This Week You Need To Know
If Civilization Can Be Saved: We Are Going To Do It!
Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche gave this keynote speech to a town meeting in Los Angeles Feb. 26, 2004.
Thank you all.
You know, politicians are lucky, they get the applause before the play.
We're in an interesting situation. You mention the little shindig that's happening down the street, on CNN, which doesn't amount to a hill of beans. Kerry is a significant candidate, but I doubt that he'll say much of significance today. Nor has he so far in the campaign. There are reasons for that, but he still is, under normal conditions, a plausible leading candidate for the Democratic nomination, and thereby, considering Bush's condition, and what George Bush would wish Cheney would do about his own heart conditionretirenormally you would say, Kerry would be the next President, with a little bit of fuss along the line.
But that is not yet the likely situation. Nor is Kerry presently manifest as a person qualified to be the President of the United States, under the present conditions. And what I can predict fairly, will be what is said tonight, in the other location, where "Brand X" is assembled, will be of no consequence with respect to the issues of the time.
Now, we're in a crisis. We're in an existential crisis, which has been coming on for a long time. I referred in a recent paper, to the fact that what we're dealing with right now, is the collapse of a world empire, which began to come into existence 250 years ago, with the onset of what was called the Seven Years War in Europe, during the course of which, the British Empire, which was then otherwise known as the British East India Company, defeated France, consolidated the process of occupation of India, conquest of India, grabbed the properties of France, colonial properties, from North America, or most of them, except for a couple of islands, and went on to become an empire, which has dominated world history, from that time to the present.
In the course of time, the only force which has effectively challenged that British Empire, is the formation of the United States as a republic. No other form of government has proven durable over this period of time. And what is called the Anglo-Dutch Liberal parliamentary system, is the dominant force in Europe, and is the dominant force among the greatest number of nations of the world today.
Let me just describe that part, before getting on to the main subject for tonight, just to get the background.
Neither Fish Nor Fowl
The British Anglo-Dutch Liberal model of parliamentary government, is a form of dictatorship. The way it works is this: You have three elements of government, under a parliamentary system of this type, a liberal system. One, is you have the institutions of state, as a leftover from the state under feudalism, typified by the monarchical state, or by modern heads of state, who actually function as a stand-in for what would have been a monarch in a previous situation.
You have then a parliament, which is highly unstable. Parliamentary governments are easily overthrown. They are neither fish nor fowl. They exert executive powers of government, but they don't really have them.
Then, there's a third element, which is called today a central banking system, an independent central banking system. The bank, or the independent central banking system, has a monopoly over the issuance of currency, over the control of debt, over the control of finances, and usually in a crisis, when a crisis occurs, the bankers overthrow the parliament, introduce more or less dictatorial measuresHitler is an example of thisand then preserve their interest, by looting the people, and looting people of other countries. And therefore, the problem of the European today, is that outside of Russia, where they still have a memory of being a world power, in Europe, there is no government which has the character capable of doing what the United States can do; that is, responding to a crisis with sovereign power, in sovereign interest of the nation, and in defiance of the power of the bankers.
The issue today is: We're now in such a crisis, a crisis which has been brought on by a decadence of the British-Dutch-Liberal parliamentary system, as represented in the United States by the international banking interests and the Federal Reserve system. We're now in a crisis where we see, in the case of Argentina, that Argentina is being murdered, as Hitler murdered the occupied countries of Eastern Europe, and others. Looting these countries for the benefit of the financiers, which he represented, and for his own looting purposes, of course.
What is happening in Argentina, is what is going to happen to the people of the United States, were John Kerry to be elected, as chief office-boy of the United States. Because that's what he would be, if the banking interests, which now control the Democratic National Committee, and control his candidacy, were to come into power. And that's the reason why John Kerry, who may be personally a nice guy, personally a courageous guy, in some respects, and so forth, is not competent at the present stage. He's demonstrated this incompetence because he has not got the guts, or the independence, to take an independent position against the people who control the Democratic Partywhich are a bunch of bankers, typified by the banking firm of Lazard Frères. Lazard Frères was a key part of the Nazi system between 1922 and 1945, in Europe. And Felix Rohatyn is a typification of Lazard Frères. And Big MAC, in New York, is a typification of the kind of handiwork, the slaughter, that Felix Rohatyn perpetrates.
That's the issue.
Now, therefore, there are solutions. There are many contributions from Europe, from South and Central America, from Asia, and even possibly from the Middle East, which could be helpful, and even indispensable, in the course of solving the present world financial crisis. But none of them, so far, have the capabilityputting Russia to one side, and what might come out of the new Putin election coming up this weeknone of them have the ability to face up to a crisis of this type, without resorting to imposing dictatorship for the purposes of looting the population of the world, to save the bankers. None!
Only under the U.S. Constitution, and our tradition, as exemplified in most recent history by the case of Franklin Roosevelt, do we have on this planet, the kind of Constitutional institution which, if properly rallied, can save the United States, and lead in saving the world from something worse than Adolf Hitler. That's our situation. That's our crisis.
What's Wrong With the American People?
The question is, therefore, why don't the American people show the good sense, to arise and demand that their government take this course of action, when everything they possess, everything they hold dear, is about to be taken away from them, and in many cases, already has been taken away from them, including their lives, by present health-care policies.
Why don't they? Why are the American people so stupid?
Of course, obviously, they're not all stupid. A bunch of us are still surviving, and fighting. And we're recognized as real, where the other candidates are not considered real. Maybe Kerry begins to be considered real. But none of the other DNC-approved list of candidates, is real. They're not in the real universe. They have no relationship to reality. And that is why we have the largest real support, in numbers, from within the U.S. population. Not people who go to buy a ticket to the grandstand, and cheer for the gladiators slaughtering each other belowthat's what this election's been so far. People sit in the grandstand, and cheer for this gladiator, and that gladiator. One drops dead, they cheer for another one. And they're going to do that with Edwards. His supporters will also cheer for Kerry, or something, when Edwards drops out of the race.
So the American people, in the main, are behaving like fools, because most of them don't have the care or sense to do what a few of us are doing, of rallying the support to what we're doing with this campaign.
Now, this is not an unusual thing in history, and the way to understand our problem, is to look at history, and realize that your grandparents and parents were also human. This is something that some of the younger people today have difficulty in recognizing, when they think about the way their parents have behaved.
So, therefore, what we are, unlike baboons, or chimpanzees, or gorillas, what we are, are cultural products of our ancestors. We're not the same thing as our ancestors, but embedded within us, is the transmission of cultural experiences, which one generation transmits to the next. And most people who have a good family relationship, over several generations, do recall, whether with some criticism or not, their grandparents, perhaps their great-grandparents, as well as their parents. They recall a shared experience. They recall the schools they went to. They recall the things that happened in previous generations. These things subtly, and otherwise, invade them. And people who are living today, are an embodiment of an accumulation of a cultural heritage, which had been transmitted actually over thousands of years.
For example, take the case of tracing modern European civilization, from its origins, as I've often said, in the shadow of the great pyramids of Giza, about 2700 B.C., where astronomy was perfected in the form expressed by the pyramids, and that perfection transmitted to Greece, ancient Greece, in the period of the revival from the Dark Age, became the basis for founding modern European civilization. Founded on the ideas of astronomy and some other things.
But there's also a history embedded here, which, if we look at it in broad sweep, helps us to understand what's wrong with the American people today, and probably indicates to us, what the cure for this problem might be, even a rather sudden cure.
Homer's Troy
Go back to the beginning of the literary history of Greek civilization, as reflected in the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer. Think of the fall of Troy. Think of how the fall of Troy occurred. Here was a city, sitting up in the area which is between the waters of the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, a sort of a pirate-nation which dominated that particular strategic neck of the woods. And a gentleman from that place, a prince called Paris, seduced and abducted a woman who was married to someone else, and hauled her back, in a sort of a honeymoon trip, to Troy. And this caused a great degree of consternation among the Greeks, who decided this was the opportunity to pick a quarrel with Troy, and destroy it. And this became the so-called history of the Trojan War.
And in the midst of all these wonderful festivities, which were actually used as the foundation for Greek culture, there's a woman, who's a leading woman of the city, called Cassandra. And she stood on the battlements, and similar occasions, and prophesied repeatedly, the collapse of Troy, the doom of Troy, as a result of perpetrating the crime of allowing this cause of conflict, with what are called today the Greeks, to occur. And so Troy was destroyed.
But, more important, through the Iliad, in particular, as well as the Odyssey, which is a much more heroic story, the horror of Troy, was passed down as an integral part of the conscious history of Greece, by the Greeks of the relatively more modern time, of which Classical Greece emerged.
But then, then, at the height of the power of Athens, which is the most important state of all Greek culture, at the time of Pericles, at the time of the greatest maritime power, and general power of Athens, Athens destroyed itself, just as much as Troy had destroyed itself, with the aid of the incident of Paris and Helen. And all the well-informed Greeks knew these Homeric legends, which were actually history, as well as being legends. And they repeated the mistake.
They went to the island of Melos, and said, "Submit to us. You're the new Iraq, and I'm Cheney. You submit to us, or we'll kill all your men, and haul your women and children off as slaves." And the people of Melos, who had been allies of Athens in the war against the Persians, said, "You can't do that to us." They said, "We can and we will, if you don't submit." And they did.
And this slaughter unleashed the so-called Peloponnesian War, which resulted in the destruction of the power of Athens, and the disintegration from the inside, of an independent Greek culture at that time.
And from that time, to modern times, with a great degeneration, which was known as the Latin Rome, the Roman Empire, the medieval tyranny of ultramontanism under Venice, the Guelph faction, and the Normans, up until the time approximately of Richard III and the preceding Black Death period in the 14th Century, Europe, despite certain progress that had occurred, but Europe as a political existence went through a process of recurring, worsening degeneration, up until the time of the 15th Century, when modern Europe emerged in the form of the 15th-Century renaissance. And the first modern nation-states existed, which recognized the humanity of people; which recognized you could no longer hold most of the people, as either wild cattle to be hunted down, and eaten or destroyed, as the Romans did, or as herded cattle, to be bred, kept in herds, and killed when they become too old.
The Modern Nation-State
That was the culture we had to deal with. And for the first time, with the Council of Florence, from that, the emanation into the work of Jeanne d'Arc, to the formation of the first modern nation-state under Louis XI of France, and the second modern nation-state through the overthrow of England's Richard III, by Henry VII, we had the modern nation-state.
But then the same forces of evil, led by Venice, and with the Spanish Inquisition, and similar forces, destroyed Europe, in religious and related kinds of warfare, from 1511 to the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648. Europe then emerged as a progressive civilization. But then again the corruption came back in. Venice was weakened as a political force, but it created the Anglo-Dutch-Liberal phenomenon in northern Europe, which replaced Venice, such that the British parties of the 18th Century were called, by themselves, the Venetian party.
Then the United States came along, because the corruption of Europe, the best minds of Europe, contributed to creating the formation of the United States, with the first Constitutional republic of our character, and to this date, the only Constitutional republic of our character, as a challenge, to the recently emerged Anglo-Dutch Liberal empire of the British East India Company.
So, naturally, Shelburne, the political leader of this new empire, set out to do two things: to destroy the United States, which he worked at from before the United States existed, from 1763 on; and to destroy Britain's great rival on the continent of Europe, France. And Shelburne organized the French Revolution, hip and joint. He created the Martinist cult; he organized things like the Queen's necklace affair, he controlled Necker; he controlled Philippe Egalité; he organized the Bastille event; he organized the Jacobin Terror. He set into motion Napoleon Bonaparte, as a tyrant, who is the model in modern times for all fascist-like tyrants since, including those of the 1922 to 1945 period, and Cheney today.
So, this is what we are! This is our history, as globally extended European civilization. It's a history of repeated crises, but with a couple of good factors in it. First of all, we are not monkeys. If we were higher apes, there would never have been more than several million of us living on this planet at any one time. We now have a reported population in excess of 6 billion. This is only possible because there's something good about mankind. The power of reason. The ability to change. The ability to make discoveries that no animal can make. Principles of science, principles of the universe, principles of Classical artistic composition. No animal can do it. Only a human mind can do it.
And what we call culture, in its best aspectsscience, and Classical artis a product of the reflections of an accumulation, both in the formation of language itself, for example, of the development of man, the self-development of mankind, through cultural development, transmitted from one generation to the next. Sometimes with fallout in between, but always it keeps coming back. Even during all these times of crisis.
In most cases, especially in the history of European civilization, going back to the time of the Homeric period, from that time, there has always been resurgence of progress, and net progress over the long span, in the history of mankind. The good things we have developed, have been transmitted from one generation to the other, or they may crop up two generations later, but there were always there.
We have in ourselves, the accumulation of that. And every American who sees himself as being part of this process, has within them, something of that potential, to call forth from not only within themselves individually, but as groups of people, to act in concert, by saying, "This is our legacy. This is our cultural heritage. This is what we share, this belief. We can therefore act together to bring forth new good, as humanity has produced good in rising over all these probably 2 million or more years, of rising from the condition of a higher ape, to modern civilization. We can do it again."
And therefore, at the time that we recognize tragedy, and the folly that we've bequeathed to ourselves, we recognize that man is essentially good, that within man there's an essential goodness which, if tapped and brought forth, brings forth not only the goodness which is the original goodness of man, but also the good things that have been transmitted over successive generations, as cultural gifts down to our time.
Now, therefore, that being the case, why don't we capture it? Why do we put up with what has happened to us?
A Downward Trend
For 40 yearsof course, we weren't too good before thenbut 40 years approximately, since the aftermath of the assassination of President Kennedy, since the launching of the Indo-China war, the trend in the United States has been downward, as typified by the transformation of the United States from the world's leading producer nation, to a parasite nation, which, since 1971-72, has been living on the blood sucked from the poorer parts of the world. We shipped our employment overseas, to cheap labor. Why is the labor so cheap? Because we dropped the value of their currencies, and compelled them to work for nothing. We looted them, by collecting payment on debts that they never incurred. We did this, and we sit here, no longer a producer nation, with great industries, with great centers of technological progress, we sit here, sucking on the blood of other parts of the world, the poorest parts, including right below our border, Mexico. We suck the blood of Mexico, which we ruined, especially from 1982 on, by sapping their currency.
We suck their blood, in Mexico, by employing them as slave labor. We suck their blood when they cross the border, even as illegals, to come in, and perform cheap labor, as terrified cheap labor, who will work for anything, to get some money to send as a remittance to their family back in Mexico.
This is what we've become. This is not us! But this is what we've become over the past 40 years, in the process of going from being, having the ideals of a great producer society, an engine of technological progress, a nation that helped to rebuild Europe and other parts of the postwar world, with a monetary system of that time. We went from that, with all our faults, into becoming a purely parasitical, post-industrial, decadent society, in which I've said repeatedly, the idea of beauty is a poor girl, so underfed, so naked, so skinny, that you can't see her without clothingso you put some dirty old shiny rags on her, and you call it high fashion. And now, that's the definition of the entertainment society. Poor anorexic woman, killing herself in order to be unbeautiful, and wear dirty rags, and call it high fashion.
Talk about Hollywood, which is in approximately this area, the product of that area is about of the same quality, and I think there's a certain consistency there. That's what we've become.
How is it, that if we're so good, as human beings, and humanity has demonstrated that, if we sometimes do such wonderful things, why do we keep repeating destroying ourselves? As in European civilization? Why did Troy destroy itself, and much of ancient Greece in the same process? Why did Greece, or Athens, at the height of its power, and culture, destroy itself? Why did mankind destroy itself, by allowing the Roman Empire to come into existence? Why did we fail to rise, as Charlemagne's effort indicated, why did we go back to something evil, more evilthe Venetian, the Guelphian, Norman system of chivalry, which dominated Europe from about the end of the 10th Century, up til the beginning of the 15th Century Renaissance. Why did we do that?
Why, after having created in Europe a great Golden Renaissance, which for the first time, actually recaptured the best aspects of Classical Greek culture in literature, art, and so forth, as typified by Cusa, by Leonardo da Vinci, and otherswhy, having done that, having created the first kind of state, in which the state was held accountable for the welfare of all of the people and its posteritywhy did we go back to something else? Why did we allow the Spanish Inquisition? Why did we allow the religious wars in 1511 to 1648? Why, having conquered this problem with the Treaty of Westphalia, did we slide into a world dominated by the Anglo-Dutch-Liberal parliamentary imperialism, as we have now?
Why, having created a great nation in the United States, did we allow ourselves to become corrupted, by that filth of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, spilled over from Europe? Why, with all the things we accomplished, with Franklin Roosevelt pulling us out of the pit of degradation, which his predecessors had imposed upon us, why did we at the end of the war, go back to a right-wing terror, emulating the same kind of Hitlerism which we'd fought against in Europe, during the war?
Why did we, having built up a recovery of the world, with U.S. help, and our currency, in the post-war period, turn, with the assassination of Kennedy, and the launching of the Indo-China war, into a great cultural degeneration of this nation, from which we have not seen any kind of recovery since? Why?
What is the fault in us? What is the tragic feature in us? What is the tragic susceptibility of mankind, that we act like such fools, as humanity, again and again, as in the United States today?
This System Is Finished
This is the issue of this election, because we've come to the point, this system is finished. It's over. This financial-monetary system is finished. This economic system is finished. Parties that continue with these policies are finished. If the United States continues with this kind of policy, it's finished, and the danger is, even by electing a man such as Kerry, who is not a bad person at all, by any normal standard, but, under these conditions, in which his tendency to go along to get along, would mean that he would submit to the financial powers which are trying to ruin us, and have been ruining us, he would become, effectively, the office-boy in the White House, working for these bankers, the predators who are eating our people, and the people of the world.
That's the problem.
That being the case, what's our problem? Why did we do that? How did we get into this mess, and how do we get out of it?
Well, there's a fault in us, there's a faulty beliefyou see it all the time. You ask the question: Why did we do it? Why don't we recognize that this system is coming down? All it takes is a visit to the grocery store, on a regular occasion, to realize that there's a hyperinflation that's been in progress in the United States. What is the price of beef? How many people have been able to afford to go into a grocery store recently? What's the price of beef? What's the price of cereals? The price of staples of all kinds? Have these prices been increasing? At what rate? What's the percentile of the cost of food, compared to the level of the average income? What's the cost of rent, of occupation of a place of residence, compared to the income that's available?
What percentage of the population has been cast away, not counted any more as unemployed, although they are unemployed, and in need of employment? How much of the health care has been peeled away, by so-called health-care reform?
Now, they're trying to remove Social Security.
How can people say that prosperity is just around the corner? How can people say, "How can you prove, how can you doubt popular opinion, that this is a prosperous economy? How can you doubt prevalent opinion, by great authorities, that this economy is going to recover, is in the process of recovery? How can you doubt this? How can you say, 'There's going to be a depression'? What's your proof? What's your evidence?"
Look inside your pockets. You're lucky if you find a hole there.
So, why do people do that? What's the basis for this? What's the characteristic human behavior which causes this to occur?
Well, I've often used the case of a Cartesian geometry, as an example of insanity. And there are worse forms of insanity than Cartesian geometry; there's the kind that's taught as New Math, that's even worse, and that's more popular today. But, what's wrong with Cartesian geometry?
First of all, it's a denial of reality. It says that there are certain assumptions, which are intuitive, unprovable, but widely shared. About the nature of a point, of a line, of a surface, and so forth, and these things are called definitions, axioms, and postulates. Are they real? No. They're not real. None of these things actually exist! But we agree, to believe that they exist. We say, "We have to come to some agreement."
Now, you go back to ancient Greece, the time beforejust after Plato, it was a little differentbut up to Plato's time, what was the basic mathematics of Greece? Was it Cartesian? Was it Euclidean? No. Euclid came later, after the works of Aristotle. Euclidean geometry did not exist in the time of Plato. But, the greatest scientific progress in Greek culture, was made up through the time of Plato. So, the greatest progress in Greek culture occurred, without this notion of definitions, axioms, and postulates, which is the standard of education, among foolish people in universities, still today. They believe in definitions, axioms, and postulates. They believe in the existence of Bertrand Russell. I have philosophical doubts about the existence of Bertrand Russell. They believe in information theory. They believe in all kinds of silly things. In the IT miracleall nonsenseruined us!
But, why do people believe these things? How does this work?
Spherics
Before the time of Aristotle and Euclid, in the period of the degeneration of Greece, following the Peloponnesian War effects, the mathematics and physics were united. They were united in what was called spherics. Spherics was based on actually Egyptian astronomy, principally Egyptian astronomy, as the Great Pyramids of Egypt demonstrate that to the living, still today. If you look at the bores, in the Great Pyramids, these are astronomical instruments. These astronomical instruments have implications. The taking of certain measurements in the nature of an experimental demonstration of a principle, any such equipment, any such design, gives you a clue, with insight into what the principle was, that this equipment demonstrated.
So, when you look up at the sky, you don't see distances, you only see angles between points of light. You see those things which appear to be regular, and those things which appear to be less regular, such as the motion of planets, as differentiated from the so-called fixed stars. That was where we got the idea. So, the world is a vast spheroid; the universe is a vast spheroid. That's what we mean by the term "universal," in Classical studies.
We look up, and we can determine angles. We can not measure exactly what things are; we have to discover. We have to discover by experiment, what it is we're seeing. So, this became known as spherics, come from Egypt. It was reflected in the work of the famous Thales of Ionia, and the Pythagoreans of southern Italy. And this was science.
This was based on a principle, which was defined well by the Pythagoreans, and defined with certain experiments, which were also the subject of dialogues by Plato. That is, what is this discovery of a principle? And what has this got to do with politics, and you, and just what I discussed earlier, today, here?
When we find an anomaly, which defies the notion of some regularity, corresponding to our sense-perception of the world around us, we have struck upon the possibility of discovering a universal physical principle, like gravity. None of you have ever touched gravity; you have never seen it; you have never smelled it; you've never tasted it; you've never felt it. You have felt its effects; but, you've never felt it. And yet, it controls, in the way Kepler defined, it controls the way the whole Solar System works, including the planet Earth. It is a universal physical principle.
There are many other things that are universal physical principles. There are also demonstrations, in elementary geometry, as by the Classical Greek geometry, of the doubling of the line: Can you double a line, if you try to define the universe as a line? You can't do it. How do double the area of a square, by construction? How do you double a cube, by construction? Each of these things demonstrates a principle, which is knowable to the mind, but, as the doubling of the cube demonstrates most acutely, the operation you perform in construction, to produce the desired result, is one which is not an object of the senses.
This is always the case, in every thing we justly call a universal scientific principle. You discover an irregularity in the behavior of the world around you. You discover something that's happening, you can't explain, in terms of regularity, or in self-evident sense-perception, or so-called common sense. You conduct an investigation, to try to understand this anomaly, this irregularity, like the crazy back-looping of Mars, in its orbit, from a normalized observation. You can actually see this thing, on the right night, when the back-looping of Mars is apparently occurring. An anomaly. From this, Kepler was led to the discovery of universal gravitation.
All like that! The discovery of how you double a line, as a matter of principle. How you double the area of a square. Or, particularly, doubling a cube. Or, why, in construction, there are only five regular solids, that are constructible in the universe? Another principle.
So, these are concepts, which you can not visualize, you can't detect them directly with the senses. You can prove them experimentally, by aid of the senses. They affect the way the world of the senses works. So, you have this problem. You have one thing, the world of the senses. What do the world of the senses show you? They show you the effect upon the universe, on your sense organs. Do they show you the universe? They do not show you the universe. The existence of a single, physical principle, means that your senses don't show you the actual universe. They show you a shadow of the universe: the effect of the universe impacting on your sense organs.
Now, so therefore, what you see, in a sense, is real. It's a shadow. Well, that's not bad! At least the shadow is real. It's a real shadow! That's reality. That's physical reality; it's a shadowy one, but it's what you got!
Universal Physical Principles
Now, then, you find out, that there's something that controls the way that shadow-world behaves. You can't see it; you can demonstrate it; it's infallible. It's a universal physical principle. It exists as an object of your mind.
So, now, you have what Gauss developed, and others developed, as the complex domain; or the catenary principle, as understood by Leibniz. There are two domains: One is the domain of discoveries, that the human mind has made, discoveries of universal physical principle. These discoveries control what you can see, as shadows of sense-perception. You demonstrate this. In mathematics, in physics, when you conduct an experiment, you have to take both into account: You take the principle, and you take what you can observe as the shadows of sense-perception, either directly, or through instruments. This is knowledge.
But only a human being, only the human mind, can discover these principles. These principles have always existed in the universe. We just didn't know them, until we discovered them. But! When we master such a principle, and we apply such a principle, to our purpose, we change the universe. In other words, the principle remains the same. The difference is, man, and man's will, is now using that principle of the universe, as a tool for changing the universe. And it works. And that's how man got ahead.
And, that is what you mean, essentially, in physical science, that man is made uniquely in the image of the Creator.
And therefore, the most precious thing we have, is not our experience, as such. The most precious thing we have, is the transmission of discoveries of principle, from generation to generation; the transmission of a continuing process of discovery, not just finished discoveries, but an ongoing process, of unresolved problems: which one generation discovers the problem, other generations, later, find the solution.
This is a cultural process, of the transmission from the ancient past, to the present, of certain things we can call principles, which have come to us today, which are embodied in us as knowledge. These principles are mankind's power to exist in, and over the universe.
Social Principles: The Human Singing Voice
There are also kinds of principles, apart from physical principles. There are social principles: For example, the human singing voice, or the potential of the human singing voice, is natural. Human singing voices come in certain types. It's an array of types: such as soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass. There are about six basic types, and there are variations on them. They all have unique characteristics, as expressed by natural register-shift values, and other specific values. These values can be developed, by training, to bring forth a better mastery of these principlesbut they're the same. When you combine these different voices together, as Bach does, in Bach's development of the well-tempered system, you now are actually unifying the human race. Instead of having someone say something, you're now saying something in concert, together, with an effect which would not be there, unless these voices were combined, in a certain, integrated way, to express their natural potentialities.
This function of well-tempered composition, has functioned for a long time in human history. We know it as poetry. The rules of musicality, of Classical poetry, which even we know, for example, from the case of the ancient Vedic, through the studies of the ancient Vedic hymns by modern people, studying the Sanskrit form of those hymns. The hymns are highly reliable, in terms of certain, very specific astronomical information, contained in some of them. These can be precisely dated to certain intervals in history, because of the precision of the astronomical observations which were made, like equinoctial characteristics, and things like that.
But, the point is, these things were transmitted by oral transmission, over thousands of years. And yet, retained a certain accuracythousands of years! Because, by speaking in poetry, with musicality, in this way, you have an automatic way of correcting errors in the memory of that poem. And therefore, the poem is preserved by the mind, because it is expressed musically. Not like words, scattered about and pasted together, which you easily forget. When a truly Classical poem is composed, there's a musicality involved.
Now, also, this is true in the dramatic stage, in the Classical dramatic stage. Part of the effect is not the lines, not the workbut it's the expression! And the expression touches upon this peculiarity of the human voice, the human mind, which involves this kind of musicality.
So, in this, we have not only the mastery of the individual mind's ability to understand the principles of the universe; in trying to cooperate with one another, in applying such principles to the universe, we have to understand, there are certain principles involved, in the way people can communicate, and share ideas with one another. And Classical art, Classical poetry, Classical drama, Classical music, also Classical painting, as in the case of Leonardo's new perspective. These things are all media, by which we are able to work together, to a common purpose, in cooperation, in dealing with the physical tasks of society.
This is what we are. This is what's good about us. And, we're good, when we recognize this in ourselves, and love other people because they're part of this process. We admire and feel great affection for people from the past who have contributed this to us, whose ideas we have replicated, we have rediscovered and replicated; that makes us happy. We feel an affinity.
We also feel something else: We have a sense of our immortality. If we are part of a human species, which is so constituted, then we are willing to give our lives, if necessary, to ensure the preservation of that which has gone before us which is good, and to ensure the birth of the future. We live as much in the past and the future, as we do in the present.
Now, when are we weak? When are we corrupt? It's when we are saying, "Look, I know there's a crisis goin' on, but I'm not gonna worry about it. I gotta take care of my neighborhood." "Look, I got this sex-life problemlook, buddy, don't bother me with this" [general laughter]. It's when we become petty, small-minded.
Now, what happens, is, people are saying, there's a crisis going on"I don't wanna hear about it!"
"I don't go there!"
Right? I say, "Well, I won't go to Kerry's lecture, then. I want reality. Not that."
What happens is, we substitute, as in the case of Euclidean geometry, Cartesian geometry, we substitute certain faults, arbitrary conceptions; we deny that there is a universe lying beyond the shadows of perception. We deny the existence of principles. We come up with mysterious kinds of religious belief, like there are little green men, under the floorboard, who make sure that free trade works. It never works. "I'm sorry! It may not seem to work to you, but it works for me, because I believe in it!"
You may be bankrupt, the country. My days, my incarnation as a management consultant, I was often called in, on mortal cases of bankruptcy, and I can tell you something about the way the mind works in business, from my experience with bankrupt managements. They have certain kinds of behavior, which lead to this bankruptcy.
And this is the same thing with people, the same thing, today: People do not want to believe, in what? Well, one of the problems of the United States iswe had a discussion of this, around here, recently, because, one gentleman did a fine job of reviving a play, The Big Knife of Clifford Odets. And the Odets play contains an historic significance for people today, who don't understand what's wrong with the United States, today. When we came back from the war, after being revived to optimism by the successes of the Franklin Roosevelt Presidency, by late 1944actually by August 1944, Roosevelt was ill, and was known to be going to die, because of complications of the poliomyelitis affliction; and overwork.
So, they put in Harry Truman, who was a racist, Ku Klux Klan veteran, from Missouri. And he was a bankers' man. And the same bankers who had put Hitler into powerthat is, American bankers, like Harriman, Morgan, du Pont, Mellon, and so forthwho had put Hitler into power, from the United States, in 1933, and had worked for that, before; had objected to Hitler, because he was European, not because they objected to fascism. Fascism, they liked; they loved it. These bankers loved it. Lazard Frères loved it, they practiced it, from inside Franceagainst France, on behalf of Nazi Germany. Nice people.
A Right-Wing Turn
So anyway, but we came back. We were here around '44, we're coming back from the war, and everything has turned nasty: The Roosevelt period is dead. You come back to the shock of the Hiroshima/Nagasaki bombing, for which there was no excuseand you find a right-wing turn has occurred. You'd no sooner land and you're demobilized, you've got your little ruptured duck on your lapelthe veterans, you know, we'd got this thing we'd call this "ruptured duck," for military service during the war; you'd just got this thing on your lapel. You were able to buy a suit, because we were short of suits at that time, and you really had to struggle to find a place that could produce a suit for you, coming back, trying to get out of uniform. About this time, Churchill and Truman had gotten us into another war, this time, picking a war with the Soviet Unionfor evil purposes. It's a game, I've written about a good deal.
But, we made a right-wing turn. And, by 1946-47, we had become, a real right-wing terror in this country. I saw men who had been courageous in war, turn into stinking cowards under the pressure of their wives, during the immediate post-war period, saying, "Don't get into trouble. Don't say anything that'll get our family into trouble. The FBI is gonna get you, if you say anything."
So, we lost our courage, and my generation lost its courage, in large degree. Many of them, those who went into university life afterward, went into suburbia, or places like that. They developed careers, and they taught their children, their pretty little children, called the Baby Boomers, they taught them, "Don't get our family into trouble. When asked about that, lie. Say what you're supposed heard saying. Don't get our family into trouble."
And so, these pretty children went off to universities, later on. But, in the meantime, we had the Missile Crisis, where everybody was looking for God in a beer barrel, for several days. They thought the thermonuclear missiles were going to come in on us. They were terrified. I saw it! The whole population was terrified; some of you who were living through it, probably remember the effects of those days, in 1962. For several days, many people believed, and we were being told, that the missiles would come crashing in, and wiping us out, at any morning. Right? And the pretty children, who had been told to lie, when threatened, became frightened. And they went to universities. They went into the counterculture, especially after the Vietnam War was declared. They took LSD"anything to fix my head!" "I can't stand what's going on in my head!" "I hate technology! I'm going to destroy it! I'm going back to the animals! I'm going to take my clothes off, and be natural," running around, doing that kind of thing.
So, what happened is, we had a change in our people. We had the "I don't go there" change. "I arbitrarily assume that certain things are true. I arbitrarily assume that certain things are not true. I'm looking for, what? My head is terrible. I need entertainment! I've become jaded, with the old entertainment. I need new entertainment! I need new thrills! I need ugly thrills! Sweet thrills! All kinds of thrills, so I can get through the night! I've got to take a pill, to get through the night. I've got to smoke this, to get through the day. I'll get out there, and I'll drive this big truck, with this joint goin' on, so I'll crash into somethingwhadda wonderful way to go!"
This was the culture! So, what you have is, you have, in the United States' generation, in the people who are 62, 60, 55, so forth, who are living in a no-future societythat is, they say, "Don't bother me about the future! I've got this problem. I've got a vacation coming up. I've got a retirement coming up. We've got this thing we want to doand I'm having trouble getting through the night. I need entertainment. I need illusion. I need escapism. I have to believe, that this is going to be all right. I have to believe, that what I need is coming to me.
"I don't want to hear about the future! Don't bother me with the future. When I die, it ends!"
You see, they no longer believe in immortality. They may go to churches, but that's only to deny immortality. Huh? That's what they do, actually.
So, that's what we've become.
Remember Ancient Rome
So, we're in a society, and I think something like this has happened in the past: Remember ancient Rome. Remember "bread and circuses." The Roman people, especially after the Second Punic War, began to degenerate as slavery took over, inside Italy. And as Italy lived on the foodstuffs, and materials, that it looted from foreign countries that it conquered and looted, the Italian people were shut out of the process of production more and more. And they were sustained, as a population, by a dole. By various ways, they were paid off, paid off by various kinds of politicians, but they were paid off. One of the big pay-offs, was entertainment, typified by the Colosseum and the Circus Maximus: entertainment! They entertained themselves, by massacring each other. Take the case of the massacres under Caligula: The elite of Rome, massacred each other! Claudius, the same; Nero! An orgy of massacre of the leading families of Rome itself, by the leading families of Rome. Same kind of process.
We're doing something like that to ourselves, now, on a world scale. We're going through that kind of process, of a flight from reality, so therefore, people build up this insulation. You see a typification of this, in this crazy Mel Gibson movie. I haven't seen the movie, but I've seen the promotions. I've seen the propaganda. I've seen the debate. I know what's happening.
Helga [Zepp-LaRouche], in an address she gave in Virginia, at the conference recently, referred in one aspect, to a very significant figure from The Brothers Karamazov of Dostoevsky: the case of the Grand Inquisitor. The Grand Inquisitor is a true Joseph de Maistre figure. He actually turns out, as Helga described it, to be Satan. Jesus Christ comes back, and Satan appears in the form of the Grand Inquisitor, and puts Christ in prison and announces he's going to be killed. And said, "Didn't you learn from Gethsemane? You turned me down in Gethsemane. Now, I run the Church. I run the Church, and you're going to die!"
That's what this is!
For example, just take the thing from a New Testament standpoint: What is the reality of the Crucifixion of Christ? The reality is, that Jesus Christ made a parade into the city of Jerusalem, like our youth group, going into the main part of Los Angeles, and fighting against the Schwarzenegger beast. And the people in the community cheered. They cheered for Christ coming through the streets of Jerusalem. The Roman Empire was not pleased. Tiberius, a real monster, a real Satanic figure, was sitting in his villa beside the cliffs of the Isle of Capri. And his son-in-law, his legal son-in-law, Pontius Pilate, whom he'd gotten out of the way for sexual reasons, and assigned him to become the Procurator of Judaea, acted in Roman style. Now, there's only one authority in occupied Judaea, who could order a crucifixion: the Roman Emperor. The Roman Emperor's representative Pontius Pilate. A crucifixion was done by Rome, by imperial Rome, not by the Jews! Who were the Jews? The Jews were nothing but the local quislings! They were the local neo-conservatives! They were not the typical Jews! The majority of the Jewish population of Judaea wanted to get rid of the Romans! And there were various kinds of Jewish groups, who were in a state of revolt, against the Roman occupation, which continued all the way through, until the mass killing of Jews by the Romans, at a later point.
Jesus Christ comes along, and to the Romans, being hailed by the people of Jerusalem, from the streets of Jerusalem, as the King of the Jewswhat does that say to the Roman Empire? Kill him! And kill him, in a way which is a lesson, to be taught to the rest of the population of this territory. "That's what we do to all of similar type." As Nero did to St. Peter. And was done to St. Paul, by the Roman Empire.
Now, if you want to portray the reality of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ, you obviously start with not less, than Christ's entry into Jerusalem. You don't paste on the end, a little scene in Gethsemane, a fantastic scene of Christ's reappearance. You don't do that. Because, the essence of Christianity, as we know it historically, from the whole history of Christianity, especially from the Apostles, was the great transformation in European civilization, which Christianity represented, which is reflected in its impact, in part, on the Jewish population, which did not really have much of a religion at that time; and many parts of Jewry accepted, as in the case of Philo Judaeus, accepted the lessons of Christianity, as a reform of Judaism. You had, in the case of the birth of Islam, you look at the essence of Islam, there are characteristics of the impact of Christianity on Islam. In the case of the great Moorish culture, of southern Spain, the same thing: the impact of Christianity, directly and indirectly, on Islam; where the Moorish culture, with its Jewish component, in Spain, represented the highest level of Spanish culture, probably to the present day. And they were expelled by the Inquisition.
So, the lesson here, is a lesson of optimism! Not pessimism. But optimism. This is not somebody being killed: This is Martin Luther King, being assassinated by the whim of J. Edgar Hoover. Is Martin Luther King dead? Not if I'm alive. [applause]
Is Jeanne d'Arc dead? She made possible modern society. She made possible the establishment of the first modern nation-state, in the case of France. She was an integral part of the great Renaissance, under which the best features of modern European society occurred. Are those who have suffered and died for the cause of human freedom, in such a heroic manner as that, who've done it, as I have compared Martin Luther King to Jeanne d'Arca very comparable case, in terms of the principle of the thingare they dead? No, they're not dead: What they have done, in their contribution to humanity, is immortal. And, when we reflect upon them, and what they gave us, with their sacrifice, with their courage, they are part of us. They live within us. They are positive, they inspire us. They don't depress us. They don't frighten us. We say, "Yes, he died. Yes, he suffered. But, look at the gift he gave us, in the process of suffering. And the price he paid, for our benefit, is our cause of rejoicing: That he loved us enough, to do that for us. He lives forever."
So, what the film does, it turnsand this film is promoted by, guess who? That great, loving, mankind-lover: John Ashcroft, the racist. Ashcroft's crowd are the biggest pushers of this film. The group that Mel Gibson is associated with, is a known fascist group, radical fascist group, of the Francisco Franco variety; of the Carlist variety. They're not Christians. They are, as Helga described the situation, the Grand Inquisitor, from The Brothers Karamazov of Dostoevsky: That's what they are.
They are the greatest danger to the United States, in the sense: This film, the way it's being promoted, among the people to whom it's being promoted, among crazy right-wing Catholics, and crazy right-wing Protestants of the worst typethis is the Ku Klux Klan type. This is the marching song, of the Ku Klux Klan! Threatens the greatest wave of anti-Semitism, and similar kinds of phenomena, that you can imagine at this time. And it's being done, as part of an election ploy, for the re-election of George Bush, although George Bush himself may not be part of it. But, that faction that wants to control the United States, by controlling the re-election of George Bush, is the faction behind this, that has pushed this thing. And they pushed this thing as a Satanic effort, to brainwash the population.
And when you look around you, and you see the people that are impressed by this propaganda, the people who admire and defend the film: Ah! You're getting a smell of the rot! You're getting a smell of the things that caused the crisis of Troy, as reported in the Iliad; the crisis of ancient Athens, as reflected in the Peloponnesian War; the crisis of civilization under Rome; the crisis of Hitler and what he represented: It's the same thing, again.
Youth: The Great Movers of History
We find the same flaw, lies among us, in our population. And therefore, the key to this is, as follows: You have to have, what we already had, first of all. You have to have a large minority, an influential and active minority, including a significant component of young adults, who are generally the great movers of history, in most parts of history. You have to have a core that understands, that is ready to push and act. Just ordinary people, but who are extraordinary, in the fact, that they have this commitment. Then, the moment of crisisand it will come soon, this financial system is about to disintegrate. It's the greatest financial crisis, in all modern history. It is not a repetition of 1929-32. It's much, much worse. It's systemic.
In 1929-32, we were still a producer society. Our strength, our economic strength, despite the Depression, a collapse of the income by about half during that period, lay in our farms. People went back to the farms, to eat. It lay in what remained of our industries. It remained in the productive skills, of people of who had laid-off from their jobs in factorieswho still had those skills. So that, when Roosevelt called out, and sounded the horn, for people to get back to work, we had the infrastructure; we had the farms; we had the remains of industries. We had to put it back together, but we had the means to put it back together.
In the past 40 years, we took what was the most productive society on this planet, our own: We destroyed several things. We destroyed the morale of our people; we destroyed our agriculture; we destroyed our industries; we destroyed our productive technology; we destroyed our self-sufficiency; we destroyed our positive role, in building up other nations, such as our neighbors in Central and South Americawhich we had done, actually, in the earlier period, or in Europe. We were no longer a positive factor in the world, standing on our own feet. Depending upon our friends, but standing on our own feet, making our contribution. We were not parasites, sucking the blood of others, and giving up our own industries at home, our own employment, for the sake of getting goods from cheap labor through Wal-Mart, from overseas.
So, we're much worse off, than we were then. But, being a sly old fellow, and knowing how these things work, we can put it back together again. There are ways of doing it. And the fact that there are people in the society, who will stick to this, stick to this commitment, for a great revival of our nation: That will work. Because at the moment, when the crisis hits with full force, we will be the factor, who will give courage back to our fellow people. Get them out of the gutter. Get them out of the depression. And, say, "Okay. We were right. We're not rubbing it in. Let's do what we have to do, now."
That will work. The problem here, is exactly of that nature. People will cling to illusions as long as they can. Especially the form of illusions which constitute denial of reality. And only when the forces of circumstance break their resolution to cling to unreality, when they're finally willing to get off the Titanic, at that point, their minds suddenly become miraculously open, as I saw, back in the time that Roosevelt, even as a very young mana boy, in factas I saw the effect of Roosevelt's election on the American people. When a moment comes, when people recognize two things: That the situation as it has existed is impossible, intolerable; there is no way of denying it's intolerable. But, when, at the same time, they see there's leadership, organized leadership, embedded in the population, which shows there's a way out, then people at that time, will go for the life raft. They will get off the sinking ship, and jump on the life raft.
That is our function. If this civilization can be saved, if this United States can be saved, we are going to do itnot because we have any miraculous powers, but because I'm going to stick to the job, and people like you are going to be there, when your friends and neighbors finally come to their senses. [applause]
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