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'WITH OUR CONSTITUTION, WE, AS A NATION, HAVE A SPECIAL MISSION'
Here is a transcript of Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to supporters in Teaneck, New Jersey on May 22, 2004.
So, we'll warm things up a bit.
The issues that face the United States today, are three: First of all, we have a terrible financial-monetary crisis. The monetary-financial system is in the process of collapsing. It's only a matter of how soon. It could collapse tomorrow; it could collapse next month, it could collapse sometime in the summertime. But, it is inevitably on the road to a collapse far worse than 1929-1933. And we shall only get out of it, if we have a Presidency, which responds to this crisis, according to the same principles that Franklin D. Roosevelt used in March of 1933. Otherwise, there is no hope for the United States, or for the world in general.
We have a second crisis, which is reflected by the war in Iraq, the ongoing war in Iraq: It never ended, once it was started. This war, with its implications, prevents the possibility, of collaboration among nations, of a type that is neededa collaboration that is neededto deal with the international financial crisis. In other words, what we will have to do, since all the major banks, are bankrupt; the Federal Reserve System is bankrupt; the economy is collapsing: What we shall have to do is, first of all put the banking system into receivership, bankruptcy receivership by government. The first purpose of doing that, is to prevent the banking system from disintegrating, in order to maintain the flow of credit and so forth, to keep the economy going.
Secondly, we're going to have to reorganize the financial system.
Now, we're also going to have to have cooperation, with other countries, to put the IMF system into bankruptcy receivership, for reorganization, with the intent to reestablish, the kind of monetary system, fixed-exchange-rate system, protectionist system, that we had back in the 1940s, the late 1940s and 1950s.
So, the problem is, that we in the United States, were, until the middle of the 1960s, the world's leading producer society, as a result of the Roosevelt changes. With the assassination of Kennedy, following the Missile Crisis, and the beginning of the official war in Indo-China, we underwent a cultural transformation, from a producer society to a post-industrial predatory society, which is living increasingly by looting other countries. The typification of how this works, is Wal-Mart. If you want to know what a disease is, you look at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart moves into an area, with one of its, now, "super-malls." It goes to the people who are supplying stores in that area, which were producing and selling to stores, for retail sales. Now, Wal-Mart says, "You will produce for us, at prices which compete with Chinese labor. If you don't, we shut you off." So, you see, when Wal-Mart moves in, with a mall store, in the counties around that mall store, businesses began folding up.
So, what we've done is, by the change in the monetary system which occurred in 1971-72, we bankrupted entire countries. We reduced them to the condition of virtual slave-labor. We then turned around, especially beginning 1982, and we began to force them to produce for us. For example, the case of Mexico: Mexico was put through a crisis in 1982, from here. It was bankrupted. It has been ruined since then. So Mexico's internal development has been destroyed. What do they do? The United States says, coming to NAFTA, which is the epitome of this processNAFTA is sort of a glorified Wal-Mart operation"You will now produce for us, your labor will produce, as virtual slave labor, for us! We will lay off our labor, shut down our industries, and we will now buy from markets such as South and Central America, China, and so forth, where virtual slave labor conditions exist.
"Therefore, we will shut down our farms. We will shut down our factories. We will shut down our communities. By turning Hispanic people and others virtually into slave labor for production of the United States."
And the quality, as you know, is generally poorespecially that from South and Central America, because they're employed as virtual slave laborwith no skill. For example, look at the housing projects you see in various parts of the United States: large-scale housing projects, in areas where people are moving in, when they're moving out of areas like the industrial belts, and so forth. Take the case of New Jersey: What happened to the industrial development, which once existed in New Jersey? It's shut down, largely. So, now, you have a vast housing speculation, based on the Greater New York market. The mortgages are rising. What do they employ? They employ cheap labor, unskilled labor, to produce shackswhich we used to call tar-paper shacks, years ago. Now, they're made with chip boardthat's the good quality, actually. And, essentially tar-paper shacks, with a few gold faucets in them (maybe); plastic exterior; and a $400,000 to $600,000 mortgage.
Now, remember that, in former times, they used to say, that you shouldn't spend more than 20 to 25% of your family income, to maintain a place of residence. What does it cost today? [From the audience: "60%!"] Exactly. So, what happened to family relations? The character of families? Raising children? How often do people meet to have dinner together, in families? We've destroyed the culture. We've destroyed the people, and we've transformed our economy in the way we've done. We don't educate people any more, because we say we educate for jobs. And what are the jobs? So we are dumbing the population down, impoverishing it, we're taking away its health carewhich it used to have. Took it away!
So, we are in the process of destroying ourselves, and we're destroying ourselves, as an imperial power, which loots the rest of the world, to maintain the wealth of our wealthy, and to impoverish our people, in general: We have become a society, like ancient imperial Rome, which stopped producing; depended upon what it stole from the countries it conquered, and from slavery; reduced most of its population to quasi-unemployed or unemployed; provided a subsistence hand-out, as a political manipulation of the population; and entertained the population, with things like the Coliseum, where you could watch lions eating Christians.
So, we have become, like imperial Rome, a society of "bread and circuses." Degenerate, ever more degenerate qualities of mass entertainment, are the dominant feature of our culture. So, we've been transformed into a rotten society. And some people like it that way, or pretend they do.
We have become, also, a no-future society. That this nation, under present trends and policies, has no future.
The young people, those who are young adults, are sensing this more and more. They look at their parents' generation, who are in their 40s and 50s, and they say, "You have given us a society with no future. We are condemned, if we live that long, to spend the next 50 to 60 years of our life, in a no-future society. And youMommy and Daddyare glued to that television set, or some other kind of degenerate mass entertainmentand ignoring reality and blocking out reality by a fantasy life, in an entertainment society."
So, we're a society that's going nowhere. And, we're in a world, which, overall, if this continues, is also going nowhere. And that time, is now.
So therefore, we've come to the point, which is not unusual in history, that once-powerful, great civilizations are in the process of disintegrating. And the disintegration is largely moral, first of all. The economic effects, come as a moral disintegration.
How did this happen? You had, back in the 1960s, you had a change after Eisenhower left office: First, you had a fascist, Allen Dulles, who organized the Bay of Pigs operation in Cuba. Shock Number Onefascism was back in the world. Number Twowe had the Missile Crisis, the so-called Cuban Missile Crisis, and people were huddling in their cellars, or barrooms, waiting for the end, when the missiles would hit, the thermonuclear missiles. Then, we had the assassination of a President, by the right wing. And that was covered up, too. Then, after he was dead (and he had opposed going into the Indo-China War), they used the fact that they had killed him, to push through the Indo-China War. Then, we had a process of cultural degeneration, where you had the young people going into the universities, in the middle of the '60swhere they were being trained, presumably, to become, within a quarter-century, the leaders of society, in government professions and so forth: They took off their clothes, soaked themselves with LSD, and rolled in the dirtand they're now running society today.
This is what happened to us! We went through a cultural change, from the world's leading producer society, into a decadent society, which is a caricature of ancient Rome's degeneracy. Which means, that the people who have acquired these habits, who are now running the country, who are in their 50s or very early 60s, that generation has no conception, no ingrained conception of how to run anything. But, they're dominating it. They want to keep their "pleasure society," like many decadent empires, which want to keep what they consider their personal way of life, their social way of life, the upper 20% of the income brackets. They care nothing for the rest of the people.
Take a comparable case in India: India has a billion people now; it's second after China, in size of national population. There was recently an election, which came as a shock to many people around the world. Vajpayee, who had been the Prime Minister of India, had been a very successful politician. But: He had not paid attention to business. And, while the upper 300 million people of India were living at standards of living, generally speaking, comparable to those of people in the United States and Europeand on the rise, in terms of the IT business600 million Indians were living in collapsing poverty. This is a condition, generally, throughout Asia. But, in this case, what happened is, 40-odd percent of the urban population went to the polls; 70% approximately of the rural population also went to the polls, and they voted the existing government out of office.
So, what you see is, the process now, is a process worldwideIndia only typifies ita revolt by the poor against the oppression, the oppression of this system, that it provides no future for the people. That's what we have here. The question is: Given the fact, that the people who are saturated with the degeneration of this culture, who run the society, are doing this, how can you get our government back, with the dedication to the kinds of outlook, that we had under Franklin Roosevelt, or the period following that? That's what I represent.
That's why I really have a problem: Because, this system is coming down, and what's going to happen? What was the reaction of the banking system of New York, to the collapse of Argentina? They said, the Argentine debt must be paid, to the creditors in the United States, even if it means killing Argentinians. What will the same kind of people do to the people of the United States, under conditions of a financial collapse here? They will do no differently to the people of the United States, than they've done to the people of Argentina. The conflict is, that under a condition of crisis, such as the type we face now, the only way we can save ourselves, is to have a Presidentthat is, the Executive branch of our system, which is unique in the worldwho does what Roosevelt did, and said: applies the Constitution, that the sovereignty of the United States lies in its people, not in the government. The government is the instrument of the people, but the sovereignty is the people. And the government must be the agent, the efficient agent, of the sovereignty of the people.
What must he do? He must defend the people: He must defend the living, the conditions of life of the living. He must defend posterity, and the security of posterity.
If a President does that, as Franklin Roosevelt did that, he gets into a lot of trouble with the bankers. We had a case like that in Europe; the crisis hit in Europe. What you had from 1922 to 1945the bankers pushed through fascist regimes in Europe. And they took over in continental Europe. What were these? These were response to a crisis, to establish a dictatorship, to prevent the people from demanding that the general welfare of the people be the standard of performance for society.
The people who are opposed to me, are opposed to me, because they know exactly what I would do, as President: I would do the same thing, in principle, that Roosevelt did. In a crisis, you have to defend the nation, and you defend the people first of all. The bankers come second. Their claims are not primary. The people's claims, to life, the claims to the prosperity of their descendants, their children, their posterity, is primary. This is our character, to our melting-pot country! We're a melting-pot nationalways have been, from the beginning. We're unique, in that respect: We're a true melting-pot nation. Most of us know it.
Therefore, what's the purpose? It's not a nationalism, in the sense that you find in some other parts of the world. That's not our nature. We're not racial, or ethnic nationalists. We have a few people who aberrate in that direction. But, we're a people who are looking for a nation, in which we can live, develop our posterity, and look forward to a better life for our posterity than we have for ourselves. That's the notion of general welfare. That's the basic thing, that the American thinks about, when he's conscious: To have a country, which is committed to the general welfare, the sovereignty of the people, and the benefit of posterity. And that's the characteristic of a melting-pot country.
I mean, people came to this countrypoor! Poor immigrants, looking for an opportunity, sacrificing, often suffering, to get their children ahead. And you would see the migration. People coming in as poor immigrants, struggling, building a family, being assimilated into the community. Then, their children would rise, in condition of life, better condition of life than they had. And they worked, to make that possible. And their grandchildren would be among the leaders of the professions in the country. And that's the way we thought of building a nation.
So, we have to recapture that sense. And the only way it's going to happen is one way: You have to break the back, of the arrogance of the generation, which is running the country. What will break their back, is when they see their money is going, and they depend upon the government to save them. They give up their arrogance: Right now, the Democratic Partyit's just like the Republican Party, in one sensethe Democratic Party is committed to what is called the "suburban group." What's the "suburban group"? The upper 20% of family-income brackets. The Democratic Party is controlled by the idea, of trying to control its population, in the interests of the upper 20% of family-income brackets. It's called the "suburban policy"! It's what Hillary Clinton, for example, supports. It's what they adopted from Tony Blair, in London, as a policy in the Democratic Party. The lower 80%, who have been suffering increasingly over the past period since 1977, in terms of the physical conditions of life and opportunities, are shoved to the one side. What they do with the lower-income brackets, they give you "wedge issues": How do you feel about abortion? Did you have one recently? You know, this sort of thing. These kinds of issues, which tend to divide people, about social-cultural issues, which are not the primary issues of the nation, are then used to divide people, to weaken, and put the poorer strata of the population against each other; and thus, with a small group, to be able to control the political process as a whole.
So, that's what we're up against.
It's necessary to understand this in a deeper way. And, we've gone through this, and most of you know it, because we did a lot of work around this, about this problem of Synarchism. When the United States was founded, at that timeit began from about 1763 on, when the British became an empire, the British East India Company, through the Treaty of Paris of 1763. And, the British at that point, the British East India Company, had two concerns: One, was to destroy France. And other, was to prevent the English colonies in North America from achieving independence. These were the two policy-planks, of the founding of the British Empire, in the middle of the 18th Century.
We founded our republic. We founded it with a Constitution, which is the best in the world, of any country. Qualitatively, far and above. But, we were only 7 million people, and once the French Revolution had occurred, which was organized by the British in order to destroy France, and the terror of Napoleon was unleashed, from that point on, the United States was isolated. And all kinds of things happened to us, because we were a small nation, of 7 million people, against the entire forces of Europe.
So, that was our situation. And, we didn't get out of that, until Lincoln changed the country with his leadership, during the 1860s. Then we became a great power. But, from that point on, the intent of European forcesespecially the Britishwas to either take us over, or destroy us. And, European countries were never able to develop a system of government comparable to our own, because of this factor.
So therefore, with our Constitution, we, as a nation, have a special mission, through our Constitutional tradition. And it's to try to bring forth on this planet, what was the original intention of the founding of our republic: To create a model republic, which would inspire other parts of the world, to do the same in their own countries. And to bring about a system of a fraternity, among sovereign republics, which would create a peaceful order among nations of this planet.
That is what we accomplished in a sense in World War II. You had the British, who were part of this fascist operation. But the British didn't like the idea of giving up their empire, to a continental Europe, Hitler-run, imperial system. So therefore, some people in Britain (including Joe Kennedy, the Ambassador, the father of Ted Kennedy) was fired, because he was a Goering-lover, of Hermann Goeringvery close to the fascists.
But, nonetheless, these fascists decided to support Roosevelt in fighting the Nazis. And we led, in defeating the danger of Nazism. If Roosevelt had not done what he had done, the world would have been under a fascist system. It actually would have been led by Adolf Hitler, and his crew would have ruled. Roosevelt saved the United Statesand saved civilization, by that leadership, and we saved it.
So, it has become our destiny, in part, to take the legacy of what we did, in forming this republic, to be the leading institution to fight for a system of fraternity among sovereign nation-states, and cooperation on this planet. That's our historic mission.
It's ultimately the only security we have. Because, horrors can develop in other parts of the world: If we can not work, to create a just world order, among sovereign nation-statesnot an empire, but a cooperative system among sovereign nation-statesthis planet, with the technologies that exist, and the dangers that exist, will go into Hell.
Therefore, we have a mission: Not only to save our country, under the threat of the present state of affairs, the present depression; but, at the same time, to take a leading initiative, as our country, to bring about cooperation among nation-states around the planet, using our influence, and our perspective of that world.
Now, this is exactly what I did, in the case of going at this Southwest Asia policy: There can be no peace in the Middle East, unless the United States does its job. Because, you can notapart from the negative factors, like the Bush Administrationyou can not have a Middle East peace, without settling the Palestinian-Israeli question. And you can not do that, unless the United States does it! It is impossible to bring that about, except by action by the United States. We can do it. We can bring it about.
It takes understanding. It takes an approach like the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 to do itbut we can make it happen. And, if other nations of the region, as indicated by response to my proposals recently, from the so-called Arab world, there's a willingness to go in that direction. And there's a willingness to trust my initiative in pushing that policy. So, all these things are tied together.
Here we aregreat depression; we're about to disintegrate; we have decayed. The people who are running the country are decadent! They're corrupted by the transformation in culture, which occurred, especially from about 40 years ago, on. We have a younger generation, in the 18 to 25 age-group, which know they have no future, under their parents' system! Therefore, they want a solution. And, if the younger generation can, somehow, kick their parents' generation into some degree of sensibility, to say: "Daddy and Mommy, please rejoin the human race. Give up your fantasy life, and rejoin the human race. Your grandchildren and our grandchildren demand it. They have a right to life. They have a right to a future. Come back to your senses."
And, if we can do that, and if we do it with our constitutional tradition: We, as the United States, will, once again, as with our founding as a republic; with our renewal under Abraham Lincoln's leadership; with our renewal of our role in World War II; we can, once again, become ourselves.
And, that's what I'm committed to. I can't say how it will work, or when it will work. I know what I must do. I know what we must do. I know the concept we must have, and continue to work for.
I do know, that Kerry is a loserwell, he's a loser! People who were thinking of supporting a Democratic candidate, and hoped that he would be that, on the Republican side, are deserting it, and saying, "It's hopeless." Some people are even saying, it's better to have Bush in, because Bush will sink things faster than Kerry will; and that will force the issue, where we will be forced to change.
That's our situation.
So, what we are doing, is a morale factor, for the U.S. population to know that there's something else, besides what we have now.
Look what we had in the year 2000: You had two absolutely incompetent candidates for President of the United States! You had George W. Bush: a mental case! A stupid character! He's only a puppet for a ventriloquist, called Dick Cheney. And Dick Cheney can only talk, when he takes the rug out of his mouth. And we had Gore, who was also equally bad, in a different way. The American people had, in effect, nobody to vote for, in the year 2000! And they got nothing, as a result! Or, less than nothing.
Again, now, we have Bush re-running: Now, we know what he ishe's the dumbest man in America! And a mental case on top of it. He's a puppet! And then, you have this Kerry, whoyou knowis probably a nice guy. If people came into his office, and said, "I got a problem. My neighbor's got a problem," he'd take down the name, and have some aide go out, and try to do something, like a social worker. So, he'd be a kindly social worker. But, a Presidency of the United States, is not be a social worker, a kindly social worker at this time! We've got some very serious issues, which he refuses to face.
So, we have, again! A disaster! Going into the summer conventions, we have a disaster. We have a Bush-Cheney ticket, as of now, which is going in for renewal. We have Kerry ticket, and who knows what else, which, as of now, is utterly incompetent! It's a replay, in that sense, of the year 2000, where the American people had a choice between nothing and nothing! And again, we're being given a choice between nothing and nothing, with this acute crisis.
The problem I get, is an acute demoralization, spreading among our people. They don't say, "no other candidate can win"! They say, "We are going to lose!" We are losing. It is as a people, that are losing! It is the country, that's losing! Not the candidates.
And, the only chance is now, is that the onrush of this financial collapse, and the anger of what's happening in Iraq, to what that implies: that these two things will produce a shock, which will force a change, in the way this election campaign is going.
What we have, on the positive sideas you may have observed: The center of our system of government, is the Executive branch. The Executive branch is not just the President; the Executive branch is the professional military; it's the diplomats; it's the intelligence service; it's the other people who are part of the institutions of Federal governmentnot only while serving in government; but also out of government, as college professors, or in some profession, who are still in active relationship to people in the government apparatus.
The Executive branch of government of the United States, is unique, among governments in the world, in the fact, that it follows the Constitution: We don't make coups in our country, against our government. They do that in other countries. But, on the sense, that the Executive branchwe have a Presidential system, which is supposed to react, as necessary, to breaking developments. We're not a parliamentary system.
We have, in addition to these sections of our government: You see, the military, the intelligence services, are leading the attack, against the Bush Administration's horror-show in Iraq, in the Middle East. That's where it's coming from. These are people I've been working with, in this area of our establishment, the Executive branch: sections of the intelligence service, military, diplomats, and so forth.
And also, with people in our Congressional system, Legislative systemboth on the state legislator level, and on the Federal. And you see, now, as you see reflected in the press, you see a process, in which a number of Senators, other members of Congress, are working together; working together with retired generals; working together with retired intelligence people; working together with others. You find a certain section of the press, like you see sometimes, the New York Times, there's a story that's planted, which may have originated with me. It then is re-written by somebody else, and it comes out in the New Yorker magazine, or the New York Times, as the way the Children of Satan was reflected in the New York Times.
So, we have a process, among institutions which are associated with our system, our establishment, which are reacting, against this horror-show in Iraq, as it's coming out.
So therefore, our situation is not hopeless. But, the system works slowly. In the political party campaign organizations, we have the worst rottennessboth in the Republican Party and in Democratic Party: It's rotten.
But, the under conditions of crisis, where the people realize, they can not submit to this party process any more; and, in which important people who are associated with the Executive branch, who are also associated with the Legislative branch of governmentboth on the state and the Federal levelrealize how serious the crisis is, a shock will produce a reaction. And, you've already seen a good deal of it. You've seen it around the pictures from Iraq. The pictures have produced a shock. People have gotten off the edge, and moving.
So, the situation is not hopeless. We have to keep fighting, all the way through: Because there are forces, which know they have to move, and these shocks, which will come fast and furious now, will give us new opportunities.
We have toreally, re-create our political system, again. It's been destroyed over the past 40 years. We have to re-create it. We have to build a process, a political process, in our country, which involves the people, involves the lower 80% of the family-income brackets, as active parts of this process. The poorer people of the country, think of themselves as begging of handouts; or nagging for handouts. They don't think of themselves as having the power, to influence the shaping of the policies of government at the top. They're begging for the bottombegging nastily, begging aggressivelybut they're begging!
They're not thinking, about how to make the country work. They're not debating, how to make the country work. They're debating little issues. Where they get this, where they get that; who gets this, who gets that.
In the meantime, we're losing everything.
But, we've got to put the country back together, again. And we have an opportunity presented to us, known as a crisis: a great financial and strategic crisis. This crisis will come to us as a shock, which may force us to realize we've been behaving like fools for too long. For two generations, we've been behaving like fools. We'll stop behaving like fools; we'll think of ourselves, asallas participating in the leadership of our country, the leadership of our institutions. And we'll go in, not saying, "I want this; I want that. My neighbor needs this." We go in, saying: "What does this country need? What do our people need? What does the next generation need?"
Start to think like a President, as if you were a President; and you're caring for the country. Try to find out, what is right for the country. And find your place, in that. Find your own sense of identity, that you're part of that. That's what we have to do.
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