This is the edited transcript of the presentation of Diane Sare to Panel 2, “Runaway Inflation or Glass-Steagall?” of the Schiller Institute’s June 18–19 Conference, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System.” Mrs. Sare is the LaRouche independent candidate for U.S. Senator from New York. Subheads and embedded internet source links have been added.

Can the United States be brought to shift its current trajectory of self- and global-annihilation on behalf of the bankrupt Anglo-Dutch imperial order, to instead join the New Paradigm of cooperation and development which is currently being led by Russia and China? This is the burning question which the prophetic Lyndon LaRouche was asking throughout the 1990s and which has been raised again by Helga Zepp-LaRouche at the May 26 conference of the Schiller Institute, “The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War.” The answer to that question must be “Yes,” or it is very hard to imagine how we are going to survive, even in the short term, let alone for generations to come.

What Is the United States?

First of all, we must remind ourselves, “What is the United States?” We are on the cusp of the 250th anniversary of our founding, but if George Washington and Alexander Hamilton were to visit us today, they would wonder how we had allowed ourselves to be so thoroughly taken over by the British Empire.

In his November 2004 paper, “The Coming Eurasian World: Toward a Second Treaty of Westphalia,” LaRouche wrote:

Was it necessary for Americans to go so far in resisting the recently spawned British Empire, as to think of a war-like break, to independence, from that cruel empire? The answer, as experience affirmed that view, was that not only was the revolutionary independence of the English colonies in North America justified, as the U.S. Declaration of Independence avows; it was necessary for the sake of the liberation of Europe’s nations from the ultimately fatal corruption of which Europe could not otherwise cure itself. The creation of our new republic must be the adoption of the best from Europe, but the best freed from the fatal corruption of the existing, institutionalized culture of Europe.

This was implicitly the same corroborating observation made by Friedrich Schiller in viewing the horrors of the French Revolution: A great historic opportunity had been lost, because the moment had found a people morally too small-minded to seize that long-awaited opportunity when it had been presented. What should have happened in France in 1789, was realized by the role of the U.S.A. under President Franklin Roosevelt. Roosevelt led in freeing a Europe which had brought the blight of the Jacobin Terror and Napoleon upon itself earlier, and fascism much more recently, through its own continuing cultural-political corruption….

Today, the same logic says: “We must free our U.S.A. from its present seizure by the infection of a fatal corruption like that which afflicted Europe in the two so-called “world wars” and rise of fascism in the past, that we might, once again, take that action which would save our republic from its own present lunacy, while also saving Europe from its own present folly.”

How does a nation achieve actual independence—not merely declared liberation, as from the British Empire?

If your people are starving and sickly, dying before the age of 40, are you free? If 100,000 of your citizens die in one year of drug overdoses, while 1 million more die over two years of a pandemic virus, is that freedom? Is committing suicide and/or genocide among the “unalienable rights” referred to by our founders?

Was a costly revolution fought against the leading imperial power in the world, the British Empire, in order for us and others around the world to have short, miserable lives? Obviously not.

In order to uphold the principles expressed in the creation of this Republic, a system of physical and political economy had to be developed which would allow people to live longer, healthier, and happier lives. Thanks to the genius of Alexander Hamilton and his collaborators, and a relative handful of great presidents, our nation managed, in spite of some rotten characters, to achieve that goal in fits and starts until the assassination of President Kennedy.

From that point on, with very few limited exceptions, our nation has abandoned the policies and outlook which led to our success, and instead embraced the agenda of a decadent and dying British Empire.

The key to a successful economy, and a free nation, is a commitment to increasing man’s power over nature. Creating our own environment with modern housing, sanitation, transportation, heat in the winter, indoor plumbing, reliable food production, which is increased with water management and fertilization, and refrigeration to prolong storage, all of which require abundant sources of energy, is the key to making each of us more productive.

While there are many complex and interrelated factors that go into this, not least of which is the concept of public credit, what I want to focus on in this limited time is four great initiatives which transformed the standard of living, and thus increased the freedom of the American people, so that you can see why joining China’s Belt and Road Initiative would be the most natural and American response to the crisis we currently face.

Four Great Transformative U.S. Initiatives

Number 1: The Erie Canal, which was first proposed by New Yorker Gouverneur Morris in 1777, and was the subject of great controversy. It finally was begun in 1817 on the Fourth of July and completed eight years later on the Fourth of July in 1825. The inscription on the capstone for the Buffalo area’s lock reads:

Let posterity be excited to perpetuate our free institutions and to make still greater efforts than our ancestors, to promote public prosperity, by the recollection that these works of internal improvement were achieved by the spirit and perseverance of REPUBLICAN FREE MEN.

“Republican,” although capitalized in the lock, means “republican” with a small r, not the party per se. Think about the cities along the route of the Erie Canal and consider how building this canal transformed not merely New York State, but the entire nation.

Second, the Transcontinental Railroad. I’m going to share with you a speech from President Abraham Lincoln, as a young man, on “Discoveries and Inventions.” He says:

We have all heard of Young America. He is the most current youth of the age. Some think him conceited, and arrogant; but has he not reason to entertain a rather extensive opinion of himself? Is he not the inventor and owner of the present, and sole hope of the future?

Men, and things, everywhere, are ministering unto him. Look at his apparel, and you shall see cotton fabrics from Manchester and Lowell; flax-linen from Ireland; wool-cloth from Spain; silk from France; furs from the Arctic regions, with a buffalo-robe from the Rocky Mountains, as a general outsider. At his table, besides plain bread and meat made at home, are sugar from Louisiana; coffee and fruits from the tropics; salt from Turk’s Island; fish from Newfoundland; tea from China, and spices from the Indies. The whale of the Pacific furnishes his candle-light; he has a diamond-ring from Brazil; a gold-watch from California, and a Spanish cigar from Havana.

He has not only a present supply of all these, and much more; but thousands of hands are engaged in producing fresh supplies, and other thousands, in bringing them to him. The iron horse is panting, and impatient, to carry him everywhere, in no time; and the lightning stands ready harnessed to take and bring his tidings in a trifle less than no time….

So, the development of rail changed the world. Now, just one example of some of the extraordinary breakthroughs required to build the Transcontinental Railroad is the Dale Creek Bridge in Wyoming, built in 1868. I also will add here, without dwelling on it, but everyone should know that 15,000–20,000 Chinese immigrant workers were involved in the construction of this railroad, in some of the most difficult places.

Number 3: The Tennessee Valley Authority was built in one of the most impoverished parts of the United States during the Great Depression. Thanks to the unharnessed and unregulated power of the Tennessee River, you had malaria, terrible soil erosion, people were illiterate, but the region became transformed to become one of the most productive areas on the face of the Earth. In the first chapter of his book, Democracy on the March, David Lilienthal, Director of the Tennessee Valley Authority, wrote:

… all of this could have happened in almost any of a thousand other valleys where rivers run from the hills to the sea. For the valleys of the earth have these things in common: the waters, the air, the land, the minerals, the forests. In Missouri and Arkansas, in Brazil and in the Argentine, in China and in India there are just such rivers …, rivers that in the violence of flood menace the land and the people, then sulk in idleness and drought—rivers all over the world waiting to be controlled by men—… fields … slopes, forests … minerals—that can be made to yield a better living for people….

Number 4, the Apollo Mission, which I would prefer to think of as a transportation corridor into space, although, people also think of it as a science-driver, because of all the breakthroughs required to do it, and for all of the benefits reaped by our economy on Earth. But it should really be thought of as a corridor of expansion into the universe, just as the railroad or canal, or river. After all, as Krafft Ehricke said, “If God had wanted man to be a space-faring species, He would have given him a Moon.”

A Disastrous Shift to Pessimism

In 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and so were Malcolm X in 1965, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968, and John Kennedy’s younger brother Robert, also in 1968, who was about to become President of the United States. Although we managed to make it to the Moon in 1969, already by 1967 the last three Apollo Moon missions were scrapped, and our national identity shifted from one of optimism, to a dark, drug-laced pessimism.

Lyndon LaRouche warned about the rock-drug-sex counterculture and the anti-human Green movement associated with it, but terrified and corrupt political leaders capitulated to the treasonous pro-British ideology of our mis-named “intelligence” agencies and State Department, which gave us the Vietnam War, and a series of forever-wars. The fact that Lyndon LaRouche was incarcerated by these very networks, as opposed to being allowed to lead the nation as President, indicated just how far we had fallen.

The commitment to transforming nature for the good of humanity has shifted to other nations, and now China is leading the way with its Belt and Road Initiative.

Positive U.S.-Chinese Collaboration

Before I get to the whole project, I would like to make a short detour with one Chinese project, done also with inspiration from the United States, specifically the TVA. The Three Gorges Dam—which holds back so much water that motion in the reservoir and filling the reservoir actually slowed the rotation of the Earth, I think, by 6/100ths of a second in a year—was the result of a continual process of dialogue between American and Chinese visionaries.

The destructive power of the unbridled Yangtze River had been known for centuries already, and in 1919 Sun Yat-sen had proposed that a dam should be built at that location. After David Lilienthal’s book about the TVA was published in 1944, it was translated into many languages, including Chinese. By 1945, 50,000 copies of the book were circulating in China. Lilienthal, himself, had been discussing this frequently with the Chinese Ambassador to the United States going as far back as 1939. The dam began producing electricity in 2003.

So, when did it become American policy to crush other nations, as opposed to celebrating progress of human beings anywhere on the planet?

The Belt and Road Initiative

In 1996, Helga Zepp-LaRouche traveled to Beijing to present a proposal for a “New Silk Road.” In line with that trip, the 289-page EIR Special Report, “The Eurasian Land-Bridge: The ‘New Silk Road,’ locomotive for worldwide economic development,” was published in January 1997 and is still available.

In 2013, President Xi Jinping announced the Belt and Road Initiative, which is now building so many huge projects in so many nations, it is impossible to even scratch the surface here. The BRI map also shows the Maritime Silk Road and a Polar Silk Road, which, thanks to the warming at the North Pole, will become a new transportation route. The schematic world map, showing various BRI corridors from the Belt and Road Initiative website, gives you some idea of the scope of the project. Six of the primary corridors are:

1. New Eurasian Land-Bridge Economic Corridor (NELBEC)

2. China-Mongolia-Russia Economic Corridor (CMREC)

3. China-Central Asia-West Asia Economic Corridor (CCWAEC)

4. China-Indochina Peninsula Economic Corridor (CICPEC)

5. Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar Economic Corridor (BCIMEC)

6. China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

The 2018 Belt and Road conference included a list of 35 projects, of which I’ll review a few.

The first one is the Djibouti-Addis Ababa Corridor which runs through Ethiopia to Djibouti on the east coast of Africa. Their trains probably go faster than ours in the United States these days!

Next is the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) project from Lamu Port in Kenya to Southern Sudan, with a branch to southern Ethiopia. This thing is really huge. I suggest you look up the pictures of the Lamu Port. It’s amazing. I think it has three berths, depending on what you’re shipping, importing, exporting, etc.—modern, beautiful.

Now CPEC, (the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor), with a modernized Gwadar Port. This goes from the port in Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea, through Pakistan into China. This corridor will certainly be important in facilitating the development of Pakistan’s neighbor Afghanistan.

We’ve heard more in the last days about the International North-South Transport Corridor, (INSTC). Russia is not trading with nations that have adopted the stupid, suicidal sanctions imposed by NATO, Biden, and the UK on Russia, sanctions that are hurting us. So, Russia is using the new corridor through Iran to India, which has been being built out over the last several years. It reduces the travel time from the western sea and land route through the Mediterranean, which would normally take 40 days, down to 25 days, via this rail route. They’ve just sent their first test shipment through this new corridor.

Will the U.S. Join the BRI and
Reclaim Its True Identity?

Look at the world as I imagine people from China and Russia see it. The United States has become a giant black hole. Everything stops here. It’s a giant pit sucking in the world’s wealth—quite literally—since we stole the money from the Afghan Central Bank and are now trying to figure out how to steal $300 billion from Russia. But, at the same time, we don’t want everyone else to leave the dollar, so it’s a tricky question: how to continue stealing but have people trust you.

Here’s the question: Are we benefitting from destroying everyone else—or trying to destroy them? No! As I said, we have had 1 million COVID deaths, 100,000 drug overdose deaths, mass shootings, power outages, floods, and fires in the United States. I just read a paper recently which talks about how people underestimate the problem of stupidity. That particular author distinguishes “stupidity” from “banditry” by defining “stupidity” as “hurting yourself while also hurting others.” He says bandits hurt others, but they gain for themselves. Stupid people (or nations) hurt others and also destroy themselves. So, let’s stop being stupid!

In closing I want to give you a few ideas—very briefly. The number one question for increasing economic growth is energy flux-density. That is, producing more energy and consuming more energy per given area, but also per mass of fuel. That’s why the fourth of LaRouche’s Four Laws is a crash program to develop a fusion energy platform—which you can’t get to without crushing Wall Street and the City of London, with Glass-Steagall and a National Bank and credit policy. We also need to join the major powers, namely Russia, China, and India, to return to fixed exchange rates. No more gambling with currencies.

Now, here’s my idea: If you look at the Chinese Belt and Road, it’s based on what they call “connectivity”—that is, corridors of transportation by land and sea. Think of the decrepit state of America’s cities. Where are these cities? Aren’t nearly all of them ports? Either on rivers, or coastlines, or man-made transport corridors, like railroads? Think about them: Buffalo, Baltimore, Houston, San Diego, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Boston, Trenton, Detroit, Newark.

What would it mean for the United States to join the Belt and Road? All of these cities would have to be modernized. The ports would have to be modernized (some have been, quietly, by the Chinese), but we need high-speed rail, about 42,000 miles of it. We need highways without potholes. We need massive amounts of energy to power all of this, probably several hundred nuclear power plants.

What about hydroelectricity, and water management? Is it necessary to have perpetual droughts and floods? Aren’t we the nation that built the TVA? We need to finally build the North American Water and Power Alliance, NAWAPA. Just that one continent-wide project, besides totally transforming the climate of the United States, would create 14 million jobs.

And finally, what’s the point of modernizing the Long Island Railroad and building a maglev train to Buffalo, if we don’t intend to travel on to our partners in St. Petersburg? So, we can’t forget the Bering Strait Tunnel, which would finally link us by rail to Eurasia—rather than considering that our best allies are over in the British Isles— as our dear friends Hal Cooper and Lyndon LaRouche intended.

Would Americans be interested in reclaiming our true identity as a force for goodness in the world? I think so. We have a huge job to do, very quickly, in reminding ourselves and our neighbors who we are.