Bush Adopts Pinochet Plan — To Steal Your Social Security

FIRST, THE BUSH CROWD STOLE AMERICA'S SACRED VOTE — AND NOW THEY'RE OUT TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY

From Volume 3, Issue Number 50 of EIR Online, Published Dec. 14, 2004

Latest From LaRouche

The following leaflet, issued by LaRouchePAC, is now being distributed across the country. It is expected that millions of copies will be circulating in the immediate days and week ahead.

Bush Adopts Pinochet Plan — To Steal Your Social Security

The corpse of the Bush Enron swindle is barely cold, and still stinks. Hundreds of thousands lost their shirts, and Californians are still paying billions, with the highest electricity prices in the country, thanks to the deregulation scheme that Bush pushed through for the fat cats who funded his 2000 campaign.

The next big stink to come from Bush's Crawford Raunch is what's left over after George W. Bush feeds your Social Security check, Pinochet-style, to the Wall Street billionaires who funded his 2004 campaign.

Bush's Social Security Rip-off is now in full swing. George has endorsed the Chile plan as his "example"—the plan carried out by fascist dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1981. Just what is the Pinochet model?

* It takes your Social Security payment, and gives it to financial managers and banks:

* It lets the bankers managing the funds take 25% of the funds, and make profits of 50% and up.

* It loses your money in the markets, leaving you dependent upon a pittance, or welfare, paid for by the state.

After 25 years in operation, this is precisely what the Pinochet plan has done. Everyone, from the World Bank to Chilean officials, agree it's been a failure for the workers. One fact, reported by a Chilean think tank, suffices to tell the tale:

If two work colleagues reach retirement age in Chile today, both with the same salary and the same number of years contributing to social security, the one who remained in the old pay-as-you-go system, and the other who changed to the privatized system back in 1981, the latter will receive less than half of the pension of the former.

It's not the Baby Boomers whom you have to worry about taking your Social Security—it's Bush's Pinochet-style ripoff! This is a repeat of Enron—but this time, it's your grandmother, and then you, who will be eaten alive.

Bush's plan for Social Security privatization stinks. Crush it now!

FIRST, THE BUSH CROWD STOLE AMERICA'S SACRED VOTE — AND NOW THEY'RE OUT TO DESTROY SOCIAL SECURITY

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by Brian Smith and Jim Hogue at WGDR-FM in Plainfield, Vermont, on Dec. 9 2004. The interview was also aired on the internet at www.wgdr.org.

BRIAN SMITH: You're on the air here at WGDR Plainfield 91.1 FM. We're discussing the election, or the selection, in 2004, and the questionable legitimacy of the outcome. And we're here with Lyndon LaRouche, a Presidential candidate.

JIM HOGUE: And do you want to tell us anything about your investigation regarding Ohio?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, everything was a mess. But what we have very clearly, and on the webcast we did shortly after the election, on the 9th, I emphasized this: Don't get involved with playing games with recount. We should do the recount. But, that's not the way to put the emphasis. Don't risk everything on the recount.

What we have dead to rights, is the fact that the Republican Party, and a large parts of it at least, engaged, with encouragement of Karl Rove, in a vote suppression program, targetting Americans of African descent and others who were suspected of Democratic proclivities, and they did this in various ways in order to suppress the vote. And, in the course of this process, there was an open statement, from Republican circles about the intention to conduct a program of vote suppression; and I had this in direct reports from Democratic officials—responsible ones—during the period of the Boston Convention.

So, what we have them dead to rights on, is the fact, there was a voter suppression action, which is in violation of the Voting Rights Act, and which is also in violation of the principle of the Constitution, upon which the Voting Rights Act is predicated.

So, we've got them dead to rights on this.

Now in the hearings before Conyers yesterday, in the Congress, this was all aired quite clearly. Conyers, I believe, is quite clear on this. Others are quite clear on it. We've talked to people in the Democratic campaign leadership, who are also quite clear on this. So we're going for it.

Now, the two things we're going for, in dealing with the recount issue—that is, the implications of the recount issue: Was Bush fraudulently elected? That's a tough one to do, because you have to do that on the state level and so forth; you would have to prove that you would overturn the election by virtue of the results you have in hand. And the problem here, is that the recount problem involves evidence we don't have in hand, because it's buried under false pretenses.

So therefore, we say, let's go at the thing from the standpoint of two issues. Number 1: First of all, we have evidence of vote suppression. That is a crime! That is a crime for which people can go to prison, and should go to prison, if they're caught at it.

HOST: And they have been—they have been caught.

LAROUCHE: Yeah, right. So therefore, that's why I say, let's start there.

Now, secondly, on the general issue of fighting back against what the whole complex of problems are, involving this fraudulent election: Is, the President of the United States, who is—I say advisedly—a mental case, is conducting a suicide impulse of going for a privatization of Social Security? Now, the program he's going for—as he himself has said, in promoting the Chilean model, which is the model he's using! In promoting that model, he is out to destroy the Social Security system, and to destroy the rights of the majority of American citizens!

HOST: And the issue, basically came right out of the box with, right after the election. The first thing after the election results, was the Social Security issue.

LAROUCHE: Exactly. Now, this is the one thing, which in all probability, can sink Bush's election—or at least the credibility of it—before the thing goes the Electoral Commission report in January.

So therefore, to me, these two things are related—.

HOST: Yeah, to me, they're related too. But, how can you explain to other people that they are related, and that this is a reason to overturn the election?

LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, many of the poor fellows who voted for Bush, on the assumption they didn't like same-sex marriage or something like that, are also people who are also suffering—as in the state of Ohio—from a collapse of the state economy in agriculture and industry, and a shift to what employment there is, from high-tech employment in former industry and agriculture, into the lowest level of general employment, which is in the poorest, most lowly paid functions in restaurant and hotel.

So, these people are suffering. They're losing everything. But, they were deluded for a time, by believing that this same-sex marriage—which was not actually a threatened reality in the state of Ohio; and similar kinds of issues—they were deluded into voting for Bush.

Now, you turn around and you say to the same people, "Bush is going to take your Social Security away, going to kill your grandmother." Now that voter is going to suddenly decide, that maybe he made a mistake. And, in politics, it is not merely the technicalities of law which are important, it's also the intent of law. And the intent of law, is to allow people in an election, to select a Presidency, for example, that they choose. If they were fraudulently represented, and made the wrong vote, they are going to complain. And there are mechanisms, in the Electoral College and in the Congress, in January, which could lead to an overturning of the reputed vote for George Bush.

Or, failing that, to put such a restriction on the elected Bush Administration, the inaugurated one, the re-inaugurated one, that it would be under the control of a mounting process in the Congress and elsewhere. In other words, you could find that Bush's putative re-election could do him about as much good as the re-election of Dick Nixon.

HOST: So, where do you think—what earliest point, or what are some of the earliest steps that people could take to focus on, like you said, weakening his victory, so to speak, on the way towards Inauguration Day?

LAROUCHE: Right now! The time is now. Not some date down the future.

HOST: And what steps do you think?

LAROUCHE: That's what I'm doing. Now, the problem we've had in the Democratic Party—we had it all the way through the campaign, up until after Labor Day: The Democratic Party was trying to lose a national election by the way it was running the campaign. By playing, "me-too" weak sister, "let's not fight the Republicans" kind of approach.

So, we started a serious campaign, on behalf of the Kerry-Edwards nomination—too late. That was after Labor Day. And it was when Clinton intervened with Kerry, convinced Kerry to change the character of the campaign, and campaign committee was changed in certain features of composition—and began to do an excellent job. But, it was late.

So, the problem we have in the Democratic Party, still today, is, many people in leading positions in the Democratic Party still don't believe in fighting. Even after what they helped to bring about, in terms of this catastrophe on Nov. 2 and 3. And therefore, the problem now is, people standing up, in the Democratic Party and showing leadership. How do you expect the American citizen, who feels like he's a helpless creature under these giant, moving circumstances, how're you going to expect him to get out and fight for you, if you don't provide the leadership to show you have the guts to fight for him? It is those Democratic leaders, and I think they're going to find more of them, around Conyers and others, who are going to support the kind of leadership I'm demanding, from the Democrats, who can begin to mobilize the population, in confidence that not everybody out there's a coward. That some Democrats have the guts to fight. And it's the guts to fight, leadership under conditions of battle, which win wars.

HOST: So, what do you think—I mean, do you have a lot of background, or a lot of information on the origin of the Democratic Leadership Council? Where it got its start, and how we can get rid of 'em?

LAROUCHE: Oh yeah! This is Michael Steinhardt, and company! Some people connected to Meyer Lansky-pedigreed people, hmm? Who decided to intervene in politics, by funding, in the South, essentially, the Democratic Leadership Council; as a Southern adaptation to the defeats of the Democratic Party during the 1980s.

Clinton, of course—who's a man of tactics, though he has policy and principle behind him; but up front, he's often a man of tactics—joined it. And it was through the Democratic Leadership Council that Clinton got the leverage to make a successful bid for the Democratic nomination.

Since then, of course, Clinton is no longer a creature (and never really was), of the DLC. But, it's one of the factors inside the Democratic Party leadership you have to deal with, in dealing with the problems of the party as a whole. It's not the only problem—but it is a major problem, still today. And it caused a lot of damage, particularly over the course of the 1980s and later, to the Democratic Party's ability to show real leadership, against the real issues of the time, especially the economic issues.

HOST: What do you think of the DNC's failure to even breathe a little more deeply, when the Kerry-Edwards team conceded? I know somebody who was fairly high up, in the DNC, who said he was furious at them. He threw up his hands: They had no intention of fighting this, at all!

LAROUCHE: Yeah, that's true.

We ran into this, in California, first. We had this—George Shultz and company set up this swindle, under this guy with credible fascist credentials: Schwarzenegger was run to replace Gray Davis, who had just been re-elected as Governor. And this was a swindle, because the issue in California was largely the effects of what Enron had done [hosts laugh], and Schwarzenegger was a key player in the Enron swindle!

So, the guy who helped swindle the state of California, is elected on the basis on an anger reaction to the swindle!

So, now, the Democratic Party—I was fighting. With our friends in the Democratic Party, the circles around Gray Davis and so forth, I joined the fight against Schwarzenegger. And we continued to fight all the way. And when push came to shove, down the line, my associates—particularly the young associates in the Los Angeles area and in the Bay Area, where we had some clout, significantly turned the tide to bring about a victory against Schwarzenegger, in those districts! But, in the rest of the state—they goofed!

So, the problem was, the Democratic Party didn't fight; and it was the national Democratic Party that didn't fight, as much as the locals—more than the locals. Gray Davis would have fought. He was told not to. He was pressured not to. Clinton came out there for a while, to California, and was going to join the fight. And he found he had a Democratic Party machine on his hands, and they weren't going to fight—so he walked away from it.

I stayed for the fight. All of the other Democratic contenders for the nomination refused to fight. I fought. We demonstrated—as we did later in Philadelphia, where we were invited to help the Street campaign for re-election: We demonstrated, that our approach of leadership, from the Democratic Party, works. Whereas the do-nothing, soft-soap variety, doesn't.

The same thing happened, of course, in the general election. We had a soft-soap panel, in terms of the candidates, except for Kerry in New Hampshire, and after that the thing was a disaster! A soft-soap campaign run by the Democratic leadership.

HOST: Election fraud helps a little bit, too. I mean, you know, switching votes from one candidate to another is fairly effective.

LAROUCHE: Yeah. I know. Well, I don't believe in going too far with this party business. I think—I've always insisted on the Franklin Roosevelt legacy of the Democratic Party, as what should be a leading factor in U.S. politics, at least up to the present time. And I've become somewhat of a minority on that issue, up until recently.

But, I believe that when we go to a vote, the party affiliation leaves at the door of the polls. And the voter should vote on the basis of an informed conscience, not an obligation, not a deal, not a treaty. The voter should think of the interests of the country, the best that he can or she can. And, that's the way they should vote. The party then resumes its function after the election. But, in that sacred moment, of going into the polls and voting, it should be the conscience, or the informed conscience of the voter which casts the vote, regardless of party affiliation.

Otherwise, I'm a party man, in the sense of saying that the FDR tradition is the best tradition, for the United States, the partisan tradition, for today.

HOST: Now, did you answer Brian's question? I'm not sure. He asked, what are we supposed to do, right now? Other than just generally fight, what are we—?

LAROUCHE: What I've done—well, I knew this was all in process. So, I set up in advance. I knew I was probably going to end up supporting Kerry, from the time the New Hampshire primary ended. But I didn't think it was wise for me to jump out of the race at that time, on the basis of "Oh, I'm going to join the winning ticket." I had a message to deliver, which nobody else would deliver. I had to deliver it. I had to put myself forward, as the most qualified candidate for President.

Actually, I had three people who were qualified for President, for the nomination: Number 1, was me; Number 2 was Clinton, who couldn't run, because of a Constitutional amendment; and the third was Kerry, who had imperfections, as far as I was concerned.

But I saw the reality, and knew that by when we came to Boston, I would probably end up endorsing Kerry, in all likelihood. And I did. But, at the same time, I'd made a decision, at the conclusion of my nomination campaign, to launch a PAC, which I've done. And the PAC is now the vehicle, which is now—is not the DLC—but it has a similar function inside the Democratic Party as a whole, particularly because of the fight we staged in the general election, as a part of the Democratic Party machine.

And we are organizing, as a PAC, together with other Democrats—and with other citizens, Republicans, too—to deal with the issues which are posed by this election, and the issues which are not addressed by this election.

So, leadership is the issue.

HOST: Okay. Now, is your PAC trying to throw the sons of bitches in jail, who were responsible for the blatant election fraud that we have just seen?

LAROUCHE: Well, I should say that's my intention.

HOST: Okay: Congratulations! That's my intention, too! That's what I'm working on.

I mean, the way that the DNC and the Democratic campaign, and many of the Democrats—I'm a Libertarian, by the way, which is neither here nor there; just —

LAROUCHE: [laughing] I've been accused of being it, and I never was! But, that's all right!

HOST: Well, and I never was, until about three months ago. But, my disgust with the Democratic Party, for turning its back on its supporters! On the people who worked for months and months for no pay, and went, you know, thousands of miles to pass out leaflets and talk to people! These people were just ditched like dirt! And I will never, ever support a party that does that to its people.

LAROUCHE: We don't have much choice! [laughing]

HOST: Well, I don't think I'll ever, ever vote Democratic, in my life, again. And I'll probably never, ever vote Republican, again. I don't think I've voted for a winning Presidential candidate since I was about 20. And, I'm not going to start now.

But, that's why I'm—one of the reasons why I wanted you to be a guest today, is because you've been a fighter all your life. And, I was—you know, wanted to let you know, that, hopefully, that's what we can stir up. And Brian and I were just talking, that maybe the Ukraine will teach us, something about how to overturn a fraudulent election!

LAROUCHE: Well, I think Ukraine may have run a less fraudulent election, than we ran here! And, after all, much of the fraud in Ukraine was run by Brzezinski, and his friends. And George Soros and Brzezinski, who've run most of the fraudulent side on the western side of Ukraine, is run by them. And you have these guys being paid, vast amounts of bucks, by the circles of Brzezinski and Soros! The same circles that are financing terrorism out of the North Caucasus into south Russia, generally, in those areas generally—are sitting out there, parked in tents, having mass entertainment in Kiev, while this goes on.

And obviously, something else is going to happen. There probably was fraud all over the place in this Ukrainian election, because you had two forces, foreign forces, including those of the United States around Brzezinski, were in there with mega-bucks, trying to rig a fraud, in the same way that Karl Rove and company were trying to rig a fraud in the United States with this election.

So, I think, the purpose is, we ought to fight for the idea of honest elections, rather than trying to say that we can win in one case, and then, ignore the others. We have to fight for honest elections all around the world.

HOST: I'm going to give you a chance to catch your breath, here. I gotta do a station id. You're listening to WGDR, Plainfield, it's 91.1 FM on the dial. We also broadcast on the web, at www.wgdr.org. It's 5 o'oclock.

We have in the studio, Jim Hogue, WGDR's own Jim Hogue and founder of Vermonters for Voting Integrity. And on the phone, we have 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche. We're talking about the results of the election, the legitimacy of the election, and many other things.

And you talk a lot about economics, and you mentioned the Social Security issue, how Bush is going right after it, right out of the box. In your studies of the issue, what is the difference between the myth and the reality of the liquidity of the Social Security fund?

LAROUCHE: The thing to do, is look at, in particular—the studies are available now—look what happened in Chile: Because the Chilean model of what happened to Social Security, or the equivalent there, is exactly what Bush intends here. Now, you look across the Atlantic, into Europe, you look at Hartz IV in Germany; you look at the new head of the party of Chirac, the political party of Chirac, Sarkozy, in France; you look at some tendencies in Italy and elsewhere: You find that there is a global effort, toward fascism, on economic issues, around the Social Security issue now, the same kind of thing we saw around Brüning, and von Papen, in Germany, in the period between 1931 and 1933.

So, what we're faced with, in a period of the greatest financial-monetary crisis in modern history, which is now coming on fast, with the dollar now rated at about $1.35 per euro and going toward $1.40, and possibly going toward $2 per euro; in a bankrupt United States, bankrupt on the current account deficit, bankrupt in terms of our long-term ability to deal with our existing deficit, you have a mood—shall we call it Enron II: This is a hundred times bigger swindle than Enron was, and by the same people who brought you Enron, who are out to swindle the world, especially the poorer people of the world, the more vulnerable, by aid of this vast swindle, called the Social Security privatization program.

If people look at this, and know about this, they're going to realize that they're being subjected to a fascist impulse, by a President, who probably really doesn't know what he's talking about.

So therefore, the clarity on what the issue is, in terms of the details, what happens to your Social Security, if Bush's impulses, or the impulses of about four of these committees on proposals, are put through? We don't have a chance.

HOST: It's interesting. Because, it's almost got a parallel to the way you were talking about Schwarzenegger and Enron earlier, it's like the guy that was involved with these folks got into power, by basically being outraged about the situation. And George Bush and the neo-liberal, neo-con whatever you want to call them, they keep talking about how we've got to reform Social Security because it's gone bankrupt, but their solution will actually bankrupt the system so much faster! By diverting funds from the actual general —

LAROUCHE: It's worse. There is no problem with Social Security, as such. There are technicalities, which should be made. For example, we've undergone a vast inflation in the recent period. People don't admit it, but it's a vast inflation. You look at the grocery store bills, and look at them from ten years ago and look at them today: You got a inflation! Look at rent. Look at housing costs—inflation, everything.

All right. Now, the problem is, is that our present Social Security tax rate, goes to a lower level, than we should be paying Social Security taxes at, as a result of this vast inflation. Now, what Kerry's office, I believe, and others have recognized in the Senate, is that if you raise the cap on the peak level at which you continue to pay Social Security taxes, we don't have a problem with managing it. Provided we continue with the present system, and don't steal Social Security funds for the purpose of trying to balance budgets.

So, we don't really have an honest problem. The statement of the problem is a lie. Because there are measures, which have been discussed, in the Congress, responsibly, and by experts in the Congress, which could deal quite effectively, when maintaining the integrity of Social Security into the generation of people now in the 30- to 45-year age-bracket. That could be done—provided we don't have a collapse of the economy.

So therefore, what Bush is saying, is a fraud, all the way around. First of all, there is not a problem, in the way he says there's a problem. It doesn't exist.

Secondly, his proposed solution is not a solution to the problem, it is the disease.

So, the question is one of educating the American people on how big a swindle this bum is trying to pull off on them!

HOST: And, can you take that both back and forward, to what you see as further—even going back further into the roots of the problem, and then projecting it into the future?

LAROUCHE: Yeah, sure. We have two things, first of all, there are two related things, in our history, which were big mistakes, which we have to take into account in understanding the problems we have, and the solutions we require for these problems.

First of all, the United States, as Roosevelt proved: We were really the only nation which got out of the Great Depression. We got out of it by Roosevelt's methods. Roosevelt's methods were not some kind of radical thing, newly concocted. These were simply the methods, which his ancestor Isaac Roosevelt, the banker who had been a collaborator of Alexander Hamilton, represented. These are the methods of the original American System.

Our system is intrinsically a protectionist form of constitutional system. We know that money is an idiot. Or we did know it. That money has to be regulated in its circulation, so that it does not become a disease, rather than a convenience and a necessity for assisting in the circulation of goods. And therefore, we had what was called a "protectionist economy" based on a fair-trade system domestically, and the idea of a fair-trade system in international relations.

When we got away from that to a floating-exchange-rate system, and eliminating protectionism, money began to behave as an idiot. And this was particularly true under the influence of the Trilateral Commission, as inaugurated under Brzezinski, which, through Paul Volcker in October-November of 1979, unleashed the system, and destroyed it. It also happened earlier, with George Shultz and company, back under Nixon: Where they sank the monetary system of the post-war period, which had been successful.

And, that again. So, we were destroyed, because we destroyed the fundamentals of a sound management of our economy, which says, that we maintain the level and quality of employment, and investment in our country, investment in terms of capital investment, by providing protection for those kinds of investment and employment which are necessary for our people. We don't try to do anything to loot other people. But, we protect ourselves, and we encourage them to do the same.

That's our problem. We've got to go back to that.

HOST: It's interesting, that you started about the world system. I noticed on your website, I was reading about your PAC, and you talk about the new book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. Just wanted to know, if you wanted to discuss our actions, since you brought up the IMF and things like that, how that affects—how it's one big cycle basically, how we're kind of, creating the economic conditions overseas, which allow for corporations to go in and get lower-wage labor, which lowers the standards here.

LAROUCHE: This is a product, actually, of what Nixon did. I think what Perkins, what John Perkins, who is the author of the book (which I understand is going through quite a rave expansion in sales and distribution); what Perkins refers to, is actually a peculiarity of the 1972-1990 on system: In which the introduction of a floating-exchange-rate system, as manipulated by basic banking systems, turned the IMF—the International Monetary Fund—and World Bank into a system of looting, a system of piracy.

We began to loot other countries, we destroyed their economies, seized everything we could seize, piled debts on them, killed people in those countries who resisted this, and this is what John Perkins is talking about. But, it's a peculiarity of the change in the system: See, John's a younger guy—he was born in what? '49? Something like that. And so therefore, he doesn't belong to my generation, which lived through the experience as adults, of what happened before he entered adulthood. So, he's actually talking quite accurately about his experience, as an adult, in this career that he talks about, the economic hit man career. And that's true. But, actually, the problem goes back earlier, to a change in the system, at about the time that John as an adult, was entering it.

So, that's my view of the matter.

HOST: We just had a caller, asking your take on the theory that Social Security money disappeared, through Bush's tax cuts to the rich? That huge surplus was given to the rich.

LAROUCHE: Essentially that is true, in direction of thought. And you would find people in the Congress—I think probably Sen. John Kerry and some others would tend to—they wouldn't say it, the way I would say it—but in their own terms, would agree with that: Is that, if we had not tried to loot the poor for the sake of the rich, and we had made the adjustments in the Social Security program, which coincided with the effects of inflation of the dollar, then we would have had no problem.

And therefore, what has happened, as with everything else—look, for example: Take two curves. Take the curve, as measured in physical consumption, of the consumption of the lower 80% of family-income brackets since 1977; then look at the curve for the upper 20% of family-income brackets. And you will find, now, that the income of the people in the upper 20% of family-income brackets exceeds the total income of people in the lower 80%.

So, we have been in, since Nixon, and since Brzezinski, we have been in a gigantic swindle of the average American person. We have destroyed the purpose and the intention of the Republic in terms of economic policy, under these systems. And the Social Security system problems, which are manageable if we go back to the right policy, are simply a reflection of that change.

HOST: And if you look into the next one year from now, say, where are we going to be, in terms of our ability to live and maintain our standard of living?

LAROUCHE: That is a very good question—but you've understated it.

HOST: That's true! [laughing] I felt that, as I said it! But, go ahead.

LAROUCHE: We are on the verge of the biggest financial collapse in world history—right now.

For example: China, Japan, Russia, Europe, are in the process of moving out of the dollar. During the recent period, we sustained a bankrupt U.S. economy, by inducing foreign countries to subsidize us, by holding large reserves of dollars. Now, the dollar has sunk by about 40% in value, under Bush.

HOST: And they don't want to hold it any more.

LAROUCHE: Well, they can't! Because it would bankrupt them.

So, what you have is, countries like China, are moving into dollar investments—Brazil, Argentina, Canada, elsewhere—are moving into mixes of currencies, of baskets of currencies, as opposed to the dollar. And for example, China is probably, or Japan, or both are probably moving out of the dollar, at the same rate that they're earning dollars now.

So, you're in a situation where the dollar is about to go through the bottom. We're about to hit—. You're looking at, in reality, the potential of a $2 euro, you're looking at a 100% collapse of the value of the dollar; I mean, a 50% collapse of the rate of the dollar.

HOST: Now, I've read some of your material, and the people that you write about, and explain how wrong they have been, this is the way in which they have been wrong? I mean, many of them are still saying, "Oh, the dollar's hit the bottom. Don't worry about it. It's hit the bottom." And then, next week, it's a little lower—"Oh, it's hit the bottom." This is what you're talking about now.

LAROUCHE: Absolutely. It's absolute idiocy.

The problem is—the second problem, about which I said there were two problems earlier, about 1964, we went through a cultural paradigm shift, which was induced by a program called the Congress for Cultural Freedom. We went through an ideological transformation, which had a great affect on those young guys entering university in the middle to late 1960s. We underwent a transformation from being the world's leading producer society, to something like ancient imperial Rome: a bread and circuses society. We're living on the dole, and we are more and more living on entertainment—not production. We depend upon the rest of the world, as our slaves, like the Roman Empire, to feed us with cheap labor, with products of cheap labor, like China.

So, we made this change. And this is the problem that's killing us. We are no longer a productive society. And our wealth depended upon our ability to loot other parts of the world to support us. Our political/military power supported us.

Now, we've come to the point, that we've exhausted our ability to launch conventional wars. Iraq is right now, the end of the ability of the United States, to try to go through the pretense of conducting a conventional warfare —

HOST: Hear, hear!

LAROUCHE: We're now going to just nuclear weapons and craziness, hmm?

So, under these conditions, we've lost our credibility. Bush has caused the United States to be hated, where it was loved before. We're now isolated, and we're on the way down, and we're about to go on the junk heap. And therefore, we have no credibility and we have no real authority, in terms of monetary authority.

We are now more vulnerable, than ever before, to what is potentially the greatest financial collapse in modern history, which is about to hit us, now: during 2005.

HOST: So, for those of us who live out in the country, small farms—that's very common in Vermont—should we be buying horses, and chickens, and thinking in terms of wind power and solar power, exclusively, and burning wood and going back to the 19th Century? Should we be thinking about that?

LAROUCHE: I don't—no, it won't work. Besides, they've had laws passed: For example, you have Monsanto's laws on patenting varieties of crops, seeds —

HOST: We don't obey laws out here!

LAROUCHE: Well, anyway, they put people in jail on the Canadian border for that, huh?

So, you know, we're producing a limited number of varieties of foodstuffs, in each category. How many varieties of tomatoes do we grow any more? And other products?

HOST: We grow enough up here —

LAROUCHE: We have a varietal crisis in agriculture, where the honest small farmer, or the guy who wants to do family farming, as a reserve, as he did back in the 1930s, he no longer can legally do it! It's just physically denied to him, virtually.

But, however, we're in a situation, where I don't think that's an alternative. But, I do think, that we're in a period where survival tactics are extremely important. And people who do have the ability to grow some of their own food and do things like that, and to maintain things, that's important.

But we have to actually—there's no alternative to winning this war. I believe that we win. I believe that this great crisis which is hitting us now, if we have leadership, will cause the American people, who acted pretty much like fools under Hoover and Coolidge, to in a sense, come back to their senses again. And accept the kind of recovery policies, or the kind of thinking about recovery policies, that Franklin Roosevelt typified: What we need is that.

In the meantime, everybody should be intelligent. They should use their good judgment; stop going into debt, if possible; hunker down, reduce their expectations; don't spend too much money; don't get into big expenditures. Hunker down, and ready for the big cyclone to come! It will come.

HOST: We mentioned the folks getting out of the dollar. To kind of get an idea of the scale: What percentage of debt is held by—I heard China and Japan have a huge percentage of our debt, right now, that they're holding?

LAROUCHE: I don't know what the exact percent is, but it's enormous. If this debt were to be eliminated, that is, if it were called in—we're out of business!

It's not going to be totally called in, it's going to be phased in. What you're going to get, you're going to get a kind of step-wise collapse, in the entire monetary-financial system. Someone withdraws some money from the dollar system. Now, the dollar system requires about $2 billion a day, approximately, to keep us from collapsing, coming in. So, if foreigners withdraw the subsidy, the rate of subsidy they're giving to the U.S. dollar now, that will accelerate a collapse.

It can trigger such things, for example, as a chain-reaction collapse of the Fannie Mae-related mortgage-based securities system. You could have the whole mortgage-securities system of the United States go into a crisis. You can have other parts of the U.S. economy go into a crisis.

That, in turn, will send you down another notch, another ratchet, another ratchet. These ratchets will accelerate, as for example in the extreme, the case of 1923 Germany, as in the 1923 crash in Germany. This kind of thing can happen. We're on the verge of it. With a government, a U.S. government—for example, if I were President now, I wouldn't be afraid of this. I'd be afraid of not doing certain things, but I wouldn't be afraid of it: Because, we could deal with this. We could enter into agreements with other countries, to stabilize the situation, to prevent panic from occurring, which is the main thing we should worry about—stop the panic. And to manage our way out of this problem by changes in policy, back toward the Roosevelt-kind of policy.

But, with this guy in the White House—this man, who's, you know—you have people who support him, will say, when you ask them on the streets: "Do you accept George Bush as your personal Lord and Savior?" And you get people on the streets will say that, "Yes. I do!" You have a man, who only talks to himself, because he wants to talk to God—in the White House! This nut is dangerous! This government is dangerous!

HOST: He certainly is dangerous to the Iraqi people.

LAROUCHE: And dangerous to the American people, too.

HOST: I have a question: Have you been following the work of Catherine Austin Fitts? It seems to parallel what you're talking about.

LAROUCHE: No, I haven't been following it.

HOST: The deficit numbers are just—I can't believe this. I was reading the deficit estimated for next year, is something like $600 billion? Is that correct?

LAROUCHE: I think that is—highly optimistic.

HOST: And the national debt, I think I read, up through 1975, I think was actually less than what the deficit's going to be, next year.

LAROUCHE: See, I'm not too much worried about the national debt, as such. Because I think like Alexander Hamilton, about this matter: The sovereign debt of the United States we can arrange to pay. Because, the sovereign debt of the United States, that is, U.S. Treasury bills, bonds, that is part of part of the security of our system. We must maintain that currency as value, for our citizens, with that pledge. The stability of the U.S. itself, as a political system, as an economy, depends upon the United States honoring its owed, incurred debt.

Now, Federal Reserve debt, which is not Treasury debt, is a different matter. Other debt is a different matter. They all go on the chopping block for financial reorganization in bankruptcy, in due course. Most of the international funding goes on the chopping block for due process consideration, under bankruptcy proceedings.

But, we must defend the integrity of the U.S. dollar. Because, we need—. See, the problem here, is, to organize a recovery as Franklin Roosevelt did, we need to have a commitment by the government, on which the provision of the Constitution for the creation of debt, by the Executive branch, with the consent of Congress, remains. Because, we're going to require a vast flow of government-backed credit, through a bankruptcy—a banking system, rather, which is in bankruptcy reorganization, in order to fund large-scale infrastructure projects, in the public sector and also in the private sector; which will cause a general increase of employment by about 10 million people in this country. Under that basis we can stabilize the system.

Therefore, I would not do anything to impair the integrity of the U.S. government's to take measures like those Roosevelt took to get a recovery going. But, everything else, is up for grabs.

HOST: Now, a question from a caller: What do the neo-cons—I mean, besides instituting complete fascism—what do the neo-cons have to gain by destroying the U.S. economy?

LAROUCHE: You're dealing with an ideological problem, where what they have to gain is, their ideology. It's like Adolf Hitler.

Take for example, let's take the case of Hitler's killing the Jews.

HOST: He did real well, didn't he?

LAROUCHE: As a perfect example of how this thing works, ideology works.

Now, the idea of killing Jews came from Spain in 1492, with the Grand Inquisitor, the Expulsion of the Jews, categorically, from Spain, which was the antecedent of what Hitler did. Now, Hitler, as a purely ideological reason, did what he did to Jews in Europe, and elsewhere. Right?

But, what was ideology? The Jew had been, in Europe, in Germany and in Eastern Europe, had been liberated from slave-like conditions in general, by the acts, particularly from Germany, from Moses Mendelssohn and his friends, in Germany in the 18th Century. So, the Jew achieved a political status, as citizen, in Europe, gradually step by step, through the initiative of a great Jew, Moses Mendelssohn, and his friends in Germany in that period.

As a result of that, you had the Jewish population of Germany, first, was transformed into largely peddlers, poor peddlers with no rights whatsoever, into a very important part of the scientific and other cultural community of Germany. The same happened as a spillover, in the form of the Haskalah, into Eastern Europe, in Poland and elsewhere, in the form of the so-called Yiddish Renaissance: These Jews were among the most important and most precious complements of the population of Europe—and Germany, included. So, that taking them away from the German population, was actually an injury to Germany.

What did Hitler do? He took part of the population, which was a precious aspect of the German population—and he moved to kill it. He moved into Eastern Europe, where the Yiddish Renaissance Jew was an essential part of the civilization in Eastern Europe! And killed them!

Now, this is not a self-interested action, by a government or a political movement: This is an ideologically, purely ideological movement—of the same type as religious war.

And this is what the neo-cons are. They are fanatics. They are insane. There is essentially no difference between them, in terms of qualities, from the Nazis. They're the same time.

And many of them are Nazis. Remember, the neo-cons are a product, in the United States and elsewhere, of those sections of the Nazi establishment, which the right wing in the United States brought back from Germany at the end of the war.

HOST: Well, it was home-grown here.

LAROUCHE: Well, you got a few home-grown types that go for that.

HOST: Now, we just had another question, and I think the answer you just gave to the former one, is the answer to this next one. What does the Bush Administration have to gain from destabilizing the Middle East?

LAROUCHE: Well, remember the ideology of the fanatics, who share this strange acceptance of Bush as their "Lord and Savior," in the United States. What's their ideology? Their ideology is—and they call themselves Zionists, they call themselves "Christian Zionists": Their ideology is, that they want the Battle of Armageddon to come on schedule. They've got a train schedule. They've got the Battle of Armageddon on the train schedule. They want nothing to interfere with the train coming in on time.

What happens when the Battle of Armageddon happens, then the victory of Christianity occurs, therefore; and they go around and kill all the Jews who don't convert to Christianity! That's their ideology!

HOST: And then, they go up to Heaven in the Rapture.

LAROUCHE: I don't know what they go to—I think they go in the other direction, actually. But, that's a different point.

But, anyway, this is the ideology. We're dealing with a sense of a form of mass insanity, in the form of ideologies, which make no sense from the standpoint of concrete human interests, even of the people who presumably advocate these kinds of crazy things.

HOST: I mean, I always looked at it, I thought with the administration that we kind of had a mixture. We had the fanatics you're describing right there, that kind of have this Apocalyptic view that they're going to put into motion; and then you've just got profiteers, obviously. That, people always ask me why I thought we went to war in Iraq, and of course, everybody was talking about oil, oil, oil, oil, oil. And I just looked at them, more like, it's a theft! It's like right out in the open; we're just basically robbing not only the wealth of that country. But, we're using that, through increased defense spending and such, to kind of rob ourselves and hand it basically to the same —

LAROUCHE: Actually, when you look at these financially motivated aspects of the thing, you find out that you're dealing with the same kind of ideology, just as lunatic, as this right-wing fundamentalist type of fanatic. They have a fanaticism about their system.

In their case, as the case of Gingrich—and George Shultz, for example: George Shultz and his father have a long tradition in this direction. These are people, in the United States and Europe, who have this idea of going back to something like a Roman Empire. And their idea, particularly after the fall of the Soviet Union, over the period of '89 through '91, that, "Now, we can have an empire. An Anglo-American empire. And we're going to run the world forever! We're going to destroy all the nation-states; destroy the populations; take over the world's raw materials; control the world's raw materials, reduce the world's population! And we're going to have utopia, where we all run and kill each other," just like the Romans did in the time of Nero, or something.

But that's the ideo—the guys who seem to be, hard-nosed, financially motivated people, are just as loony, and as loony and more dangerous, perhaps, than the lunatics who are coming out of these funny churches.

HOST: I mean, to me, I think the biggest outcome of the situation in Iraq, is that—like you said I think earlier, you touched on it. We basically exposed how unable we are to actually complete what you just talked about, this grand empire. Because, we essentially attacked a country that had no standing army, and we can't really even occupy this country.

And so, the fact that they're talking about Iran, and they're blustering here, and blustering here and there—. I mean these people have no reason to—. I mean, our leaders may be crazy enough to try it, but we've pretty much killed any credibility, or pulled back the curtain to expose how little we actually can control militarily.

I mean, we have the big weapons, and we can wave the nuclear weapon at them. But, in terms of actually moving in, and taking over countries and occupying them, such as like Great Britain did back in the 1800s, it just not possible to do that.

LAROUCHE: This is an argument which was made by Leibniz, when he said, "this is best of all possible worlds." Which some people couldn't understand, or didn't want to understand: Is that, evil ultimately destroys itself, and the good must ultimately prevail. But, the good needs a lot of help.

HOST: We asked you earlier, what you think we can do to overturn the election, and getting to voter fraud. But we just had a caller who wants to know what we can do now, to persuade the people who voted for Bush, that it—I forget exactly his question—but it's a suicidal venture, to keep on with this. Is there any way to get through to these ideological—?

LAROUCHE: Yes, there is. But, as I said, it's leadership. And there is some success in the Democratic Party—and among Republicans. Remember, not all Republicans are insane. And some people who are not part of any party, are also not insane.

So that, if you provide leadership—it's like a military situation of leadership, those who went through real, in the old days when we had wars were honest wars, not these kind of crazy things. Is, the decisive thing is the quality of leadership. And leadership is not pushing people around: Leadership is taking responsibility.

For example, a commander-in-chief, like say, MacArthur in the Pacific during the Second World War, or at Inchon in Korea, took upon himself the personal responsibility for an outcome, which in the first instance would determine whether the United States existed or not; in the second case, whether the U.S. forces would get out of this Korea mess, alive or not: In both cases, he took personal responsibility, on his own shoulders for the decisions that he had to make.

Now, leadership essentially, is that quality. And, it's what people see. You have a lot of people, like people in foxholes, quivering, or hiding here and there: What gives them the confidence to come out and fight? And that is, having leaders who will take upon themselves, the personal responsibility for making the right decision, and take the responsibility for the outcome of that decision. This is what we've lacked in the Democratic Party in recent times. It's what Roosevelt represented, but what we've lacked.

It's what was lacking among the candidates during the primary campaign. It's what began to come out in a certain sense, but inadequately, in the general election campaign on the part of the Democratic Party, among some people.

We have to realize, that if you want to fight, you want to mobilize the people, you've got to give them a reason to fight. They've been betrayed so many times, that you've got to show them that you're willing, at all risk to yourself, to do what they need done.

Then they'll support you.

HOST: Do you see anyone in the Democratic Party, who is in any power whatsoever, who is about to do that?

LAROUCHE: I'm doing it. And I have some, at this point, as a result of what's happened over the course—actually, since Nov. 7, 2000, when I stepped in on the basis of the catastrophe which had just happened in that election: And I began to build up a machine internationally, and in the Democratic Party, a new machine, around this particular issue. And, as a result of the way things worked out, particularly after Labor Day, between the Boston Convention and Labor Day in the Democratic Party, we have—despite all the residue of all the rubbish that we had before then—we have something new that's going on in the Democratic Party.

And it's not just limited to the Democratic Party. There are also leading people in the Republican Party. There are also people associated with the institutions of the Federal government, like the military, intelligence services, other services—either past or present—who realize what this is.

We have people, who are prepared now to begin to move, to show American people, more and more, that there is the kind of leadership that a great people requires, for a great undertaking. We have it right now.

I'm doing what I'm doing. I would hope that other people will join me and will take my example and do the same thing. We get enough of us moving in this way: We'll win.

HOST: We have somebody here on the line with a question.

CALLER: Greetings, actually just being on the road, I realized that Lyndon LaRouche was on the program.

In backtracking just a bit, I wanted to go back to the Roosevelt Administration. What seems to be interesting, is since Roosevelt's Administration, a lot of agencies have been created, and certainly first into his administration. And, if you can tell us about Public Law 1, or the suspension of the gold standard.

And then, subsequently, he created loads of agencies that began to regulate Americans, usurping, actually, them of their liberties and rights.

LAROUCHE: Well, that's a common mythology. I mean, what you're saying is very common mythology, and it began—actually, as I first recall it, clearly, from Alf Landon's Presidential campaign of 1936, which was my first expedition into American politics in a conscious significant way. And since that time, there have been attempts to blame and defame Roosevelt, with charges which are either untrue, or which are factually premised, but untrue on principle.

For example, the methods of regulation which were used by President Roosevelt, to save the United States from a collapse of the U.S. economy by one-half, between the time of the October crash of '29 and Roosevelt's inauguration, actually saved the United States from Hell. If Roosevelt had not been elected, and done as he did, we would have had a fascist government like that of Hitler in the United States, by 1934-36.

And there was the famous coup attempt, which was reported on this stuff, on that effort.

So, the criticism on the gold standard: Fine. The gold standard—the idea of the freedom of the gold standard is idiocy! The gold standard, which the British had repudiated in 1931 because it no longer worked —

CALLER: That's Constitutional money. It's Constitutional.

LAROUCHE: No. Constitutional money is not the gold standard. Constitutional money is the authority of the United States for its own currency. The metallic system is the British system, which ruined us for a long time. The gold standard is what ruined the United States, repeatedly, especially from the period of the repeal—or the Specie Resumption Act of the 1870s. That's what ruined the United States.

CALLER: Article I Section 10 states that gold and silver are Constitutional money.

LAROUCHE: Well, that's a false assumption. There was an effort to get that going, but that was a mistake. It's not consistent with our Constitution.

CALLER: Uh, this is why you've been labeled certainly a socialist/communist. Um, if you can you, yourself, state that this is not our Constitutional currency. Whereas see, our currency from the Federal Reserve Act of 1913, privatizing our monetary system, under the Wilson Administration and then just segueing from the Wilson into the Roosevelt Administration, Wilson's Trading with the Enemy Act, and then, the War Powers Act under Roosevelt amended who an "enemy" is, i.e., one who carries Constitutional money or the gold, or gold and silver.

LAROUCHE: Well, gold is not a Constitutional money. Constitutional money is what is specified by the Federal Constitution, period. The other interpretations of Constitutional money, which are very popular in the right wing, they're very popular—they're insane, they're wrong. And that's the kind of thing that ruined—.

Remember, the Federal Reserve System was a scheme, run by the British monarchy through its agents in New York City, and pushed through by Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson; both of whom, whose affiliations were not the Federal Constitution, but the Constitution of the Confederacy! Teddy Roosevelt was a nephew, and protégé of his uncle, who was the chief of intelligence for the Confederacy. Woodrow Wilson was an enthusiast for the Ku Klux Klan, and brought the Ku Klux Klan back into prominence in the United States, from the White House while he was President through aid of that film, the so-called—the film he did all over the place.

So, these guys do not represent—as far as I'm concerned, they represent implicitly, traitors to the United States! And what they consign to be law, these right-wingers—and you get the same thing today, from the fascists. You get these people who are sympathetic, the crowd of people who backed Hitler, from the United States, in 1931 into 1933; the people who funded Hitler's party in order to make him the dictator of Germany. Who later turned around, and for different reasons, supported Roosevelt in fighting the Nazis—these people are the people who are the source of these ideas about Constitutional money and all that other stuff.

It's their propaganda: don't be taken in by it. Study the U.S. history as it was actually written by the Founders, and issues as they were fought.

HOST: I have another question for you about fiat money. The most successful currency I've ever read about is the Franklin mint, and his system of currency which is based on goods and services, and it was the British East India Company that quashed that, because it was too successful. Am I correct in that?

LAROUCHE: Not quite. You're correct in the sense that what happened is, the United States always has tried to use the management of the metallic reserve currency, that is, gold—not silver. The bimetallic thing doesn't work. But use the monopoly over gold, or the gold price, the management of the gold price, as a way of protecting the United States from things that were played with gold bidding overseas, like the British gold system. So, that part's true.

And the United States also used, as Roosevelt did... What Roosevelt did, was mobilize the gold reserves of the United States, as in the famous act which some people complain about, mobilize them as a weapon to defend the United States, against the predators that were about to come in after us from Europe. And it was an act of defense of the nation's economy. He knew what he was doing.

HOST: Well, in the time we have remaining, we should be moving forward, in terms of how to save ourselves. And you've done a very good job with that so far. At another time, I'm fascinated by some of what you've written that I have read, going back to the Eleatics, and the Sophists, and right up through Cervantes and the British East India Company, indeed. If that ties into anything, any advice you have for us today, feel free to ...

LAROUCHE: I'd just say one thing. We are a product of European civilization. A European civilization which was developed around the Classical currents in ancient Greece. This is our civilization. We are now at a point where the European civilization is now in jeopardy, because of the things we've done to ourselves, and because of the rise of the populations of Asia, such as China and India. China's over 1.3 billion people, and a growing population with many problems inside. India has over a billion people now, with about 300 million who are living at, shall we say, satisfactory levels of existence, and about 700 million not.

We face this kind of world. The time has come that we have to, in the United States, go back to our traditions, as a leader in the fight to defend the principles of European civilization. And find new ways of cooperating with the emerging cultures of Asia, so that we can maintain a system of sovereign nation-states on this planet, which will be peaceful, and which can prevent the kind of circumstances that lead us to new wars. Because new wars, of any importance, in the world today, would mean the extinction of civilization.

And therefore, that's the mission we have today. We have to stick to European civilization, recognize what the United States represents, in terms of aspirations of Europeans since Solon of Athens; and then recognize today that we have a responsibility, as Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, was thinking of the post-war period, we have to go out and see the peoples of Africa, of Asia, in particular, and see them as an emerging part of the planet, and we have to develop ways and means for providing for a secure future in cooperation within the planet in the coming period.

HOST: So, of the current officeholders, or national officeholders, can you identify some folks that you think, that are in office right now, that would possibly qualify as somebody to lead into that era?

LAROUCHE: I think, what we have is not so much individuals. I haven't seen any individuals, quite with the guts. I think Clinton has undergone a change, since he left the Presidency in terms of rethinking his experience. He probably would be a better President today than he had been when he was in office. But in general, my opinion is we have produced a defective quality of development of political leaders.

However, we have in the whole roster of people who are former servants of government, and in government, we have a whole roster of people who are very serious leaders, at various levels. This combination of people, of leaders, brought together around a common purpose, as Roosevelt tried to do in terms of the war, that kind of combination, is capable of providing leadership from the United States, for bringing the rest of the world together. That's true today.

The United States still has a unique mission within it. We're just making a mess of it. We have to bring that tradition back into play, and we do have people...

I mean, Kerry, for example. Kerry is not my idea of a commander-in-chief, but he would make a very good colonel in a regiment, in an actual combat situation. We have other people who have similar talents. Kerry's a very intelligent person. We have others in the Congress who are extremely intelligent, in the House of Representatives, and in the Senate. We have people in the government institutions, the military, the intelligence services, other parts of government service, past and present; some professors who are associated with this process, who are consulted by governments on important areas. These people, brought together, do represent a core of leadership, which, if united around a sense of common purpose, can do a job as good as we did under Roosevelt, during World War II.

HOST: You mentioned that you thought Clinton would probably make a better President now. Do you think our system, electoral system, allows a great person to even make it through to the top office these days? And, if not, what do you see as the biggest changes we could make in our electoral system? Since this is how the whole conversation started today, with the electoral vote. How do you think we could change it, to make sure, folks that actually are visionaries, and are powerful in ideas, can actually get through the grind that we have out there?

LAROUCHE: If you look at the history of civilization as a whole, and of course, I specialize in everything from ancient Greece to the present, as what I look at on the table, any time I look at any problem in any part of the world, at any time—I always take this whole panoply of what I know of world history, that part of world history, into account, and look at it from that standpoint.

That, in that view, you take the case of Charles de Gaulle, for example, as an example of this. Charles de Gaulle was not a perfect leader at any time. He was not perfect as a colonel or a general, in the process leading into World War II. He was not perfect by any means in his role in the immediate post-war period. He acted as an inspired genius in the period that he came in to save France from the effects of the Algerian War. But then, once—and he'd created a Fifth Republic, which was not a bad job. He did many things which the French nation is benefitting from still today, economically.

But then, as soon, 1963: Kennedy is killed. We had gone to Hell. Things are breaking down all around the world in 1964. We go into the Vietnam War, and the French people, who have just been saved from a horrible fate, by this President de Gaulle, begin to turn against him, and they dump him unceremoniously in 1968, after they virtually destroyed him beforehand.

This is the history of this planet. We find that, as in the case of Roosevelt. Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, one of the greatest geniuses and leaders this country ever had in top office: The day after he died, this country, under Truman, began plunging into the right wing, and into many of the horror-shows that we're facing today! This is the history of the United States. This is the history of virtually every other nation. It's the history of the case of the aftermath of Louis XI of France, the founder of the first modern nation-state. It's the history of what happened to England after Henry VII, when his crazy son, Henry VIII, came in there and got confused over a sexual problem.

This is the problem.

So the problem is, we have to keep fighting, and fighting, to get good leaders; to develop them; to get them in office, and to try to keep them in office once we've got them there.

HOST: On a side issue, I've been following and interviewing Wayne Madsen—you ever read his material?

LAROUCHE: I know his material, yes. I have respect for it.

HOST: Well, he has an interesting theory that the CIA is so furious at the gutting of its intelligence operations, that some of the operatives are beginning to turn on the Bush Administration, and indeed that is where he is getting some of his material. I find him optimistic, and I wish I could be as optimistic as he is, and I was wondering what you might think.

LAROUCHE: I'm optimistic too. I may not agree with Wayne on everything, but I share his optimism, and I share his viewpoint on this question. I think that the institutions of the United States, people who have given their lives, their adult lives, in particular, of devotion to service to the interests of the United States, its well-being, who see the United States being betrayed, and sent down into the sewer, by what's happening now, will, without violating their oaths, without violating their principle of loyalty, their principle of respect for the integrity of our institutions, will tend to do what they can to unify themselves, and to help out, in the system.

HOST: Where have they been for four years? That's why I'm a little pessimistic.

LAROUCHE: This—where has the Democratic Party been? Where have the American people been? Where's everybody been for the past four years? I've been there, I've been fighting this stuff all along. You have to, you have to be patient with human beings. They usually make a mess of things, but if it's like being a parent—you love them, they're making a mess of everything. They're making a mess of the house. You keep at it, and you rejoice the day they do something right.

And you have to have that attitude in dealing with a situation like this. It's my attitude, it's the only way I can handle the situation.

HOST: Thank you, that will help me get through another few more days.

LAROUCHE: Good!

HOST: Speaking of optimism/pessimism, how much tougher, or how tough does it make it, to fight the fight with the situation of media consolidation, and corporatization, and basically, like you said, we were entertaining ourselves to death? I think someone actually wrote a book with that title. Do you see the fact that fewer and fewer hands are owning more and more outlets, making things tougher to change?

LAROUCHE: Not really. Changes generally come in the form of crises. They come in the form generally of gradually. You have gradual changes, but gradual changes are generally improvements based on the general acceptance of a principle, which people begin to work on, to implement. It's like people take a job, and they try to do the job better as they go along. But taking the job is the first step.

Until the job is taken, I think people will not tend to improve. But, once we realize how bad, how absolutely, stinking bad, this Bush Administration problem, how evil and stupid the things are, that led into even considering electing an idiot like that—once we get that idea in our heads, and we realize that we have a mission of recovery before us, a job of recovery, I think we'll be better.

I think we have to be patient with the American people. I mean, I say this from the standpoint of studying history, I deal with history all the time. I see situations like this all the time: You have to be patient with the human race. If Jesus Christ could be patient with these guys, I have to be, too!

Do your job.

HOST: What kind of timeframe are you looking at? How long do you think it will take for things to get awful enough to wake people up?

LAROUCHE: They're right here now. We're right in it now. I think, and many people would agree with me, I think, in political circles, what Bush is doing with his privatization of Social Security, is probably the straw that will break the proverbial camel's back. This thing could result in a change in the destiny of the putatively newly elected administration, faster than you can say, "Dick Nixon."

HOST: Will the press go along with your predictions?

LAROUCHE: Well, the press is a prostitute, it'll go along with whatever is for sale.

HOST: Okay. And you think that that will be a more overwhelming story than Bush trying to shut it up?

LAROUCHE: We're at the point the nation won't survive unless that does happen. And that's on a short term. That's not long term.

HOST: So, the press will get it through its head, one way or another, that it has to begin covering this.

LAROUCHE: The New York Times began to get on the case several years ago, on the question of the Iraq war. The Washington Post did not. But there were changes. I think you'll see more changes coming as the crisis gets worse. Either way. For the worse, or for the better.

HOST: Okay. Yeah, I'm praying that the Madsen story breaks, because that, in itself, will just cause the whole house of cards to break down, but, of course, it has to be correct.

LAROUCHE: Cheney will go ape on that news. Cheney will go berserk. So will George Shultz. But Cheney will be more obvious about it.

HOST: That will be good. I will appreciate seeing that reported.

LAROUCHE: Okay, good.

HOST: I'll tell you what we can do in the last five minutes here— I'll let you off a little early, since you stayed with us for nearly two hours. Do you have any information you want to give out on yourself, your PAC, your other activities, your book, your website? A promo. You want to tell people...

LAROUCHE: Well, they can all they want, if they use the internet, they can get all they want from larouchepac.com. We try to keep a fairly fully served website, and if you get to the right buttons, you can go into all kinds of other things, historical things, background and so forth, access. There's very little about me which is not immediately accessible, if somebody goes through that search routine. And I would suggest that people do that. It's all there, and enough people do use the web system that most people could get it.

HOST: And what about the book? The Satan book?

LAROUCHE: The Satan book? The Children of Satan? This is something we published as a packet. It was done on the basis of an enhancement of things we published during the campaign period, and this is simply identification of what Cheney is. It's what Cheney represents, where he comes from, where the problems are.

HOST: Yeah. I read just a little bit before I rushed over here to the station. It's very well written. Your people are good writers.

LAROUCHE: Well, we have to do our work. We love it. We love doing our work. It's not the money that does it. It's that we like it.

HOST: Well, that's for sure, in my case. I think I went after the Bush Administration for four years, and it's certainly been costing me more than it's been earning me....

Thank you very much for joining us, Lyndon LaRouche.

LAROUCHE: Thank you.

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