LaRouches Return to India
Lyndon and Helga Zepp LaRouche visited India Jan. 10-22, where they met many old and new friends. In addition to the 170 members of the faculty and students at the Federation of Rajasthan University in Jaipur, LaRouche gave public addresses to the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute in Calcutta; faculty and students at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi; the Institute of Economic Growth, a government thinktank at Delhi University; and an extremely lively meeting of officials, professors, lawyers, and other policy-makers in New Delhi. In addition, there were many private meetings with serving and former high-level members of the Indian government, policy thinktanks, and friends of two decades and longer.
LaRouche began every discussion by telling people of the two State of the Union speeches which will be given in Washington on Jan. 28his first, and then President Bush's. This was very welcome news, with one very high-level former government official telling LaRouche: "I would vote for you for President."
The first question from almost everyone, was about the danger of a U.S. attack on Iraq. LaRouche's discussion of his personal leadership in mobilizing the U.S. military and other institutions, tothus farprevent the war, month by month, from September until now, had a big impact in countering widespread worry and pessimism on this question.
The other focus was the world financial/economic breakdown, and how to rebuild. LaRouche emphasized in the discussions, that if the Iraq war can be averted, how optimistic he is about the potential for the rapid growth of Eurasian economic cooperation. The core of this is the India-China-Russia Strategic Triangle, which, with neighboring nations in Asia, will become, LaRouche said, the main engine for world economic growth. The Triangle, with other Asian nations, is geared for combined economic development and national security: Nations establish their sovereignty by economic development of every region. Western Europe needs the markets of China and India to survive, and the same is true of Japan. The Mekong River project and the rail line in Korea, if completed, will play key roles.
There is great interest in China from the Indian side, some positive, some more cautious. One frequent theme of discussion, was how to improve Indian-Chinese economic relations, which can be done with water and power projects, and in technical cooperation, such as between India's highly developed software industry, and China's highly developed hardware.
In all the meetings, the Indian leaders and policy-makers denounced the role of the IMF/World Bank in choking Indian economic development. India must become willing to "burn" these international financial bloodsuckers. India is not investing due to its "fiscal deficit," but this is, in reality, costing the economy enormously.
LaRouche emphasized the importance of infrastructure: that 50% of a nation's economy must be infrastructure investment, led by the national government. Two things are vital for Asia: water management and nuclear power. Asia, as EIR's New Delhi bureau chief Ramtanu Maitra, who accompanied the LaRouches on their tour, stated, has very different water conditions from other continents, and this in itself is an opportunity to share water technology among Asian nations. India is launching a nationwide highway program to link every corner of the vast subcontinent, but also urgently needs to improve its rail system. Both President Abdul Kalam and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee have some excellent ideas, but the "fiscal" crowd, which the World Bank has cultivated in the Indian bureaucracy, will always clamp down on any initiatives. The private sector has not taken up the slack of reduced government spending since the fiscal reform. Therefore, India must develop institutions for national investment, free of the IMF and World.
The visit to Calcutta, LaRouche's first since his memorable days there in 1945 and 1946, had a profound effect. Calcutta is now in worse economic condition than he saw it under British rule, LaRouche said. Infrastructure, buildingseverything has been allowed to collapse under 25 years of disastrous rule by the CPM (Communist Party Marxist) government. Although there was a massive demonstration of up to 1.5 million people in Calcutta during the visit, this was only a "show of force" by the CPM. Of Calcutta's 13 million people, some 20%that is, 3 million peoplelive in the streets. Even in the center of the city, there is little or no public sanitation: In some places, there are human feces on the sidewalk and in the gutters. Food is cooked on the street, and the only "housing" is some blankets on the sidewalk. People, dogs, cows, goats, and pigs all live on the streets together. Many people are second-generation street dwellers. Yearly income is the equivalent of US$100.
In New Delhi, Helga Zepp LaRouche visited an HIV/AIDS clinic. This is the work of a women's NGO, founded to help AIDS victims in New Delhi's slums. The mass migration of rural workers, as LaRouche noted, is becoming a critical national security issue for India. Many millions of migrant rural workers, from West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, and Gujarat, are flooding into India's cities, now becoming unmanageable "super cities." The spread of AIDS is one part of this problem, the other is the spread of criminal elements, which subversive and terrorist networks penetrate and use as a cover for their operations.
In the cities, poor migrant workers are targets of drug pushers, prostitution, and AIDS. Slum housing ranges from old houses with no running water or toilets, to huts built of anything available. Water is available only in the street, and even that often fails for days on end in the summer. Conditions become much worse in the summer, when temperatures reach 45° Centigrade (113° Farenheit). Many families can afford fresh vegetables only once a week. In these conditions, the NGO runs weekly clinics, "outreach" to families with puppet shows and house visits, to teach children and parents about health, and a clinic for AIDS victims. The clinic staff and health workers are well-known and very welcome in the areas where they work, as we saw directly. They work closely with local leaders, including the two Muslim and Hindu "elders" of one neighborhood, where religious strife is unknown. In another, the local teacher was the neighborhood coordinator. The NGO is caring for AIDS victims, and a small but growing number of children born HIV-infected.
Report submitted by EIR correspondent Mary Burdman, who accompanied the LaRouches on their visit
Highlights of India Visit: Discussions with Students; 'Roundtable' with City Officials
Two highlights of the LaRouches' visit to India were their extremely lively discussions with students in Jaipur, and the spirited "roundtable" with city officials, professors, lawyers and others in New Delhi.
After LaRouche's talk in Jaipur, a tea was given in the garden, where groups of eight to 10 students at a time surrounded the LaRouches, wanting to know what they had to say on everything from Kashmir to the dialogue of civilizations. Students and faculty alike were surprised, but very happy, to hear an American statesman speak as LaRouche did on globalization, the IMF, and the U.S. "shuttlecock President." Many wanted more material.
In New Delhi, LaRouche's brief but to-the-point remarks on the world situation, set off a discussion on the role of the state in economic development, banking policy, and government regulation. The New Delhi State Commissioner for Housing and Slum Clearance was at the meeting, and was very impressed that we had visited the East Delhi slums. He described the failure of "privatization" of this sector, and the urgent need to build housing.
The discussion then turned to how leadership can be created, how to inspire people, and how India must re-define its idea of development. One participant mentioned Mahatma Gandhi's "cottage industry" policy and asked if this were appropriate todayto which LaRouche answered, that what Gandhi did must be understood as a policy of "strategic defense." Inspired by the Indian nationalist Tilak (1856-1920), Gandhi declared war on the British Raj in a very clever way. He led India's poor peasants, who would not fight, in non-violent resistance and local production of vital goodsstrategic defense of their basic interests. This is the issue, not any "model" based on Gandhi's methods. What he did, was understand how you can lead the people which you have. He developed their powers, and led them to freedom.
The discussion ended with a debate on population, with several participants asserting that they did not think that population is the problem it is made out to be. Helga Zepp LaRouche then spoke about her intervention in the Bucharest World Population Conference in 1974, where it became clear that the "population issue" was made up by the likes of John D. Rockefellerand that then, and now, the only real issue is poverty.
Leading Saudi Daily Interviews LaRouche
The Arabic-language Saudi daily Asharq Al-Awsat published an article and interview with Lyndon LaRouche on Jan. 23. Asharq Al-Awsat, the Arabic daily with the largest circulation in the world, and the most influential daily inside Saudi Arabia, published an article by Berlin-based writer Iqbal Al-Qazwini, who interviewed LaRouche on the sidelines of the Dec. 18 EIR Berlin seminar. Al-Qazwini uses paraphrases from her interview with LaRouche. The Asharq Al-Awsat cartoonist, Mandalawi, volunteered a nice drawing of LaRouche instead of a photo to accompany the article.
The article adds to the deep debate in the Arab world and, in particular Saudi Arabia, on the current U.S. policy and the role of LaRouche. It is also a major slap in the face of the neo-con allies in the Arab world who slandered LaRouche in the same paper one month ago.
The article refers to LaRouche's presentation at the Berlin seminar and statements made in the interview with al-Qazwini. The article goes through LaRouche's role as a thinker and political leader; the Eurasian Land-Bridge and New Bretton Woods system, and the "Oasis Plan" for Middle East water development as "a comprehensive development strategy" to "save the human race"; the American Intellectual Tradition as a basis for U.S. foreign and development policy; saving the American people from dictatorship; the gradual removal of the dictatorship of the "U.S.-created Saddam" through lifting the sanctions and allowing the Iraqi children to live; and LaRouche's view of the "Palestinian cause." As a final note, al-Qazwini says she asked LaRouche about those who call him a "Nazi millionaire." "The enthusiasm and seriousness with which LaRouche (the man who dreams to change the world) speaks turn into sarcastic laughter, when I asked him about what is being said about him as a 'Nazi millionaire.' He reiterated that he knows very well the source of these statements. It is a group of right-wing Zionist organizations and racist Likud-allied, right-wing Jewish groups. The reason behind this, is his opposition to their policies. He stresses that he paid the price for his commitment to his ideas and the moral principles and values he believes in. That price was five years in prison, from 1989 to 1994 on false charges. He considers that a badge of honor."
Here is the translation of the first paragraph of the article. A full translation will be produced.
Title: "Major Global Crises Require a Gigantic Project to Overcome Them"
Subtitle: "LaRouche, the American thinker and politician dreams of changing the world, and runs for the Presidency in his country from a different perspective."
"In spite of the controversy aroused around the personality of the American Lyndon LaRouche, the candidate for the 2004 Presidential elections, no one can deny that this politician has an extraordinary and balanced vision of the method he has been calling for since the 1970s. He is the founder of an international political movement with many supporters in the United States and around the world, especially among young students.
"LaRouche, in contrast to many other politicians, does not talk about a temporary program for attracting voters, but presents with conviction and enthusiasm a system of strategic, economic and cultural system of ideas. If these ideas were to be implemented, they would change the course of current history."
A Youth Movement of Geniuses Can Create a Renaissance
by Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon LaRouche made the following presentation to a group of youth in Wiesbaden, Germany, on Jan. 5, 2003. Subheads have been added.
Let's talk generally about the youth movement as such. I've said this before, but it's something which is important enough that it deserves to be said again. And I'm in the process of completing a paper for publication which I hope to have completed this week, which will clarify this somewhat more: That all history, as we know it, is a struggle between Tragedy and the Sublime. As a result of the decadence and corruption, or weaknesses, of cultures, cultures fall into decay, and sometimes exterminate themselves. They are saved periodicallyin times of crisis especiallyoccasionally, by a Renaissance, a kind of rebirth of the society. These rebirths of society come from two general sources: one, from certain leaders, or people who emerge as leaders, who have some of the qualities which Plato attributes to Socratessomeone who's against the existing culture, who knows its corruption, and therefore is able to hold up a lantern, so to speak, to guide people out of their own foolishness. That is, to guide the ordinary people, who are the cause of tragedy.
Popular opinion is the general cause of tragedy of every culture. It's a rotten popular opinion, which brings a culture down sooner or later. And the question so far in history has been: How do you get cultures out of their own rottenness, at the point they're about to go under, because of that rottennesssuch as the world culture today, especially Europe and the Americas, most notably? We're in a rotten culture, which is about to go down; it's about to go under. We're in the month when it's ready to go under, worldwide. How do you save civilization?
We've got, in history, before, a few leaders, like Socrates, who go against the stream, who are the enemies of popular opinion, who under conditions of crisis are sometimes able to lead populations, to recognize that their culture is rotten, and to change it, in time.
These leaders did not work alone. As far as we know, there have been youth movements, people about your age, or slightly younger, who have arisen in response to such leadership, to kick their parents in the rear end, and to make them human again. The second birth of the parent is when the son kicks the old man in his rear, and the old man becomes human again, something he'd forgotten how to do.
Now, I've said, that's not adequate, because the problem has been, that in all the wonderful renaissances, the resurgences of society, what has always happened is that they never really went far enough. Sooner or later, as Solon of Athens in his old age describes the corrupt condition of his fellow citizens of Athens, whom he had formerly led to freedomhe wrote this poem documenting their personal corruption, which was leading them to destruction. So the question is, how do we prevent a society which has been led momentarily out of its own tragic self-destruction, to find its way out of that catastrophe? And why doesn't it last longer than it does?
The Religious Wars in Europe
For example, as you know from case of the history of Germany, the ground on which we're standing here, that it went through a terrible time, all of Europe went through a terrible time. And a fellow called Mazarin, who was a Cardinal in France, played a key part in pulling Europe out of the religious warfare, which had dominated all Europe from about 1511 to 1648that is, periodic religious warfare, and wars which were reflections of religious warfare. Chiefly, on the one side, Venice, orchestrating the Hapsburgs, who were always evil, on the one side; and then this emerging new form of evil, later called Anglo-Dutch liberalism, which developed in an imitation of Venice, in the Netherlands, along the northern coasts of Europe, and later, in England.
So then, this great decadence took over from a great period of renaissance, which centered initially in France, around Colbert, the successor of Mazarin.
And then, with new wars launched in the time of Louis XIV, who himself was a forerunner of that Hitler called Napoleon, that in these times, there came another return to darkness, so to speak. It was called the Enlightenment. And since it was darkness, they called it enlightenment. It was typified by Voltaire. It was typified by these neo-Cathars, or a whole group of neo-Cathars, called Calvinists, and similar kinds of heathen, who believed, with the Cathars, that there are little green men under the floorboards of history, who, if they liked somebody, would make them rich, and make the other people poor! And this was the doctrine of Quesnay, this was the doctrine of Mandeville, who was an apostle of evil, this was the doctrine later of Adam Smith; this was the doctrine of Jeremy Bentham, and so forth and so on.
So the Enlightenment was crushing all Europe, which had emerged through a period of renaissance, under the impact of Mazarin and Colbert, a renaissance typified by the figure of Leibniz. So now, in the middle of the 18th Century, the Enlightenment, which is total degeneration, has taken over once again! It's dominant. In this figure, a fellow born in 1719, in Leipzigand Leipzig is a very important cityDresden became important later, but Leipzig is a very important city. For some reason, which probably has a great deal to do with the Hartz Mountains, and the way history was shaped in the period following the Thirty Years' War, Leipzig became a center of culture, in the period following the Thirty Years' War.
For example, Leibniz's family was an old Leipzig family, the Leipzig of Bach. Bach, in a sense, was a junior to Leibniz. And Bach's influence in Leipzig, despite the fact he had enemies there, was crucial in the development of culture and music.
You had another person in 1719 emerge from Leipzig, born again from a Leipzig family, Abraham Kaestner, who adopted the position of being the successor to both Johann Sebastian Bach, and Leibniz, in defending music and defending science. And to attack Wolff for simplifying and degrading the work of Leibniz. And he wrote this book, this textbook, in 1758, which is to free the students of Germany from the mind-slavery of the Wolffian simplification of Leibniz.
Now, Kaestner produced some great people, under his influence. He was a key figureas you'll read in the coming monthshe was a key figure in conveying the ideas of Leibniz into the United States, against Locke. And it was the movement around Franklin, through Kaestner's relationship to Benjamin Franklin, which organized the movement against Locke, and made possible the creation of the United States. The same Kaestner was the man who took another fellow from Leipzig, Lessing, and Lessing, with his friend Moses Mendelssohn, who were students, essentially, in following both the influence of Leibniz and Bach. Leibniz and Bach launched several things, including getting Shakespeare out of the dirt, and bringing him back to work again. And Kaestner was responsible for this, even though he did not publish the book of Shakespeare's plays: reviving them from the garbage pit, where the British had put them, the Enlightenment had put them.
So, you had in this period, in Germany, a great enlightenment, which spread in other parts of Europe. And the American Revolution was a reflection of the same enlightenment, of this kind of enlightenment, not the other one, but the real one. A renaissance.
The French 'Castration'
Then again, you had the French Revolution, 1789, the Bastilleeverything went to Hell. Because the Bastille operation was conducted by Jeremy Bentham, who was head of the secret committee of the British Foreign Office, who ran Jacques Necker and Louis Philippe, who were the orchestrators of the Bastille. And the French, who lost their chastity with that, celebrate the loss of chastity every July 14. It's like a man who celebrates the day of his castration, as a eunuch. And this is what's happened to the French intellectual life, more or less, since.
So, but then at that point, what happened in Franceand the France which is supposed to be a continuation of the same process expressed by the American Revolutionbecame a dismal swamp, and worse. It became the mother of fascism. The first modern fascist was Napoleon Bonaparte, and he's going to be celebrated on television this week. He's being celebrated! And the TV specialI haven't seen it, I've seen the previews of itthe TV will be dominated this week, on the second channel, by this Bonaparte film, which is a pure romantic cult film on Bonaparte. And it will have to be dealt with as a disease. A doctor has to pay attention to diseases, not because he likes them, but because he has to deal with them.
So, Europe went into a romantic decadence. First, with 1803, with Napoleon's coronation as Emperor, at which point Hegel, who had been a radical extreme leftist, Jacobin-type leftist, suddenly became a fascist. And he later, after the Congress of Vienna, he became the author of the Theory of the State, which is the model for fascism. The Theory of the State of Hegel is the basis for fascism in Germanyand also in other parts of Europe, Italy, so forth. In this period, with the triumph of Napoleon as Emperor, in 1803, which destroyed all illusions about the French Revolution, except among real idiots. But everybody who had any brains knew this was a disaster, the French Revolution had become a disaster for all Europe.
Then, 1806: the Jena-Auerstadt defeat. Germany, even Goethe, became a romantic. You had a romantic degeneration of people who had been leading figures of the German Classical movement. Then, after 1815, especially after the Carlsbad decrees, you had a wave of pessimism throughout Europe, of moral despair, and only a few people continued to fight for freedom. Optimism was revived by the victory of Lincoln in the U.S. Civil War. It was as a result of Lincoln's victory, and the influence of Henry Carey, that Bismarck, in 1877, adopted a version of the List model, for the industrial development of Germany. It was 1877, and the visit of Carey, in his last trip to Germany, in 1879, which launched the industrialization of Germanywhich the British didn't like at all.
It was the influence of the American Revolution which launched the trans-Siberian railroad under the direction of Mendeleyev, the great scientist, who also advised the Tsar, on beginning the industrial development of Russia. It was the influence of the American Revolution, under Lincoln, which transformed Japan, under the personal direction of Henry C. Carey, the same Henry C. Carey who worked, inspired Bismarck, to begin the industrialization of Germany. The Risorgimento in Italy, the establishment of a state in Italy, was a reflection of the same influence. There were things like that happening in France, which had gotten rid of Napoleon the Turd, and this sort of thing, which lasted for a period of time.
So there was a renaissance, which again was destroyed by the agreement in the 1890s, to go for a general war. There was an agreement that was organized by the King of England, even while Prince of Wales. The purpose was to prevent Eurasia from being organized for cooperation as among a system of nation-states, on the American model. The fight to do this was called geopolitics. The idea was that the English-speaking peoples should have a world empire, like the Roman Empire, free of Christianity, as heathen as Hell itself. And they should destroy Europe, Eurasia, by causing the leading powers of Asia to kill each other in a general destructive war. And because the three Kaisersthe Tsar, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the aging fool of Viennaand Clemenceau and so forth, were all idiots and fools, the people of Europe, for no reason of their own, but motivated by chauvinistic motives, such as those of the Balkan wars, went into a war which caused the destruction of Europe, from which Europe has never recovered to the present day.
Solon vs. Popular Opinion
So, that's the problem, that's the nature of the problem. And you can go back in ancient history. You have the case of the Peloponnesian War. You have the case even of Solon's letter to the Athenians. Here in Athens, especially, with its culture of the Greek Classic, or developed on the basis of the previous work of Thales, and Pythagoras, and so forth, this great culture developed. It destroyed itself! By popular opinion! Exactly as Solon describes the process. It destroyed itself by popular opinion, with a crazy Peloponnesian War. A virtual Thirty Years' War, from which Athens, and Greek culture, never revived politically. Greek culture continued, largely in the formunder the heritage of the Academy of Athens, and the conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander. That's the so-called Hellenistic culture, which was in the process of degeneration. But the Roman conquest of southern Italy, at the end of Second Punic War, the conquest of Greece, the games with Egypt to destroy Greece and Greek culture, this resulted in a destruction of civilization from which mankind did not recover significantly, until the 15th-Century Renaissance.
Europe was dominated by a neo-Roman style of regime, which became, after Otto III, the Emperor Otto IIIwas centered on Venice. Venice was a continuation of the Roman Empire, a rival of, and successor to, the Byzantine Empire of Diocletian. Venice was an imperial maritime power, based on a financier class, a financier oligarchy, which can be described in biology as a slime molda lot of individuals putting knives into each others' backs, who nonetheless come together for the common purpose of breeding the slime mold, and spreading it. This is Venetian culture. Venice controlled the Hapsburgs, and Venice dominated Europe, especially after about 1000 A.D., by using the Normans.
The Normans were used, first of all, to destroy the Saxon culture, which was a human, Christian culture of England. And to destroy Charlemagne's work in France. The Normans became known in succession, as Plantagenets, and the House of Anjou. It was these Normans, under the control of Venice, as a military force, who conducted the Crusades, including the Norman conquest of England, which was actually a Crusade, technically, to destroy the Saxon, Christian culture, and introduce a heathen culture in its place. Again, the same kind of process. A long wave of degeneration of European civilization.
There were many efforts to bring it back. But Frederick II was killed, and his family died. The work in Spain, of the people like Alfonso Sabio, was drowned eventually, in the Reconquista. And in the Inquisition. The great influence of Islamic and Jewish culture, contributing to Europe, was repeatedly crushed, though not entirely exterminated.
So the problem in history then is, again and again, noble efforts to elevate manfrom the tragedy of his own stupidity and cultural corruption, cultural degradation, of the people themselves, and of their customary leaderswere done by a handful of leaders, if they're available, and if they survive. And by youth movements.
Now, the problem has been that the youth movements of the past, which have done these thingsand sometimes youth movements did bad things, rather than good things, as we saw in the middle of the 1960s. The youth movement of the mid-1960s was used primarily to destroy European civilization from insidea systemic destruction of European civilization. That's what you're suffering from now.
So, therefore, the problem is, how do we develop a youth movement with sufficient qualities of leadership and breadth, so that the elimination of a handful of leaders does not ensure the victory of the forces of tragedy, over a new renaissance?
Rejuvenating an Aging Organization
And that's how I approached this business, some years ago, of launching a youth movement. Our efforts were sliding into the mud, as a result of being an aging organization, which had not been rejuvenated by a youth movement, as we had been born as a youth movement. I created this thing as a youth movement. It was a youth movement. It functioned just fine, with all its foibles, with a certain amount of psychoanalysis to deal with tough cases, we got through. It worked. But then it became demoralized. It became aged. You know that some people, at the age of 35 to 40, become aged. You would think they were ready for retirement, or past time for retirement, which some of you may have thought about some of your parents. That they retired about the time you were trying to get out of high school.
So, to rejuvenate that, we had to do more. We had to get a youth movementotherwise this organization was going to die. It could not sustain itself internally, just on its own inertia, its habitsit would die. It was headed for death. So, I said we're going to revive it. And I had a lot of opposition to reviving it. So, I got sly, as I often do in these cases. I flanked the situation. We had some people in California, we had a couple of our leaders in California, who understood what I was proposing. So we protected and nurtured our youth movement in California, for the past four years, approximately, Which I worked with, with special seminars, discussions, and so forth, back and forth, and things I wrote.
A couple of years ago, it began to take shape. A year ago, it began to assume shape. So, last year, I really released it, officially. And we pulled together what we had on the West Coast, and the East Coast, and some other things, and we began to spread it. We spread it into Mexico. It is now growing in Peru. It is here, as some of you know, and so forth and so on.
Now, the difference of this youth movement, and those you've known from the past, is what I have learned from history. That the problem has been, youth movements have been too practical. There's been too much enthusiasm, and too little intellect. And therefore you do not have leaders, in sufficient numbers, to have a secure movement. Because you have a few people who emerge as leaders, by a kind of natural, or unnatural, selection, as the case may be. And that's all. The rest of them will tend to slide back into decadence, under aversive circumstances, and without a renewal of the leadership. And that's how renaissances of the past have died. Those who led a great renaissance, were too few, too vulnerable, to keep the movement alive against aversive circumstances, by a determined enemy.
Therefore, I said, we have to produce a youth movement of geniuses. We have to outnumber them, outnumber the enemy. So we're not vulnerable to the loss of a few people, as we are now. You have to create a broad spectrum of leadership. That means you have to challenge young people, as groups, to become qualified leaders of civilization, not just political leaders, not honchos of local youth organizations, but actual leaders of civilization.
How do you do that?
By taking the principles, the Classical principles, of the Sublime, which is the general opposition to the tragic forces, and you train a youth movement around those principles, which define the essence of the Classical method of thinking and leadership.
What do you start with? Well, I said, when the question was posed several years ago at a conference in the Washington area, I said, to the youth, who said, "How do we get an education now? You describe our universities as junkheaps"with which they agree. Anybody inside a university knows that the tuition you pay is in inverse proportion to the quality of education you get. That's the mathematical law of present U.S. educationand German as well.
How do we get an education? I said, you start with Gauss's 1799 Latin paper, attacking Euler, and attacking Lagrange, on the issue of the fundamental theorem of algebra. And you go from that mastery of science, from that standpoint, into understanding history, as first of all, a history of science, and from a history of science, understanding the science of history. In other words, things come down now to a fundamental question. What's the fundamental issue?
It's not how people feel. It's not what people like. What people like is usually poisonous and bad for them, and will usually kill them. They generally prefer the most stupid things you can imagine, and do terrible thingsto themselves, above all, to their neighbors, their family. So what people like is not very important. Democracy in that sense is disgusting stuff. It's a kind of poison. You need a blood transfusion to get rid of this stuff.
What Is Man?
What you need is a sense ofwhat is man? Now, we had a discussion the other night, in celebration of Gabriele's old age, among a few of us. And one of the topics of discussion was the contrast between Gibbon and Mommsen, and what the implication of the contrast is. It's that the British Gibbon, who was associated closely with Jacques NeckerGibbon was, like Necker, an agent of Lord Shelburne, the man who created the modern pig system of Britain. The father of Bentham, the creator of Adam Smith. One of the most evil men of the 18th Century, and the founder of the modern British System. So, Lord Shelbourne personally owned Gibbon, as well as Jacques Necker, and of course Madame de "Sow" Stael, and similar kinds of people, including Louis Philippe, one of the pretenders in France, who was the enemy of Franklin.
So, what we have today is a system, as we discussed this briefly in the discussion on that occasion, where Gibbonand if you read Gibbon, it's obvious to youhe blames Christianity for the fall of the Roman Empire, and says that if you can get rid of Christianity, you can have a successful Roman Empire. Now, that's exactly what's being done today! That's coming out of Britain, especially. It's coming out of the British monarchy, especially. It's world religion, and so forth. It's the present attacks on the Catholic Church, on all flanks, are part of this. It's Satanic evil.
So, looking at things from this standpoint, the problem is, not religion as such. Gibbon's a liar. The Roman Empire destroyed itself because of paganism, because of its paganism. That was its tragic force of self-destruction. It just took a longer time, because civilization moved more slowly in those days. The issue was: What's the rise of European civilization from the depravity which is inherent in Roman tradition? It's the Christian, Platonic tradition. It was the revival of the Christian Platonic tradition, which was the subject of a struggle from the time of Christ, the time of the Apostles John and Paul, to the present, which led to the revival of European culture. European culture, until the 15th Century, was just a thing on the landscape of the human race as a whole. There was nothing particularly special about it. It was the Renaissance, the 15th-Century Renaissance, which introduced on a massive scale, in terms of impact, which reintroduced the Classical Greek tradition and the Classical Greek version of Christian tradition, into Europe, which resulted in the Renaissance, and produced everything positive, distinctively positive, about European civilization worldwide, to date.
So, it was Christianity, understood not by some priest mouthing catechism, but as understood actively, as the leaders of the Renaissance did, like Cusa, which gave us the modern nation-state, and civilization, and all the achievements of European civilization. Gave us science, modern science. Science is Greek in its origin, Classical Greek. There was no science prior to Classical Greek culture. Prior to Thales and Pythagoras, there is no known Classical Greek science. And no known systemic science, as we define science today, in any other part of history. There are elements which lead to science. There are elements that we can recognize, and can praise, as achievements of humanity in the direction of science, from Egypt and elsewhere, but no idea of science as such, until Classical Greece. Until Plato. And no idea of a science-based civilization, a science of history, and history of science, actually until the work of the Renaissance, in the 15th Century.
So European civilization owes its achievement, its escape from feudalism and the Roman legacy, to this conception of Christianity, the Classical Greek conception of Christianity, typified by Plato.
As in Genesis
What's the central issue? The central issue is not whether you believe what you read in the Bible or notthat is unimportant! As you can see. All these fellas pointing to the Bible like this, "Here's what it says heah, and I understand this, God intended me to understand this jus' the way it's written heah, in plain English! God wrote this in English!" As Elmer Gantry will tell you.
That's not important, obviously. As a matter of fact, that's negative. Received belief, based on reading from the Bible, words from the Bible, interpreting words from the Bible, is not godly religion. It's a special kind of heathenism, to give you the real, American version of this stuff.
What's important, and what the essence of Christianity is, as expressed by the Gospel of John, and the Epistles of Paul, is the conception of man. It's the Mosaic conception of man, as in Genesis I. Adam and Eve never existed. I know, because I studied the matter. I was doing a study of Mesopotamia, ancient Mesopotamia, and I ran across these ancient heathen myths, in which this Adam and Eve thing came up. And they said, well, if God created man and woman in the first book of Genesis, as equal, and having dominion of the universe, responsibility, where did this Adam and Eve come from? And again, this woman, this rib out of man, out of Adam? Who's getting ribbed? It's the believers that are being ribbed! Who'd believe that nonsense? Cain. The old story of the atheist who said, "Where does Cain get his wife?" If human beings all came from Adam and Eve, Cain killed Abel, and then Cain went off and had wives, and childrenwhere'd he get that wife? He committed incest, or something? It sounds like a Kentucky mountain family tree. A family tree with no branches.
So, who'd believe that junk?
But the issue then is, the issue of man, as defined, in a sense, in Genesis I. Who has that conception of man? That is the essence of the matter. The concept of Christ and Christianity in John, the Gospel of John, in the Epistles of Paul, is this: the conception of man. The conception of creation. The conception of man's relationship to the Creator. First of all, the conception that man is not an animal. Nor is he a runaway portable computer, the way some people argue these days. We can build, we can replace man, man is going to be replaced by a superior beinga computer! You know these things, you can't trust these things. Anyone who has one, knows one. You can't trust those things. You turn your back on them, and you don't know what they're going to do.
So, therefore, the question is: How do we know man is human? How do we know that man is not a beast? One thing we know, and this is reflected in Gauss's fundamental theorem statement, against Euler, against the heathen Euler and Lagrange, in 1799, based on ideas that had been taught to Gauss largely by Kaestner, who was the first person to pose an anti-Euclidean geometry. And some of you can read thatit's fun.
What's the difference? Man isas Plato defined itis capable of knowing what lies beyond the veil of sense perception. Essentially, it's a scientific issue. If you recognize the obvious fact that what are called sense perceptions are a reflection of organisms within your mortal body, then how dare you say that sense perception is truth? How dare you say, that sense perception is knowledge? The nature of your sense-perceptual apparatus is such, that all you can say is, that your body is stimulated by the real world, and the stimulation, insofar as it affects your sense-perceptual apparatus, is known to you as sense perception, not as the real world. Then, when you find contradictions in the sense-perceptual image of reality, and find that there are principles which you can not see, taste, touch, or lick, out there, beyond sense perception, which are really controlling the universethen you know what we call a universal physical principle.
Plato called this a power.
Doubling the Square
For example, a simple case. The simplest of all cases. Can you double a line, without cheating? You can not. How do they say you can double a line? With a compass. A straight edge and a compass. Where'd you get this? What's the compass? The compass is a surface. How do you get a surface out of a line? You can't get a surface out of a line. In order to measure a line, you must have a surface. In order to have a surface, you must have a solid. These are powers, these are the powers, the only powers which are described by Gauss in his fundamental theorem of algebra.
Also, these numbers, which pertain to this, including the question of the cube, the doubling or roots of the cube, take you into the domain which is outside so-called normal mathematics, into what's called the complex domain. Which the poor heathen idiots like Euler and Lagrange call the imaginary. They call the numbers imaginary. But the complex domain, the mathematics of the complex domain, is a reflection of reality, as opposed to the false image of using simple counting number arithmetic.
And so this is a classical case of the problem. The difference between perceptual mathematics, perceptual doctrine of material matters, and understanding that it is the human mind, which, by making discoveries of principle, which are provable experimentally, that man shows that he is able to understand the universe which exists outside the bounds of sense perception, the so-called Plato's Cave allegory. No animal can do that. How do we know no animal can do it? Because no animal has ever done it, nor could.
Why? Because an animal is an ahistorical creature. Biologically historical, but not otherwise historical. Every animal starts over again where they began. They do not progress. Whereas the human being is wonderful. The animals are determined by their genes. Now, genes can evolve. The genetic system is overrated. Particularly, you meet some people, and you say, "The genetic system here is obviously overrated." But we actually undergo, as human beings, we actually undergo an evolution. A physical evolution. We don't fully understand why it happens, but we can prove that it does happen. When we discover a universal physical principle, when we incorporate it into our practice, socially, when we change society's behavior, because of our discovery of this principle, we change man's relationship to the universe. We increase man's power to exist in the universe, per capita and per square kilometer. We live longer. We have more people. To control the deserts, and the oceans, and so forth.
Now, we die. Those who discover these principles, die. We each die. But we're capable of transmitting the experience of this discovery from one generation to the next. The transmission of these principles, from one generation to the next, changes the physical characteristics of the human species, in the same way that only biological evolution would change the characteristics of a form of animal life. For that reason, I've called this process "super-genes." That when we make a discovery of principle, and transmit it to others, when society assimilates that, as part of its culture, then society is transformed to a higher form of life than it represented earlier.
The history of these discoveries, and their transformation, and application, is, obviously, the history of science. And the relationship of this to the development of cultures, within which the transmission occurs, is the science of history. It is the science of man. So the issue of religion is not an issue of a textbook, a Bible, or some priest who's babbling something he doesn't understand. The issue of religion is the nature of man. That man is a cognitive being, as Plato describes him, especially implicitly in the Timaeus, who is capable of discovering the laws of the universe, who's capable of mastering the universe increasingly, as an act of will, through these discoveries, which changes him, himself, and his successor generations, by transmitting these discoveries of knowledge, through practice. A transmission we call culture.
What is true in culture, is that which is engaged in the truthful transmission of valid principles. That's the difference between Romanticism and Classicism. In Classicism, the question of truth is everything. Which I'll get into in a writing you'll get shortly. But that's the point.
The Case of the Sublime
So, the issue today, is this issue, the issue of man. Against the heathen British. The heathen British royal family, and similar degenerates. It's to defend the concept of man. It's what is called, "man made in the image of the Creator," as, in a sense, Genesis I describes it. But this is not something we accept because it's said in Genesis I; it's something we can prove. As a matter of knowledge, not a matter of arbitrary belief, or taught belief. It's true. We know it to be true. And the only ones who can lead, are those who know it is true. Not who believe it's true, but who know it's true.
Take for example, this case of the Sublime. Again, it comes back to this question of Classical culture. And the case of Jeanne d'Arc, as opposed to Hamlet, which I've contrasted on a number of occasions. What killed Hamlet was not Hamlet's failure. What killed Hamlet was the Danish people, and stinking culture. What killed Hamlet was the fact he couldn't violate that culture. What killed Hamlet was not his fear of death. It was his fearas he says in the Third Act soliloquyhis fear of immortality. His fear of having to face what the implications are, of his having lived, in the future of humanity. He couldn't face that! "I can die. I can kill. I can die, but don't ask me to think about what is going to happen to me after I die. After I," as Shakespeare put it, "shuffle off this mortal coil."
That is what makes a coward out of Hamlet. That is what makes a coward out of most political leaders who otherwise seem promising. They have no belief in immortality! They're afraid of it. "I don't want to think about that!" Therefore, they don't have the ability, as Jeanne d'Arc had, to die, for the sake of life. And only leaders who understand this issue of immortality, in the way that flows naturally from this concept of man as in the image of the Creator, only from that source, can leaders derive the strength, under the most difficult conditions, to lead a nation, to lead a world, out of a great tragedy, like that today.
So, my mission here, is to develop a stratum of leaders, of young people, especially out of the 18-to-25-year, so-called university-age group, who represent a broad base of capable leadership, who, by being broad, in their numbers, and qualities, and not so damned vulnerable as the youth movements to which we are indebted from the past.
Thank you.
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