Priority Campaign Issue
Is President Bush's Insanity

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

Mr. LaRouche gave this speech to a webcast conference of LaRouche PAC in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 6, 2004. The moderator was LaRouche's spokeswoman Debra Hanania Freeman. Video and audio archives of the event are available at the LaRouche PAC website.

Debra Freeman: ... Let me just say, that with now less than four weeks to go, to the election in the United States, we find ourselves in what is undoubtedly an extremely tense situation. The strategic crisis continues to deepen. The global financial crisis, and the global economic crisis, is undoubtedly what is driving that. We see the manifestations of that in every aspect of life in the United States. I think that, for those of you who listened to the Vice Presidential debate last night, we would all have to agree with Senator Edwards, that it's very unlikely that this country could take four more years of this policy.

But, it's also the case that the policy did not begin four years ago. Even George Bush and Dick Cheney could not do that much damage in four years. The fact of the matter is, that we find ourselves now at a crossroads: a crossroads in the history of the United States, but also a crossroads in the history of modern civilization. And what this election will, without question, determine, is what direction we take. We have an opportunity right now; we have an opportunity to reverse what has been 35 years of an extremely destructive policy, and a policy which flies in the face of the intention of the Founding Fathers, when this nation was established.

As I think everyone who is listening knows, Mr. LaRouche has played a critical role in this election campaign, first as a candidate for the Democratic nomination; and then, following the Democratic Convention, with the formation of LaRouche PAC, Mr. LaRouche endorsed the candidacy of John Kerry, with the understanding that the most important thing for us to accomplish right now, is the absolute smashing of the Cheney-Bush Administration. And we have proceeded to do precisely that.

But we've also done it, with an eye toward the policies which must dominate the new administration. And those policies will not be implemented, and can not be implemented, without the active participation of Lyndon LaRouche. That is the case inside the United States, and it is also the case internationally.

To be fair, I think we do have to give some credit to President Bush, who I think proved, beyond any shadow of a doubt last week, that he in fact can tell people everything he knows in less than 90 seconds. And he can do it, with dramatic pauses! I have to admit, that for myself, every time—and I may be dating myself by saying this—but every time George W. Bush talked about what hard work something was, I kept hearing the voice of Maynard G. Krebs in the background, screaming, "Wo-o-or-r-k!!"

But, while we can joke about it, and while we obviously have to joke about it, one thing that I think alarmed Americans, and it is a theme that Mr. LaRouche has hammered away at, is the fact that we currently have the United States, the world's remaining superpower, under the guidance of a President with extremely serious psychological problems. And I think that those psychological problems were manifest before the eyes of the entire world last week.

There's certainly more that can be said about this. And there is more that can be said about Mr. LaRouche's role in this drive to defeat the Cheney-Bush synarchist crowd. But rather than taking the time to do that, now that everyone has settled in, I'd like you to join me in welcoming Lyndon LaRouche.

LaRouche: As I indicated, the problem which I'll address today, has to do with insanity. Not only, however, the insanity of the incumbent President, George Bush, which I shall refer to, but also the insanity of two other types: We have mass insanity, as typified by the role of religious fundamentalism in shaping the policies of the United States today; and secondly, we have cultural insanity, expressed in the form in particular, over the past 40 years, of the transformation of the United States, which had been the world's most powerful, most productive nation—the one that had rebuilt the world, or led in rebuilding the world, in the post-war period—40 years ago, began to transform itself, into the junk heap, the bankrupt junk heap, we are today.

This was not done merely by bad Presidents, such as the cowardice, in a sense, of Johnson, who was frightened that maybe the three guns that shot down Kennedy might shoot him next; but also the insanity of people who supported President Nixon, a virtual fascist regime, which launched the actual wrecking of the U.S. economy in a large degree.

The mass insanity of transforming this nation from the world's greatest producer society, to today's bankrupt society, post-industrial bankrupt system, in a bankrupt world, which we have led in bringing about.

So therefore, we have three kinds of insanity: One, the insanity of the President himself—and that is a major factor in our problems: Because we, as the United States, are crucial in this planet. If the United States goes insane, there's no other part of this planet, or no combination of other parts of this planet, which is prepared to prevent a global disaster, even potentially a new dark age. So, we have to be patriots, for the sake of the world: Because only the United States, in all its rotten condition today, still has the potential, in a time of crisis like this, a time whose precedent is that of the incumbency of Franklin Roosevelt, without whom the world would have gone to hell. And Roosevelt is to be credited for that, in part, but Roosevelt is to be credited also, because he was a President of the United States, in which are embedded the potentials which no other part of this planet has, for dealing with a crisis of the type which confronted us then, in 1933, and which confronts us again, today.

And therefore, that has to be our approach.

Therefore, an insane man in the Presidency, is a crisis. It's a crisis for the world. It is not something the rest of the world can overlook. There's no hope for the rest of the world, unless the United States is able to play the role it must play, under terms of the present crisis.

There's a mass of insanity, which is associated in this country with religious fundamentalism, both of the Catholic anti-Pope type, and of the Protestant fundamentalist type. Neither of which are Christians. And that, I will have something to say about, because that's an important part about this.

There's mass insanity in form of belief in free trade, which I will demonstrate today in a serious presentation of the subject, but brief, that this is a form of mass insanity. And if we don't get rid of it, we're not going to solve any of our problems.

Then, we have the cultural insanity, which is taking the form of fascism today: the fascism represented by the Bush-Cheney Administration. The support for what Bush-Cheney represents, is a form of mass insanity.

Now, so far, there are hopeful signs from the population, especially from the "unusual voters"—not the usual voters, the ones who have voted for insanity repeatedly, often, over the past four Federal election cycles. But rather, a kind of more serious kind of voter, the poor, the lower 80% of family-income brackets, and young people, young adults, particularly the age-group of 18 to 25. These layers are beginning to turn out. The role of youth, young adult youth, turning out to register to vote, and their role in inducing others to turn out to vote, from the lower 80% of family-income brackets, is the most positive factor in our population today.

Because the customary voters, the ones who voted at three out of the last four Federal elections, have performed very poorly. Bill Clinton managed to overcome that difficulty among them, and won a lot of them to his side. Al Gore couldn't do it—he became part of the problem, not the solution. And so forth.

So, these things have to be dealt with. They have to be understood.

Now, my position is, of course, I'm supporting Kerry for President, and have seen him as a second choice for a Democratic Presidential nominee since the New Hampshire primary, and have said so repeatedly. So, my support and endorsement for him, in the course of the convention in Boston, should have come as no surprise to anybody who was paying attention.

But I considered him actually my third choice, because there wasn't a second choice. What that means, essentially, is that he does not have the qualifications, presently, in and of himself, in the policies expressed and in his behavior, to be the kind of President the situation requires. So today, we're considering—and my role here is crucial—we're considering what has to be added to a successful election of a Kerry-Edwards ticket, to produce a Presidency which is actually qualified to deal with the challenge which a mere Kerry-Edwards team would not be qualified to do.

In other words, we have to bring into process, not only victories in the Congress, not only victories in state elections; we have to bring into the United States government, not just political appointees, not the usual hacks, not the usual people brought in as favors for financial contributions. We have to bring in some people who are not necessarily the richest people in the United States, but who are senior representatives, who are diplomatic, intelligence, military, and other governmental professional people, who may no longer be in government, but who have the knowledge, as a group of people, brought together for a dialogue, of providing a Presidency with the kind of guidance it requires to get through this.

I've worked with these people, directly and indirectly, for some time, people of this type. I find that our Americans of this type are among the most reliable for policymaking in the world. The problem is, they have not been brought together as a force. And I think if the Kerry-Edwards team wants to be successful as a Presidency, as well as merely elected, they're going to have to bring these people in, as their key advisors in various parts of government, rather than bringing in the so-called "financial angels" who come in as appointees: Because, at this time, the financial community of the United States, and the world, is insane. As I shall indicate today.

That's our problem. Take the case of Argentina.

In 1971-72, the Bretton Woods system, as established under Franklin Roosevelt in 1944, modeled not upon the Keynesian system, but modeled upon the American System of political economy of Alexander Hamilton and company—that system, the Bretton Woods system, enabled us, the United States, to take a shattered, bankrupt world, and reorganize a recovery for over two decades in the post-war period, notably in Europe and other places.

In 1971-72, Nixon, under the advice of Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, and Paul Volcker, destroyed that system. And George Shultz, the following year in 1972, at the Azores Conference, destroyed the system on which the post-war recovery and development of the United States and other nations had depended. We have been going downhill ever since.

Now, what has happened to us, is something similar to what happened in Europe during the 1922-1945 interval, when continental Europe was taken over, step by step, by fascist governments, starting with Mussolini in Italy, and continuing with Hitler to 1945.

But, at the end of the war, although the United States took some notable Nazis, and hung them at Nuremberg, the people that put the Nazis into power, including financial interests in our own country, formed the right wing in the United States, typified by Allen Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, and so forth. The right wing was there. The Truman Administration was a right-wing turn against everything Roosevelt fought for. We have long-term tendencies, where the same people, from the United States, Britain, and from Europe, who financed Hitler, for whom the Truman Administration covered up at the end of the war—names like Harriman, Morgan, du Pont, Mellon, and so forth. The people behind the planned military coup against the United States government of 1934: These people were brought back in, and the right-wing turn occurred.

Now, these people, again, are coming to the point that their system, that they created, is bankrupt. It's hopelessly bankrupt. This system is finished. Every major banking institution of Europe and the United States is presently bankrupt! And hopelessly bankrupt! Don't believe anything else: It's all lies.

But look at Argentina: Argentina, at the end of the war, had the fourth highest standard of living of any nation on this planet. It now has people living on garbage, today! Why? Because of the policy changes introduced under Nixon in 1971-72, the so-called floating-exchange-rate system. And what is happening? Annie Krueger (the mother of Freddie Krueger), the chief spokesman of the IMF, is imposing Nazi-like repression against the people of Argentina—accelerated death rates. And the same people in the United States, under George Bush and Cheney, would do the same thing to you, in the United States, in the coming year or two ahead.

Therefore, we've come to a point, where Kerry's and Edwards', but particularly Kerry's flopping, and Kennedy's flopping on the economic issue, from the Democratic Party side, is no longer tolerable! We're going to face a situation, like those faced in Argentina! Our lower 80% of the population's income brackets, our youth, are going to be faced with the same kind of measures, from a Bush-Cheney Administration, that Argentina faces from the IMF today.

This is fascism. This is the way this works, under the so-called "liberal" system, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, the so-called "free trade" system. You go along—free trade. Everything is free trade, fine! "We have democracy!" You don't know what you're talking about, but you have a right to say it. The politicians don't know what they're doing, but they have a right to decide. It's called "liberalism," as opposed to truth. Truth is measured in the consequences of a decision, not in the right to express it.

What happens then, when the system fails, as it always does? The history of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, since it became a power over the period between 1688 and 1763, has produced this kind of cycle repeatedly, including the Napoleonic dictatorship in Europe, and similar kinds of things. What it does, it practices liberalism for a certain period of time. It gets rich. Then it comes to the limit of its getting rich by those methods. And the question is, who's going to pay the unpayable debts? And suddenly, the liberals turn into fascists, or the equivalent: They start to skin the people, rather than save them, in order to pay the debts.

This is fascism. This is what happened in Europe in 1922, in particular, beginning with Mussolini, but actually plotted at the Versailles Treaty, concluding World War I: A group called the Synarchist International, which are international private bankers, who control most banks, they plotted to set up a system of fascist regimes. The first choice, set up by a banker called Volpi di Misurata, who was a British-controlled banker in Italy, put Mussolini into power. And you had, over this period, a succession of appointments of fascist governments all the way to 1945, on the continent of Europe.

The issue was, as in 1931-1933 on, the same thing that faces the United States and the world today: It's what's going on in Europe today, with the so-called "Hartz IV" program, in Germany. It's fascism! It may not be political fascism yet, but it's economic fascism. Similar proposals in France, in Italy, elsewhere in Europe. Europe is on the road toward fascism, as it was in 1931-33, right now!

And we, here in the United States, without a Roosevelt as President, face the same threat here.

Therefore, in order to stop the fascists, who are clearly marching behind Bush-Cheney, we have to get them out now. But we have to make sure that a Kerry Administration does not, out of liberalism, capitulate to the demands of the bankers, in the way the Europeans capitulated to the bankers in installing fascism in 1933, in particular, in Germany.

This is the problem.

Now the problem here is, that the people I'm supporting, for President and Vice President, have not yet shown the ability, or the willingness, to understand this problem. Well, I'm not going to fuss too much about it with them right now. Nov. 2's coming up. But the day that they are elected, on Nov. 2, this is what I'm going to fuss about! We're not going to turn a Kerry-Edwards victory into a license to introduce fascism into the United States.

And that's why this PAC exists. For that purpose.

My constituency, and I propose the constituency of the Democratic Party, has to be primarily two groups: the lower 80% of family-income brackets who have been looted and ruined over the past 40 years, by the change from a productive society to a post-industrial utopia; and secondly, the generation of young people typified by those 18 to 25 young adults, who are given now, no future. Look at the income standards of people reaching the age of 18, who should be going to universities, today; and look at the universities they're being sent to—and weep! And look at the incomes they have; look at the futures they face for the next 40 to 50 years ahead, if they have a future at all! That has to be the constituency.

The political constituency of a true republic, has to be the poorest people, the least fortunate. And the test of good government, is the ability of a President (in our case), and the Congress, to look at the conditions of life of the poorest layer of our population, the least privileged, and to say, "Justice for them, is a measure of our conformity with the Preamble of our Constitution, with the sovereignty of our nation: Which means the bankers come second, and the nation comes first." The general welfare of our people, the test of which is how do we treat those who are in the poorest layers of our population? Our posterity: How do we treat our youth, and those coming after them? Those are the three principles, the great principles of our republic, which must govern us in this period ahead. And that's what I'm going to fight for. That's what I shall continue to fight for.

We have to support Kerry and Edwards now, because they're the only available choice. We must stop the Bush-Cheney proposition. Kerry's an intelligent guy. He's got many good qualities. Edwards is a younger man, but we have hope for the whole crew.

But: They are going to have to have some guidance. Because they have not shown, yet, a comprehension of the real problems that face the nation. I think Senator Byrd probably should also have something to say about this thing on the question of War Powers Act, in particular.

Now, so let's start this outline of the parameters of the ball field. Let's look at this case, piece by piece.

Now, let's start with a picture—there's a wonderful book, published by an honorable, distinguished psychiatrist, called Bush on the Couch).

A very good book. What it does, it takes material from the public domain, and with the expertise of the psychiatric profession which has developed techniques for understanding how to profile political figures, and political movements, in the same way that a psychiatrist would look at an individual patient. And he has shown us, with facts which are available to us, which can be substantiated by psychiatrists professionally, but which are understandable by citizens: that the President of the United States is, in effect, clinically insane.

And, if you didn't believe that, you have to look at a few clips from the Bush-Kerry debate.

[[VIDEO CLIPS FROM FIRST BUSH-KERRY DEBATE]]

You wanted to have that, for the President of the United States? In a time of crisis? A man who will kill, without even knowing who he's killing or why he's doing it?

Well, then I've got another one here.

[[EDWARDS AND CHENEY AT DEBATE]]

I've got a short cut from the Edwards-Cheney debate. How is that? All right. What you're looking at here, you're looking at an honest fellow, Edwards from North Carolina. But you're looking at something else. Now, Bush personally is a psychopath. What you're looking on the left-hand side there [Cheney] is a sociopath!

Now, Edwards didn't know how to deal with this sociopath, because he didn't know how you deal with a sociopath of that type. It's sort of like an organized-crime hitman type of sociopath: Think of a hitman, an organized-crime hitman. You're dealing with a very similar type of personality, right there. The Vice President of the United States, or the President in Charge of Vice.

What should Edwards have done? He took the wrong approach for dealing with a sociopath. This is a killer sociopath, a conscienceless killer; and a conscienceless liar. How do you deal with him? Accuse him of cowardice. And he will respond by showing you his other side. Then the sociopath will come clear to the surface. Just imagine telling a mafia hitman, "I understand you're the biggest coward in the neighborhood." And he will then demonstrate his propensities to you, in all probable cases.

What I want to turn to here, is look at the effect of what has happened, recently, in the United States, and what is happening now, to the lowest 80% of family-income brackets....

This is what is happening! This is fact about the economy! Forget the financial figures.

Most of the financial figures reporting on the U.S. and world economy are totally fake. The financial figures are largely related to so-called financial derivatives. These financial derivatives have no direct correlation with physical economic reality. In terms of physical economic reality, as I shall emphasize here, today, the United States is disintegrating! It is disintegrating under Bush-Cheney at a faster rate than at any time previously! And if you keep them in here, the disintegration will be total. And Bush himself, and Cheney himself, have, in the two recent debates, avowed their commitment to continuing those policies which have caused this. Now, if you want to starve to death, you vote for these clowns!

Let's take a series of these: Let's take, first of all, what has happened to aluminum.

And I'm going to explain in the course of this why I'm using these methods. These are called animations. They're not charts, in the sense of the kind of charts you get in printed publications, they're animations, and I'll explain what the importance of these is. That's one case.

Let's take the next one, steel.

This is over a century.

Take the next one: nickel.

This was the effect of Roosevelt's mobilization for the war, and the results after 1970, when the change occurred.

Okay, take the next one, zinc.

Another crucial one, similar kinds of characteristics. World War I; now World War II, hmm? It's called the "kitchen zinc."

Okay, copper.

See again, you see a similar phenomenon, a little different, because of the electrical wire and related industry with copper. Again, but the same factor.

Now, look at something else: Look at the collapse of the rail system, which is our basic transportation system—rail and water. This is one section, that section of the United States.

You could correlate these things with industry. Now, we also have some others I don't have here. But you look at the collapse of steel, the steel industry, and you find the collapse of the steel industry, together with the collapse of the water-transport system, that is, locks and canals and dams and so forth: They correlate, of course, with this collapse of industrial power, industrial might.

Now, this is our friend "Smiley." One of my associates likes to give this.

What has happened is that Wall Street and finance, which has been growing, and which is accounted as a source for the growth of the economy, is not the growth of the physical economy; it's not the production of the physical standard of living on which people depend; nor does it represent production by people. It represents a hyperflationary (actually) inflation of the nominal value of money, which has no necessary correlation with the production of physical goods.

Look at one other thing. We've got one here on flux-density and technology, just to make a crucial point, which explains why I'm using animations. We'll come back to this again—I want to repeat this—but, first explain what I'm talking about here.

In ancient Greece, before Aristotle, there was a development of culture around Greek figures known as Thales, the Pythagoreans generally, a Pythagorean by the name of Archytas, and Plato. In this period, there was an understanding of science, which the ancient Greeks, or these ancient Greeks, acquired largely from Egypt. And if you go back about 5,000 years, to the Great Pyramids of Egypt, you will observe that these pyramids were astronomical instruments. And the ancient Egyptians had a method of developing physical science, which was based on a study of the universe as observed, as the astrophysical universe.

This was called "spherics." Instead of looking at the universe in a silly way, in a Cartesian or Euclidean geometry, which only silly people will believe in, you look at it from the standpoint of the ancient Egyptians and what's called "spherics." You're looking up to the universe. Sooner or later, you get the idea of normalizing your observation position on Earth, when you're looking at the stars at night, because the Earth is in motion, in orbit; the Earth is rotating. And therefore, you have to take that into account, in correlating what you think you are seeing, from this platform called Earth, when you look up to the universe. And you see things which are the so-called "stellar constellations." And there's motion there. And you have the non-stellar motion such as the planets and the asteroids and so forth, which are also part of the picture.

So, from the standpoint of trying to understand this spherical system, which the ancient Egyptians understood from the science of spherics, the ancient Greeks, as typified by Thales, and the Pythagoreans, and Plato, and so forth, developed a concept of physical science. Now, this modern physical science, and modern technology, is actually based on the principles which the ancient Greeks, the ones I referred to, developed. It was called the concept of "powers." Not energy, but "powers." Only idiots measure things in energy. Energy is an effect, it is not a cause. Power is what's important.

What do we mean by power?

This goes back to the very nature of man: Only man, among living creatures, knows the concept of power. By the concept of power, we mean, that we think we understand things, once we get past purblindness. We look out at our experience. We think we see objects. We call them "sense-perceptual objects." Well, there are sensual-perceptual objects, but are they really the physical objects which are causing the effects we're seeing? No!

And modern science, as typified by people like Nicholas of Cusa, who was the founder of modern experimental science, or one of his key followers, Kepler, and followers of Kepler, such as Leibniz, developed this concept in the form which defines the most effective form of modern science: that man, through our use of the principle of hypothesis, the principle of discovery, is able to define, not visible, but visibly efficient physical processes in the universe. By understanding these principles, and applying them, man is able to increase our species' power in and over the universe.

Thus, for example, if the human species were a monkey—or a Dick Cheney (comparable: one gorilla knows the other)—then the human population of the planet, in the past 2 million years could never have exceeded much more than 2 million people, living individuals. We now have on this planet, more than 6 billion living individuals.

How did this happen? Because of the principle of powers: Mankind, in his history, has accumulated discoveries of principles, principles which are things which can not be seen, but can be proven to exist by the mind. These become the mental objects we call "principles" in physical science. Also the principles we find in Classical artistic composition. Principles. These principles enable man to increase man's power to exist in the universe. To raise our standard of living and culture.

We reflect these changes, in modern society, as technological progress. Using technological progress in the broad sense, to mean not only discovery and application of scientific principles, but on the basis of the use of discovered scientific principles, to create what we call new technologies. It also applies to culture, to Classical culture; it applies to poetry, to music, to artistic composition, to the stage, which enables people to understand history, through great tragedies enacted on stage, as those of Shakespeare, or Schiller.

So, this is man's notion of powers, or technology.

So therefore, man's increase in power, per capita and per square kilometer, is the result of the development of this knowledge and its use. So therefore, we can measure progress in terms of the rate of density of technology—more and more uses of technology, to solve human problems, to enable human beings to live better, to become more numerous, to master the land, to master, eventually, the Solar System.

So, that's how we measure progress. When we have people, for example, in industries, like small businesses which are high tech, which produce most of the technologies on which large corporations have depended; or small firms, usually less than 200 employees, sometimes much less, in which the large corporation depends upon them for developing the technologies on which these large corporations depend for the quality of their product (if they pay attention to them, which they do less and less these days; and we write these people off).

So, we measure progress in terms of the development of our people, that is, development in terms of technology proper; development in terms of Classical artistic principles in music, art and so forth, the things which go together to enable us to cooperate, to solve problems, technological problems, in cooperation. The great effect of this, is in the form of small industry: which means the progressive farmer, the progressive entrepreneur, who hires anywhere from 3 to 200 people, typically. These are the people who are dedicated, not to making a profit. Yeah, they don't want to lose money; they don't want to go bankrupt. But, their primary motive is not profit per se. Their primary motive is a sense of achievement: To build a firm which makes a successful contribution to society.

A firm which will continue to live, which will employ perhaps members of their family, or people they've adopted, as key employees. These firms will have principles that will go on from generation to generation. They used to have great reputations. We used to have firms in existence for three or four generations, and you would look upon them, reliably, as sources of good technology. You would call them up, if you wanted a problem solved. You would rely on a brand name, associated with that firm.

The purpose of an individual, who is a human being—and I shall get to that in a moment—the purpose of the individual, is to do something with their life! To do something with their life, not only for themselves, but for the people who come after them; and to bring honor to their grandparents and parents for what they've done. That's the great motive of humanity. Not a financial motive. It expresses itself, in the fact you can't keep a business going if you keep losing money. But the purpose is not to make money: The purpose is to be able to do something good, for it to grow, the way a farmer tries to make a crop grow better, and to pass something on to coming generations. And also, to honor their ancestors, whose suffering they may remember, and whose sacrifices they may remember.

Therefore, we have a system in the United States, which is called the "American System"—it's not the European capitalist system. It's the American System. The American System means, that 50% of the national economy will be associated with infrastructure, because to produce, we require water systems; we require power systems; we require mass transportation systems, as well as ordinary water systems; we require public education; we require health-care systems, and so forth. And therefore, about 50% of a total, healthy, modern economy is in the area of public infrastructure.

Some of it's financed by the Federal government. Some of it is organized by state governments, perhaps with the assistance of the Federal government, with credit organized by the Federal government; some of it is organized by municipalities and counties. But these are all things, from water systems on down, the public services which are necessary to maintain and improve the structure of the country, as a precondition for all kinds of private production.

But while these things are government operations, in one sense or the other, they also depend upon their function in fostering individual initiative by private entrepreneurs, because there's only one source of human progress: It's the creative powers of the individual mind. And therefore, we want to foster the opportunities, for the development and utilization of the creative powers of the individual mind, for the benefit of us all.

So, then, the American System, as Hamilton summarized it, that's the kind of system we want to have.

Now that means that our point is, is, we have to increase the technology-density of the United States. And that will be a measure of how powerful we are, per capita, in meeting our own needs. That contrasts with the fact, that during the past 40 years, we, who because of our high technology-density, were the leading world's power in productivity, have destroyed ourselves, with the post-industrial, so-called "Greenie" ideology of anti-technology society! We destroyed ourselves.

We now live, in the United States, by shutting down our places of employment, and getting what we eat and wear, from the slave labor, or virtual slave labor, of other countries. And our country is being destroyed, because we are no longer earning our own income. We are stealing it from other people. And the people from whom we're stealing, are going shut up, like the case of Argentina, or the case of Mexico.

We are not losing our jobs to Mexico. The Mexicans are not benefitting from what's happening to them in their relationship to the United States. Mexico is becoming progressively poorer, as a result of producing for us, at incomes in Mexico below the level needed for Mexicans to survive.

So that people in our country are taking our jobs, and shipping them out to Mexico and other places, where Mexicans work at slave labor conditions; or, Mexico as a nation, lives at slave labor conditions, in order to provide cheap goods for Wal-Mart, the same Wal-Mart that's firing the firms that used to supply the stores in their area. In other words: We are destroying both our own country, and the country from whom we steal, in the case of Mexico.

Look at the case of Mexico in particular: Take the immigration into the United States of both illegal and legal immigrants. Look at the generations among them. Look at the effects. What we are doing: We are taking the bodies of Mexicans, and we are looting the bodies. Look at where the employment is in Mexico, and among Mexicans coming to the United States: There is a negative rate of employment, among Mexicans who have been in the United States, legal or otherwise, for more than four years! There is an increase in employment, among Mexicans who have come into the United States within the past four years! What does that mean? We are stealing the cheapest labor, and looting it!

This is not the United States. This is not what we were created to be.

Look at our own country! Look at these areas we just indicated here. Look at Ohio, where there's a big turnout for Kerry. And we're helping to organize it. Look at Michigan. Look at western Pennsylvania. Look at other parts of the country, where there are similar things. Look at the Northwest of the United States. Look at the Southern states of United States.

Look at the ruin. We've come to a point, a real cycle, a 40-year cycle: Most of the long-term infrastructure, such as rail systems, mass transit systems, locks and dams, water systems and so forth—. Electrical power production and distribution systems, usually have a capital life-cycle of between 40 and 50 years. Now 40 years ago, approximately 1964, we started to go into a phase, of phasing down from being a high-technology society, to a post-industrial society. Now, look at the installations we had then! Look at the dams! Look at the locks! Look at the water systems, the reservoirs, which are used by the counties and so forth, for freshwater systems. Look at the systems of dams on the county level, within states. Look at power distribution and generation: These systems are now collapsing!

Why? Because 40 years ago, we had created these systems! And now, the systems we created 40 to 50 years ago, have run the life-cycle where they had to be replaced or replenished. And we have no allotment for doing so.

So, the obvious conclusion is, that the great challenge before the United States today, with a Kerry Administration, is to create between 8 and 10 million new jobs, immediately, by utilizing labor for what it can be utilized for. Initially, the great emphasis will have to be on basic economic infrastructure, on the Federal, state, and local level.

We have to create Federal credit the way Roosevelt did, using the Constitutional power of the Federal government to create credit. Put the bankrupt banking system into bankruptcy; don't let them close their doors, force them to stay open, keep the thing functioning. Pour credit into the system through the Federal government, the state government, and the local government. Get the infrastructure projects going. Build up the paid income of people in these areas, to the level that the states are at a breakeven level! If you bring all the states above breakeven level, then you've brought the Federal government's operations above breakeven level.

This means that now you've created, by infrastructure projects, you have created the stimulation, for participation through contracts, by private contractors, all the way through the system—contractors or suppliers. So suddenly now, you take the private sector, by activating the 50% of the economy, the infrastructure sector, you now stimulate the market, on which the private sector depends. And it will go into growth. That's what we have to do.

But that means we have to put the system into bankruptcy reorganization.

Now, look back at this chart, these flux-density technological leaps.

Each of these things represents what you measure, in crude terms, as increases in energy-flux density. The burning of wood is the least efficient, in terms of energy-flux density, and the effects on nature in the long term are not too good. Remember, in the 16th Century in England, England was almost in a crisis, because it had relied upon charcoal, which is a product of this combustion of wood, for its fuel. And, as it tried to go through a primitive level of its industrial development, as for making cannon and so forth for warfare in that period, it soon reached the point there was a crisis. So the English were forced to discover the use of coal, and promote the use of coal, which is a higher level of efficiency, in terms of density, than wood. We then went to higher products in terms of fuels, in terms of fuel development and so forth, and we went to nuclear energy.

Now, nuclear energy—there's no system, no non-nuclear system, which can match nuclear fission as a source of power. It's qualitative. So when you stop having nuclear fission as a power source, you're nuts! You've ended technological progress. That's not adequate. You have to have better nuclear fission systems. You have to have also thermonuclear fusion systems, which are a still higher order of magnitude. And we'll probably get to matter/anti-matter reactions, sometime in the course of this century, if we don't collapse in the meantime.

So these kinds of things. New technologies, improved technologies in every area, in biology, chemistry, whatnot, are the essential thing. And the more we can employ people, at higher levels of technology, higher levels of educational development, which go along with higher technology, the more productive and the wealthier our people are.

What we have done, with the post-industrial ideology of the past 40 years: We have destroyed that. We have destroyed our economy. Our infrastructure's collapsing. We're about to go into a breakdown.

Let's get to the next aspect of this thing, the next category of insanity: mass insanity, of the type of pseudo-Christian fundamentalism, both the nominally Catholic anti-Pope variety, and also the fundamentalist variety that comes out of the Nashville Agrarians, well known to us, but not endeared by us. This is not Christianity. And it's important to recognize it's not Christianity, not merely for factitious reasons, but because it's not Christianity! Christianity is a religion of love. It is coincident with the Classical Greek principle of agape. It's the principle that man is special, because man is in the likeness of the Creator; that all persons are born in the likeness of the Creator; and therefore, this is a quality which man must regard as sacred, as existing in every individual.

You don't try to create categories of hate against human beings! If you hate some class of human beings, you're not a Christian. This is the great argument that was made by Plato in The Republic, where, through the voice of Socrates, there's the denunciation of Thrasymachus, the prototype for the Vice President Cheney; or Glaucon, the man who was the formalist in law; in defense of the principle of agape. This is the great principle which the Apostle Paul cites in I Corinthians 13. There is no law that is any good, if it is not governed by this principle of agape, this love of mankind. Christianity is a religion of love of mankind.

Now, you take the case of Moses Mendelssohn, who was born and died an Orthodox Jew, who was one of the great apostles of modern Judaism. One of the great founders of the Classical humanist Renaissance in Germany, during the 18th Century. The man who inspired the Yiddish Renaissance, in Eastern Europe. This great man: same principle. The immortality of the individual soul.

What does that mean? Now people teach that as a religious teaching, but do they know what it means politically? Is it just something they have in a church? Or is it something they really understand? What does it mean politically? It means that man, unlike any other living creature, by virtue of our power to discover universal physical principles—"powers" as the ancient Greeks called them. The same powers we associate with technology; the same powers we associate with Classical artistic composition. These powers define man, as what? It's the ability to discover what no animal can know: the great principles which define the order of creation, made, for example, as physical scientific discoveries. Mankind, having discovered what the Creator has constituted in the universe as these principles, is then able to apply these principles, to man's work in the universe. And thus transform the universe, including Earth, to a higher level of existence.

For example: Geologically, you have three principles operating in the planet Earth. One, the so-called "abiotic" processes, processes which do not depend upon any notion of a living principle; secondly, you have biotic principles, living principles, which correspond to the Biosphere; thirdly, you have something which only man represents: the creative powers of the human mind, which make man in the likeness of the Creator.

And if you look at the Earth, geologically, you look at it first of all, in terms of abiotic processes. Then you see that if you weigh the Earth, you find that historically, the percentile of fossils of living processes is growing relative to non-living ones. The Earth is becoming a living process. It's being transformed into a living process. Then we discovered another one, especially in the recent half-century or so: the power of the human mind, as unleashed by the 15th-Century Renaissance in Italy, has increased the fossils produced by man's effort, at a higher rate than the fossils produced by living processes as a whole.

The planet as a whole, is becoming not only a living planet, as a whole, as living processes take over, more and more, but the planet is becoming an extension of those creative powers which are unique to the human mind.

Now, every human being on this planet represents the embodiment of that potential! The identity of a person, is not whether they're born to die as, in the flesh. People have immortality, as no animal does. The immortality lies in what they are able to do, in the discovery of powers, and utilization of powers, and passing that knowledge on to successive generations from previous generations.

So, every human being is, in the eyes of the Creator, immortal, and has an immortal personality, as distinct from being an animal, or something in the flesh. And therefore, when we look at our fellow human being, there's a certain law, which is implied in this: that if man is created in the image of the Creator, who has a right to touch human life? Who has a right, to touch the human soul?

So, if you want to call yourself a Christian, what I've given to you is a more scientific explanation of what the theology is—but the Christians have always, the true ones, have always looked at it this way: that man is something made in the image of the Creator, and therefore individual human life is sacred! And must be protected. And must be promoted.

And the kind of evil that we see, in racism and so forth, is a demonstration of an anti-Christian attitude. But, what is it? Well, we have an example of an anti-Christian attitude in the case of the Spanish Inquisition. The Spanish Inquisition was not Christian. My report is that Pope John XXIII wept when he read the records of the Inquisition. It was anti-Christian! You had the famous Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky has a character in his novel The Brothers Karamazov, in which the figure of the Grand Inquisitor, which is the figure of Tomás de Torquemada, is presented as what? As Satan! As Satan. Saying, "I triumphed over You, Christ, once, and I'm going to triumph over You permanently now."

The image of that section of the Catholic Church, is purely Satanic. Just as is the image of the Protestant fundamentalist, who says that God loves you because you're a piece of dirt.

But Christianity, as Moses Mendelssohn's Judaism, or the Ummayyads of Spain for Islam, understood this principle. And therefore, when we develop the economy in this way, we are expressing ourselves, as citizens of a republic which is dedicated to this principle. We may call it Christian; some others recognize it as Jewish; some recognize it as Islamic: But it's the same principle! And it's the principle of the sacredness of the individual life. Not in the flesh, as such, but what that life means, in terms of the individual personality.

And that's what we've lost! That's what we've lost in our philosophy of economy! That's what Adam Smith takes away from us! That's what free trade takes away from us!

The purpose of economy, the purpose of our republic, is to provide for each individual, access to participation in that personal sense of immortality, to give them the opportunity to do so. To educate them, to develop them, to the extent we have the resources to do so, in that direction.

When you say, "No! Free trade has to take over," what's free trade? There is no principle of free trade. There's no profit that was ever made from free trade, no true profit was ever earned from free trade! It's only a form of stealing. What's the philosophy? You had this fellow Quesnay, a physiocrat, and he was a feudalist in France. He was trying to restore the feudal system. And he insisted that all wealth comes from the earth. Ah! But how's it come from the earth? What about the human beings who're supposed to do this extraction and growing and so forth? "No! No! They are only cattle! They are human cattle! The wealth is created by the Creator, who so loves this contract this landlord has, that the landlord's possession of the contract creates the profit."

This was copied, this principle of Quesnay's, was copied exactly—or plagiarized from Quesnay—by Adam Smith. It's the philosophy of the British Empire. "We have the power, the power to steal from you! That is called profit." And what we've done, in our country, we said that since the financiers must have more profit, we must loot our people by free-trade principles, and destroy—as we have done in the past 40 years, since the beginning of Nixon, in the United States. We destroyed ourselves.

We used to be a country of citizen-farmers, and producers of other kinds. People who invented ideas, or teachers who produced students who were qualified for great careers. That sort of thing.

We stopped that—in the interest of free trade! Or the nominal interest of free trade, which is really the right of parasites to steal, with the backing of the Federal government. You buy the Federal government: You contribute a fund to George Bush, you have the right to steal. Look at the case of Cheney.

Cheney is a creation: He's a sociopath, who was brought into politics in the Nixon Administration. And because he was more of a consistent sociopath than his initial sponsor, Rumsfeld, he's now Rumsfeld's boss—because Rumsfeld is not the complete sociopath that Dick Cheney is.

What is Dick Cheney? He's a thief! A pure and simple thief, by all moral law. And what are he and his friends doing? They're stealing—from the Iraqis, from the U.S. government, from everything else. And some people say, "In the name of free trade" we're going to support them?

No. The issue is very simply here: We have to go back, in this time, and Kerry and Edwards and others have to come back to reality. We have to take this Democratic Party, and this nation, back to Franklin Roosevelt's tradition. Not because Roosevelt was a perfect man. Actually, I think Abraham Lincoln was a much greater President morally, and if you read and study the writings of the two of them, you'll recognize that. But because Roosevelt in 1933, when Hoover had destroyed the U.S. economy, destroying it by one-half—the total product and total incomes of the United States were not destroyed by the '29 Crash; they were destroyed by Hoover, by his policies, in reaction to the '29 Crash.

The income, and the total product and the income of the American people, collapsed by one-half in less than four years. We were on the road to joining Germany, in global fascism. And if du Pont, Mellon, Harriman, and so forth, had succeeded—and remember, it was the firm of Harriman, the controlling firm, enterprise of Harry Truman; whose Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the incumbent idiot here now, was the guy who signed the paper that released the money in Germany, to finance the Hitler Nazi Party out of bankruptcy, as a part of the step in making Hitler the dictator of Germany.

Now, these people backed off from Hitler, at a later point, though up until May-June of 1940, key people around Beaverbrook and so forth, were still planning to make a deal with Hitler. The only reason the British did not go with Hitler, was because Winston Churchill did not want to sacrifice the British Empire to rule by a German dictator. That was the issue.

Roosevelt exploited the fact, that the British were willing to join with the United States in fighting Hitler. But Churchill was not a good guy. He was just one thief, contending against an upstart thief from the continent. And you saw, in the post-war period, that the people associated with Churchill, and the people associated with Harriman, including Truman, went immediately to bring the right-wing group that had financed Hitler and the Nazis into power, into power in the United States—and they are still the problem today.

This is what is behind Cheney and Bush, today.

Bush may not know what it is. He may not know which way is up or which way is down. But he's an instrument of policy, who out of sheer meanness does what he's told to do, what his ambition inspires him to do.

Cheney is a sociopath, who's only good for killing and stealing. He does what he's supposed to do.

You have to look behind them, at who is behind them: And I'll tell you who is behind them—and I know it. My research, and the research of my friends—we know it cold. I knew when I came out of World War II, and came back here, and I saw the right wing here, coming back into power, in 1946 and on. And through 1946 and '48, I saw these guys taking over our country as the right wing.

I rejoiced, when Eisenhower became President, because he put the lid on them for a while, and got rid of Truman, the fascist, who I knew was a fascist.

Later, in the course of life, because I've been fighting these guys all my life, I found out a lot more about them, who they are. Who they still are, today. And that's the problem.

We have, right now, as I said earlier, we have in Europe an attempt to take over Europe for fascism, in the name of the European Union. The Hartz IV policy is an example of that attempt to take over Europe for fascism, right now. It won't work—it will lead only to confusion and hell. But it's in process. That's what we face—exactly that.

So, we have to understand these issues, in these terms I've indicated. We have to tell Kerry and company: "Look, you're a very useful guy. We want you to be President. But we want you to be a good President. Don't be a fool, who goes with the bankers against the people. Don't come in to us and say, that you have to impose the kind of conditions which Freddie Krueger's mother is trying to impose upon Argentina now, on the American people. We're not going to take your austerity. We're not going to take your looting. You, Kerry, if you're elected, belong to the American people. And your primary duty is to uphold the Preamble of the Constitution: to defend the sovereignty of our nation, to defend the general welfare of our people, and to promote the posterity which is represented by young people today, young adults of 18 to 25. That's our policy."

And we have to become conscious of what this is.

So you have the third form of insanity: You have the form of insanity, which is the culture of hate, which some people call "Christianity," like the followers of the tradition of Torquemada in the Catholic Church, the enemies of the Pope, the followers of Torquemada. Or the Protestants, the racist Protestants, one of those sects. That is a form of insanity.

But then, you have the cultural form of insanity, which is more pervasive in the country, which is found among the liberals, in the form of saying, "Well, we have to go by free trade. The bankers have a right to their payments on their ill-earned money, ill-earned credit." They're looting us.

So, we in the United States have to do, as Roosevelt did: We have to put this system into bankruptcy reorganization. The U.S. government must take the lead in doing so. This is coming down now! The banks are bankrupt, now! Every one of the major banks in the United States is bankrupt. They're bankrupt, now! And what you're seeing in Fannie Mae is only one of the rumbles, about the general collapse, which is coming on—maybe next week; maybe January, maybe February. But it is now inevitable.

This U.S. financial system and the world financial system are about to go into a general crash, far worse than anything of the 1930s. This will be a permanent collapse of the system. The only solution is the intervention of government, in the way that Franklin Roosevelt acted in 1933: The Federal government must put the banking system into receivership, government receivership, for reorganization. The Federal government must maintain the banking system in operation, bankrupt or not. The Federal government must create the credit, and the laws, to get the credit out there, to get the employment up, in infrastructure first, and a supply of credit to private entrepreneurs, who come in on the benefit of the growth program. That is what we must do.

If we do not do that, this nation will go to hell. You don't have a choice; there is no real choice. You must do it. That is the meaning of law. Law in principle: What you must do, for the sake of principle. And that's what we must do.

We must get Kerry elected. We must assure it occurs. But we must ensure, also, that he adopts instruments of government, and personnel in government, which have the guts, to do what I would do.

Freeman: Well, as I thought we would, we have a significant number of questions that are coming in, many of them, institutional questions.... [station id] Lyn, I'm going to take a couple of questions first, that have come in from the press, and I will get to questions from the people in the audience here, but I do want to take some institutional questions, first.

This is a question that came in from Maddie Carlisle [ph] from The Progressive, which is a magazine produced out of a Democratic think-tank here in Washington. She says:

"Mr. LaRouche, there's been a great deal of talk during the Presidential campaign, on the question of the deficit. Last week, former Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin, in a speech in Kansas, said that the size of the Federal deficit had emerged as a national security problem, and he said, that we faced a situation like that of Argentina, which I thought was particularly significant in terms of your remarks.

"Last night, Senator Edwards said, that the truth of the matter was that we could not fix the deficit in four years.

"My question to you is this: How big a problem is this issue of the deficit? Was Robert Rubin right? But also, is John Edwards right? Is it the case that we can not deal with it, in the course of four years? What would you do, if you were President?"

LaRouche: Well, let me say, first of all, Bob Rubin is one of the few figures, prominently in public life, on these kinds of questions, who knows what he's talking about. Most of the leading figures, who were in the under-63-years-of-age bracket, know nothing about banking or economy today. They're so steeped in the ideologies which have been promoted during the past 40 years, that they don't know. I mean, my big problem was with President Clinton, he had absolutely no comprehension of what an economy is!

And Clinton I cite, not because he's such a bad fellow, but because he is very intelligent. He's probably the most intelligent President we've had, since Roosevelt, at least—among Presidents. Whatever his defects and mistakes may have been, this guy is one of the most intelligent Presidents, with the ability to carry a concept from one side of the room to the other! Which most of them couldn't do. And he may have made mistakes—but he's one of the brightest. And he does study, and he does think. Which is something most of them consider too painful to undertake, any more.