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This webcast excerpt appears in the February 11, 2000 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

LaRouche: Join the Fight,
Don't be a Spectator!

Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. made the remarks excerpted here in a webcast discussion with voters in Delaware on Feb. 1.

... From my standpoint, the big problem is that the majority of voters in the United States, and citizens generally, are behaving like the proletariat marching into the Roman Colosseum to watch the lions eat Christians, and they're deciding, who's the front-runner: Shall we bet on the lions, or shall we bet on the Christians? And generally, they vote against the Christians, because they look like losers to them.

So, the problem in the campaign is that voters--and I've watched this behavior--are cheering for what they think are front-runners. It's like cheering for athletes who they don't know personally, in a football game, mass football game. The crowd is cheering. What are they cheering for? Do they know who that bum on the field really is? And then they find he became President because they cheered for him, and they said, how did we get that bum in there in the first place?

The trick today, is to get the average voter, the average citizen, to realize that they are not sitting in the grandstand, of a Roman Colosseum; they're sitting in the arena, down with the Christians, and the lions are coming on. The trick here, is to get the Americans to flee from their sense of unreality--probably not a grandstand, maybe a television screen. They're not spectators; they're victims in the field....

Imagine yourself sitting up in the grandstand of the Colosseum, and looking at the lions eating the Christians, and you're wondering which you're going to cheer for. Realize that you're one of the Christians, and when you look at a television set, or you look at some electoral spectacle, or some candidate parading through town, dropping promises which he will not keep, or could not keep, perhaps, in many cases, don't think, "Which is the front-runner?"

Think of yourself: Are you one of those proletarians who is going to sit in the grandstand, you as a Christian, to watch and cheer for the lions who are eating the Christians? And start to think about politics in a more serious way, and get your neighbor to think about politics in a more serious way, since you're obviously more serious about it than most of them are. Get them to see: Stop being a spectator in matters on which your life, and your family's life may depend. Think clearly! What should our nation's policies be? Who represents what those policies must be? Who is qualified to represent those policies?

Don't be stampeded by the orchestration of public opinion by mass news media. Don't be stampeded by other tricks. Don't be corrupted and turned into a Yahoo by watching sex and bloody violence on your television set. Think of yourself as one of the Christians down in the arena about to be eaten by lions, and think of which way, under those circumstances, you would vote.

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