is determined by this accumulation, most of which we're not conscious of.

If you understand history, then you begin to understand yourself; because, if you understand the history, that we came from, then you're able to understand why you react the way you do. And why other people react the way they do. You see yourself, not as an individual, like a blob on a page of history; but as an individual, who embodies a cultural process. You embody history.

If you know that, you have a sense of power. You have a sense of being somebody. And you can act. And you can act, for society. You can say, "Look, what we did, in our history, we struggled to bring something into being, something better. We struggled to overcome bad things. We struggled to make things better. That's us! We're not going to betray that! We're going to continue the process, of struggling to make things better, for future generations, with a sensibility of what we went through to get here, so far! And all the struggles and setbacks we experienced."

When you convey that, to a population which is confused and frightened, befogged by circumstance; you create a movement, because, when people have a sense of that kind of immortality, that they're an expression of the immortality which is conveyed by this cultural transmission, they have a sense of power; they have a sense that what they do, is important for future generations. And they have a sense of pride, in looking back in memory at their ancestors. "Hey! You over there! Look at what I just did." And, it's that sense of pride, that gives people a sense of power. And you have to take poor people, who think they have nothing, and give them the sense that they are something.

And that's the way you create a movement. That's the way you win elections--really win them.

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