This is a partial transcript of the discussion period which followed Lyndon LaRouche's remarks a LaRouche in 2004 campaign event in Queens, New York on June 29, 2023. (Click here to read a transcript of Mr. LaRouche's remarks.)

Question: I want you talk about the future. When we win, what will our society look like? What is the potential that humanity has? And, if you could talk about maybe the latest in science and technology that we could develop; and where our world can go; and what's the prospect for things like space travel? I'd like to hear some optimism.

LaRouche: But, you'll also get a lot of assignment to work from me! Because, you know, I'm running a youth movement; you may have heard about it. And, the task there, is to set a standard for knowledge, immediately, among people in the 18 to 25 age-bracket, that does not exist in most universities today.

The key to it, is the issue of immortality. Now, the most important part, the most important thing about a human being, is the human individual personality is the only immortality in the universe, apart from God. Now therefore, the fundamental requirement of education is, what is immortality? And how do I defend my own?

Look at the case of Senator Kerry: Kerry, like Hamlet, is not an uncourageous man, by ordinary standards--quite the contrary. But--I think his wife is even more courageous. But: The problem is, he has a Hamlet problem, and you should study, very carefully, Hamlet, one of the most important lessons in history and politics, available to anybody today. If you do not really understand Hamlet, you do not really understand Hamlet, you really don't understand politics: Because this question, of the leader in a time of crisis, faced with the threatened destruction of a nation, who is not capable of meeting the challenge of the definition of immortality, will flinch, will fail. And, the nation will fail, because the leader fails.

Now, in the case of the individual in society, the same lesson applies. How do you get great leaders in society? Just as you require a sense of immortality--a valid one, for the leader of a nation--you also require the same thing, implicitly, of every member of the nation. What is our problem? Our problem is, that our people are, in a sense, immorally and intellectually immature. They do not have a sense of immortality. They may have sense--an arbitrary sense: "Oh, I got--you know, Falwell promised me immortality." Now, you want to call fraud, that is really a fraud!

Immortality is a sense of the difference between man and the beast. This problem comes up in society. Why? Because heretofore in civilization, and before civilization, as far back as we know-- society has been composed of three classes of people: Those who rule, or prey--not in church, but prey anyplace, upon somebody else. What they prey upon are either people they hunt down, and kill, and maybe eat, like cannibals; or they herd them, like cattle. They send them out to the fields to eat; they send them back to the barn to work, making milk and meat; they milk them. They say, "Hi, Bossie." They stroke them, all these kinds of things. But, they treat them (if they treat them well, as cattle) as cattle.

Now, in most societies, today, as in the United States, most people are educated to be, conditioned to be, human cattle! What's the difference? Man, the individual, has the power of discovering what we call "universal laws of the universe." No other living creature can do that! These laws take the form of discoveries of principle; they take the form of Classical artistic principles, and things of that sort. Only human beings can discover these. By discovering these things, or rediscovering them, and transimitting them to the future, and perpetuating them from the past, we achieve, in fact, a tangible form of immortality.

We know we're all going to die. We're born and we die. So therefore, what do we do with this life, which we know is limited? What purpose is it? Are we a beast? To go into the field, and eat hay? Come back to the barn to be milked? To be slaughtered when our time is come? The way the present HMO policy works? Or, are we human beings? And, if we are human beings, what is our real interest? Since we're all going to die anyway, what is our permanent interest?

Our permanent interest is in doing something, which aids in the process of transmitting the discoveries of the past, to the present and to the future, and adding to the stock of knowledge. Not in the sense of learning this, or learning that! A cow, a cat, can learn this or that! They may scratch you in the process, but they'll learn it, sooner or later. But they're not human. They have no sense of immortality. It's when you have a sense that your life is important, because you are doing something, in terms of defense of a principle, promotion of a principle, discovery of a principle, which is useful for the future of humanity; you used to get that. People would build bridges, or build buildings, and they would take their grandchildren out, "I built that!" "Grandpa, you built that?" "Yeah. I built that."

That is manifesting an approximate sense of immortality, that my life was devoted to some purpose. Most of us, up to recently, until the Baby Boomers came along, we used to think of--be a future-oriented people. We would think of our past, where we came from. We would think of what we learned from the past, what we acquired from the past. We would think of what we would give to the future of humanity. We would be proud people, if we thought we were doing the right thing.

And, this was the basis of our morality. What happened after 1964, with the Baby Boomer generation, with the rock-drug-sex counterculture, a change occurred. A fascist change. Induced by the Synarchists; this was fascism. The rock-drug-sex counterculture was fascism, or the leading edge of fascism. Why? What was the difference? The point is, you said, "No longer is the past important. No longer is the future important. History has ended!" What you get now, is your "life-style." You get your kicks. You fix your head! Like Jannis Joplin did. Fixed it permanently.

And you have people today, 50, 60; they're running the country, in most positions. They're having post-mid-life crises. They're trying to discover a newly invented life-style, because the old ones have all become boring. They're looking for the fifth sex, hmm? They are frightened, and hateful, against their own children! They don't like their own children. Because their children are a nuisance: They interfere with the way I want to live. "I don't like this. I got a life-style to take care of! I have my own lifestyle to take of!" And, when people are approaching their senior years, and they have that attitude, what's going to happen to them? What is going to become of them?

So that, in youth, you have to do two things: Become the masters of the discovery of science--not "learn" things from textbooks. The youth also have to do some other things: The youth have to look at their parents' generation, which is mostly a disaster, a moral disaster; a collection of futile life-styles, wandering in search of a purpose--or non-purpose. And, you have to give your older generation, your parents' generation, back some morality. A sense that this nation was not a failure. That Franklin Roosevelt was right, what we built out of this nation in the post-war period under Roosevelt, was right. Maybe there were mistakes, there were things wrong--but, we built the nation. We saved the world from Hitler: It was right!

So therefore, we should be proud of the fact that we did something right. And dissatisfied, that we didn't do better. But, you've got to get the parents' generation, who, by and large, with few exceptions, are off searching for a new life-style, to compensate for the pure boredom of being themselves. And, by seeing you doing something, about the future, you've got to get them back, to thinking about their role in the future. Because you are their future! They, like me, are going to die soon. You are their future. And what comes after you, is the future.

This is not the secret of our immortality, in itself: but, is an expression of it; is a way of thinking about life, in a practical way, which is consistent with a sense of immortality. If you're going to fight the kind of issues we have to fight around the world today, you've got to inspire people with a true sense of immortality. The kind that Shakespeare's Hamlet lacked.

And everything else you learn, everything else you master, should be governed by that.

Question: Lyn, it's a great surprise to see you here. It's pretty cool to see you. I didn't expect that. On my way, I stopped at a Dennis Kucinich fundraiser, thinking that I could give him an intervention. So, tonight on the airplane back, his campaign fundraiser promises that he would be reading the material, and it's all about how you're launching the impeachment effort. And, she said she's hearing about you, and about the effort to impeach Cheney, as opposed to Bush, so I think it's working. So, that's pretty cool.

My question is--there are all sorts of strategic interventions, that seem to be useful and effective. My question is, when do you give up hope? You know, God says, never give up hope. People are never beyond hope and redemption; but, you're in a horse-race, and it's a temporal world, and immortality will always exist. But, when we're trying to get you to be elected, it's important to be strategic and effective. And, it seems that there are some people--I was at a wedding and I saw [California Gov.] Gray Davis there. And I thought, "Wow, there this opportunity!" But, there's an undeniable level of corruption in people, and you can smell it and feel it.

And, I'm susceptible inside myself, so it's always a cat-fight. But, I guess I'm asking, how do you stay effective? How do we do this in time? And, how do we know when we're wasting our time?

LaRouche: Oh, we're doing just fine, actually. It's a tough fight. It's a grinding fight, and you run into a lot of stupidity, from a lot of people who shouldn't be stupid. But, nonetheless, they do it. I don't worry about it. I've seen so much stupidity in my life, and here I am. Having a grand ol' time. [applause] I'm running for President, and there's not a qualified rival in sight!

If the American people are going to survive, the obvious conclusion is, I'm going to be the next President. It's obvious. It's that simple. Don't worry about what people think! Or, what they say!

You know, this is a problem of leadership: It's like leadership in combat, in military affairs. Leadership is simply having the guts to use reason, rather than fear, to control your behavior. You have to say, "What should I do?" You have to be critical, self-critical: "What should I do?" But, once you know, what you should do, and you're clear on that, you don't allow anything to get in your way. You must do it! Particularly, if you do it for humanity.

You know, I see the world. I've been in many countries recently, directly and indirectly; or in touch with people in these countries, at high levels on policy questions. I know the world--not every part of it, not every detail, but enough of it. I know the world. This world is aching for what we must do here in this country. And, if we don't succeed, there isn't going to be this country. There is no alternative. It doesn't exist! Look at this crazy Mayor of New York, just for an example--the Blooming Idiot, huh? [laughter] This is going nowhere! This is chaos! Mayor Chaos! So, against this, who's right? Against this, what do you do? Well: You can not solve the problem of this mayor, in New York City. There are things that can be done, to get him out. He will probably be run out of town, because he doesn't like the jokes that are being made about him.

But: The problem of the United States lies at a higher level than the Mayor of New York. It lies at the highest level: We have to have, from the head of the state, from the President and from the people around him or those circles, we have to have the kind of leadership which changes the rules of the game; which enables us to fix these problems, in areas like New York City. You can't do it inside New York City.

And, don't worry about the dummies, like Kucinich. I mean, he's got his own problems. But, think of under his leadership, what will happen to the United States? There will not be a United States. Under the leadership of the other candidates, what will happen to the United States? There won't be a United States. If you allow this Cheney and Company to continue to control the country, what will there be? There will be Hell on this planet. There will be a destruction of civilization. You can not go around launching nuclear wars against one nation after the other, and not unleash a condition on this planet which is impossible. Plunge the whole planet into a New Dark Age, in which you're lucky if a billion people survive that process! Not just the war itself, but the after-effects of it.

So, you get to a time, as now, when your conviction is less questioning, because you know you must do it, because you know what the consequences are, if you don't. And, that's what I face. And, I'm happy, that I'm sure it's a possible thing. We can do it. Therefore, I'm determined to do it.

I've nothing else to do!

Question: Hi Mr. LaRouche, it's a pleasure to speak with you. When I'm talking with people about what our country's doing, specifically overseas, and the drive for war, the thing that I hear the most from people, is that we're defending against the terrorist networks that are all around the globe, specifically al-Qaeda. Now, I'm familiar with the way with our government aided the establishment of these terror groups. But, even in EIR, a few weeks ago, in the Editorial, in the back, it stated that al-Qaeda was thought to be behind these bombings in Saudi Arabia. But, the question was, who was controlling al-Qaeda?

So, my question is: It seems as though, although we had a part in forming these networks, that some of these networks have gotten, say out of our control, and may be--or, has that happened? Do we actually control them? Or, if not, to what extent have these networks gotten out of our control? And, if that's the case, to what extent are they a legitimate threat, to the citizens of the world? And, in light of that, what should--I don't think we should go on a whole Mideast takeover, that's obvious--but, if they have gotten out of our control, and are able to commit acts of terrorism, to what extent should we react to that?

LaRouche: [You have to look at what] our policy is; our international policy now is desperate. What you have for example: Let's take the Arab world. I talked to some leaders of the Arab League, oh a couple months ago, on just this question. They're not completely realistic. As a matter of fact, they're rather passionate on this question, because their ox has been gored. And they will tend to defend Osama bin Laden more than they should.

This thing was created, largely originally from London--this whole problem, in terms of the Arab world. It was created London. It was created largely, first, out of the India office, of the British intelligence service. And then, after World War I, this was varied, and they set up the Arab Bureau from British intelligence, and they ran operations out of there.

Since that time, you have two other major groups--the Soviets used to play their games in this area--two other major groups, that are involved in these kinds of operations. One are of U.S.: Iran-Contra is an example of that. Who created Osama bin Laden? Well, essentially, the initiative for that came from George Bush's network. And I can give you the documentation on that, as to who did it. And, they're all the people we call "Chickenhawks" or "neo-cons" today.

I was consulting the National Security Council, on the question of my project, which was this SDI. I was meeting with representatives of the head of the National Security Council on a fairly regular basis, because of these discussions that were going on. At the other end of the offices, at the National Security Council, where I was going in, was this whole crowd around Ollie North: This included Roy Godson, de Graffenreid, the whole crowd in there. They were running it. Together with people on the British side, who were running the operation.

So, George Bush, the former President, then as Vice President, and the heads of British intelligence who were running the operation in Pakistan and other countries: Their idea, which Brzezinski set into motion in the first place, was to engage the Arab world, through Pakistan intelligence, the ISI, in Afghanistan, in a war against the Soviet Union. And, they said, "Muslim brothers must go out and fight against these heathen Soviets." They created an operation, which was funded largely by drug operations, the same operation that set up the Iran-Iraq War, for their purposes, the same kind of purposes, and this stuff was left to run.

The other one is Israel: Now, the worst terrorist organization in the Middle East, is Israel! [applause] To my knowledge, my personal knowledge, Ariel Sharon and Henry Kissinger, in 1982, were involved in setting up Hamas. Hamas subsequently split into various parts, the factional parts. The Israelis play it. And, the way it works, is, there are two ways of running it: You run it directly, or you know something's out there, you have your influence on it, and you play it.

If you look at the history, since Ariel Sharon came back into power, event before he came back into power, including that storming of the Temple Mount, that every bit of terrorism, centered on Israel, in the Arab world, has been orchestrated by Ariel Sharon and his crowd personally. If we do not eliminate Ariel Sharon, are we going to have terrorism? Well, that's questionable: If I were President of the United States, we probably wouldn't. Because I would have a certain relationship with the Saudi government, and other Arab governments, which I think I've earned. And, with me as President, or representing the Presidency of the United States, as a private citizen, I think we could deal with the problem. Not by killing. We might have a few law-enforcement problems running around loose. But we would come to an agreement.

The basis for peace, is not simply law enforcement. The basis for peace, is what makes law enforcement unnecessary. And, if we can get agreements with governments and people, which make them optimistic about their futures, they will help us. They will help us control the problem, and reduce it to a minor law-enforcement problem.

My objective with terrorism--and I understand a great deal about it; I've been studying this thing for a long time--but my objective with terrorism, is to reduce it to a law-enforcement problem, but policies, shared among governments and peoples, which create the conditions under which it can be managed as a law-enforcement problem. Most terrorist operations I know of, are protected in one way or another. They're protected by governments. From a government standpoint, apart from my responsibilities on the law-enforcement side, my major concern is to make sure the governments do the thing, putting these things under control.

What has to be punished, is a government which engages in this kind of practice. We have to agree to this, and governments have to agree, together: "We are going to stop this nonsense!"

"Terrorism" is a bad word. It's a word which describes an effect, and everybody can use it for what they perceive to be the effect they don't like. But, actually, terrorism belongs to a category I've called "irregular warfare." It's a level of warfare which goes from strikes, strike actions, civil disobedience, all kinds of things. These are all forms of irregular warfare. They're forms of conflict in society, whether orchestrated or otherwise, which may or may not become serious problems. The way to deal with this, is to deal with the roots of the problem, the roots of the conflict. Which government can do.

The problem is, we have a very cruel society. We abuse people, horribly. People do not consider attacks on us, shameful. They consider them honorable. Why? Because we've put them in a desperate position, where they have no option! No peaceful option is offered to them. No alternative is offered to them. They go crazy. And, they kill, and they hate. And, that is--some people call it terrorism. I don't use the terrorism, as such. Sometimes, I'll say, or use the word, "terrorism"--but rarely; only if I'm defining the context I'm using it in.

My thing is, we have a problem, with this around the world. We have an evil world! We are cruel to people! We are doing things that are cruel. And, if we have policies which are better, particularly with the power of the United States, to influence the world--I know personally! That most of these kinds of problems, we're concerned about, could be solved. Most Palestinian-Israeli conflicts could be stopped--how? Very simply: Step on Ariel Sharon! Step on these guys, these fascist mass-murderers, who are in the right wing in Israel. Step on them! The United States says: "You are not allowed to do this, any more!" They say, "We got a right to"--"No, you haven't got right!" [applause]

So, shortly, because it's a long question you've opened up to, but the thing is, there are two aspects to it: There's a law enforcement aspect; there's a countermeasures aspects. All right. That's law enforcement, or extended law enforcement, or military in some cases.

But, the other thing is , the main thing is policy: We have insane foreign policies in practice. We allow people from our government and other governments, to do things that should not be allowed. They should be brought to public attention, exposed, and held accountable before the world, as to what they're doing. Under those conditions, like the case of Israel and Palestine, we must not tolerate any more of that! We now have a significant population of Israel, one for peace, other who are Yitzhak Rabin, who recognize that war is foolish; they have to come to peace. Some are actually for peace; others realize that peace, as a realistic proposition, must be solved.

If the United States intervenes in the right way, and if we crush the gangsters in New York, who are supporting Sharon in Israel, we can bring about peace. We have the power to do so, with the countries, which would help us make that effort agreeable.

If we destroy that problem; if we do something about the mess we've made in Iraq; if we give the Iraqi people back their country; if we take the threat of war away from Iran, and other countries, I assure you, that if I were President, we would have peace. And, to the extent I'm influential in projecting the attitude of our government, we can win.

Otherwise, it's just a counterintelligence/countermeasures law-enforcement problem.

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