Let's Have a Second
American Revolution!
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Here is the speech by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche to the Schiller Institute/International Caucus of Labor Committees conference in Reston, Virginia, on Feb. 15, 2004. Lyndon LaRouche's speech from the previous day was published in EIR on Feb. 27.
I think you all are still maybe shocked, under the impression of what Lyn was saying yesterday: that we are at a crossroad of history. And I think we all know—you in the audience and the people listening to this conference on the Internet, and actually every reasonable person around the world, especially in leading positions—are aware of the fact that this battle, which Lyn is conducting in the United States for the Presidency, will bring about the most important decision of the last approximately 250 years in this country, and by implication for the rest of the world. If you understand history, and you really have the whole world in your mind, and in your heart, and you understand what is at stake; if you look at Africa; if you look at Latin America; if you look at some places in Asia; even some places in Europe and the United States, you see the danger that the world is collapsing into a chaotic disintegration of the financial system, and that there are forces in the world that want to bring back a system of feudalism, and impose, worldwide, a fascist system which, by implication, would mean that the world population would, in a very short period of time, be reduced to maybe a billion people or so.
That is clearly on the horizon, and anybody who does not understand, that that is the danger, is not in the real world. On the other side, as Lyn was saying yesterday also, if people can elevate themselves to the sublime level of a Joan of Arc, of a Martin Luther King, I can easily see also on the horizon, the possibility to implement a just, new world economic order, and to spread the principles of the American Revolution on a global scale. Not by imposition on other cultures, but just by respect for human beings.
The American Revolution has to be upheld worldwide. I know that this may come as a surprise, and even shock for many, because America, right now, is not exactly popular in the world. As a matter of fact, the existence of the Schiller Institute—whose founding I initiated to improve the foreign relations between the United States and Western Europe in the beginning, and then quickly to the rest of the world—was actually an effort to counter anti-Americanism and anti-Europeanism, which was spreading widely, already, in the beginning of the '80s. So, I have been concerned with this problem of anti-Americanism/not anti-Americanism for a very long time. But, in my lifetime, I have never seen such an enormous, deep resentment of the United States—even hatred, fear, and contempt. A fear, and an anticipation, that if the present policies of the U.S. government are not changed, they for sure will lead to asymmetric nuclear warfare, and possibly chaotic World War III.
A Watershed in History
The fact that Lyn is waging this fight in the United States, to uphold the American Revolution's principles, is right now, recognized by very influential people around the world, as the most important strategic question today. And even though many of you know this and have talked about it, studied about it, still I want to restate it, also for the benefit of people in the world, because this question of America has not been so clear in the recent period.
Why is this question of the American Revolution, and the ideas which are contained in the Declaration of Independence, in the Preamble of the American Constitution, and the Constitution itself, an absolute watershed of modern history?
Because of the idea which is expressed in the Declaration of Independence: that all people have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that government is only legitimate, if it is devoted to the common good of the people. The idea that happiness is not just some luck, some winning in the lottery, but in the Leibnizian sense, that only if people—if every man and woman on this planet—can develop their potentialities, their cognitive potentialities to the fullest, is a very precious thought, and I will elaborate shortly, why this is so outstanding and not self-evident. I think if people start to take it as self-evident, they are losing what it means. And the fact of what John Quincy Adams was saying, that the basis of international politics should be an alliance of perfectly sovereign nation-states, bound together by a community of principle.
These are extremely precious ideas. And since they were realized in politics, in 1776-89, that has been the definition of the battleground. Because against that, against the so-called "ideas of 1789"—when normally people don't mean the French Revolution, but the ideas of the American Revolution—since that time, there has been a very powerful counter-movement, which was been variously called the Conservative Revolution, a counter-revolution, fascism, Synarchism. And what was the issue, between these two fundamentally different conceptions? At the core of it is the image of man. And that is a question which is on the table today: Is man a being of cognitive powers, infinitely perfectible, capable of freedom, of beauty, and of the good? Is every man and every woman potentially a genius, provided he or she develops all potentialities in him or herself, and brings into conformity his or her individuality, with the ideal man? And is every man innately good, born to be creative and happy?
Or, is this only true for a small number of people, born with privileges to be powerful, rich, and independent, and to rule over a majority of people, who are deliberately kept backward, who can be turned into slaves and human cattle by their ignorance, their fear, and tiring occupation for the bare minimum of their daily existence? And where it does not matter, if once in a while, large sections of that human herd, of human cattle, are culled—slaughtered, sacrificed for entertainment, or the privilege of that small group and their supposed benefit?
That was, and is, the issue of the American Revolution. And it is the question of today, in the question of Argentina and similar cases. And this is the issue that was only solved in the United States. It was never completely solved in Europe. It has never been solved in Asia. It has never been solved in Africa, historically. This question has, today, become a life-and-death question for billions of people, at a point where globalization is in its terminal phase.
For this reason, 1789 was the watershed. And the issues which erupted then, are still the issues of today, both positively and negatively. In 1789, on April 13, George Washington took office as the first President of the United States. It was a moment in history, where a tremendous potential to turn the world on a course of improvement existed.
Echoes of the American Revolution in Europe
1789 was the year when Friedrich Schiller started his famous Summer semester as a teacher of history in Jena, where he made the famous "universal history" address, when he basically was convinced that the American Revolution could be replicated in France, and then, from there in all of Germany.
At that point, the young American republic was not yet fully developed: You only had 13 states; you had Florida occupied by Spain; you had French territories. But, nevertheless, looking at the United States from Europe, at that point, all republican and humanist forces in Europe were absolutely hopeful, that the example—the test—in America would function, and that the American example could be replicated in Europe.
Schiller described this question as the most debated and most beloved question of the decade, meaning the 1780s: How can a state be developed, with the greatest freedom of its citizens? And how can the state be brought to its fullest blossoming? There was a general hope among all humanists and republican forces that this could be replicated, starting in 1789, in France, and from there, throughout all of Europe.
It took only six weeks, after Washington became President, on June 17, until the French National Assembly was convened, where, under the leadership of Jean-Sylvain Bailly, an attempt was made to give France a written constitution, to turn France, at least, into a constitutional monarchy.
On June 20, all participants took an oath to work as long as necessary to establish such a constitution, in the famous Tennis Court Oath. But, in the meantime, Lord Shelburne—who was running the show in England, because King George III had already lost his marbles over the loss of the largest colony, namely America—felt that the interests of the British Empire were threatened. And he organized a multi-faceted destabilization of France, forcing it to eliminate any relics of the Colbertist reform policies. And international banks conducted financial and economic warfare, so that the agriculture and trade in France collapsed. A famine spread, creating the social conditions for an insurgency operation. An instigated rumor campaign spread, and then the climate was created, such that on July 14, the infamous storming of the Bastille occurred, which eventually turned into the Jacobin Terror, using terror and fear as a means of politics. So, then the guillotine was set to work, and people turned into "a small people," as Friedrich Schiller described it: "A great moment had found a little people."
What followed then was the terror from the right, the Thermidor and the rise of Napoleon, who transformed himself from a Jacobin to a self-proclaimed Emperor, in the tradition of the Roman Empire.
But this was not the whole story. While the French Revolution turned totally sour, in the same period, in the 1790s, you had, in Germany, the beautiful Weimar Classical period, which, from many standpoints, represented the highest cultural level mankind has reached so far. This was the period when Schiller was writing about the Sublime, the beautiful soul, and Wilhelm von Humboldt turned the idea that every human being had the potential to become a genius and a beautiful soul, into a generalized educational system: the idea, that if you give every child, every baby, every young person, a universal education, then basically, human freedom would be possible. This is, essentially, the concept of the LaRouche Youth Movement today: that if every child learns the great achievements of great thinkers, and poets, and scientists of the past, then you can spark the light of creativity in every human being.
Napoleon vs. the Prussian Reformers
Now, in the meantime, Napoleon covered Europe with wars—Italy, Spain—and this became the determining factor in the history of Germany, for the first one and one-half decades of the 19th Century. You had war, exploitation, oppression, imperial power. Since 1801 all territories on the left bank of the Rhine had become French. There were territorial rearrangements amongst the smaller entities which became so-called mediatisieren, which meant dissolved as a state, integrated into medium and larger territorial states. Into this went a lot of corruption, bribery, and a lot of the same banking houses of the Synarchist tradition that are at work today, were actually functioning in these rearrangements at the time.
The beneficiaries of these new territorial orders were the princes and ministers of these states, and they were held back by no patriotic or legalistic scruples. They grabbed power with both hands, and this poisoned the relations, for example, between Prussia and Austria, which didn't want to accept the idea of one unified state or the rule of one Kaiser. But all of these small entities were completely dependent on Napoleon. They were the result of the policy with which Napoleon established his hegemony in Germany. In 1806, in the famous Battle of Jena at Auerstedt, Prussia was beaten by the Napoleonic army in a devastating way. The Prussian reformers, vom Stein, von Humboldt, Scharnhorst, and others, could organize the first reforms in agriculture; they could eliminate slavery; they could make army reforms; in education; eliminate the classes.
But, this was just a moment. Napoleon demanded brutal war contributions. Russia was expected to pay 20 million francs (Napoleon demanded 154 million, which was impossible to pay). Vom Stein, who was the leading minister of Prussia in 1808, when the news about the rebellion in Spain arrived, became the leading representative of the resistance to Napoleon. And he was convinced that war, in alliance with Austria, and a general, popular upheaval, would be the only option. And the Prussian reformers, Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and other military leaders led a complete popular upheaval in all of the north of Germany, with the declaration of the liberation of the peasants, the declaration of a constitution, the ousting and expropriation of the princes. Now, that was a pretty revolutionary program, and it was the program of the reformers—not of the Prussian throne, but of the reformers.
A letter of vom Stein, written on Aug. 15, 1808, landed in the hands of the French police, which had their agents everywhere since the time of Fouché [see EIR, March 19, 2004], and there were only hints of such a call to the revolution. Napoleon had the letter printed in a government newspaper, and, in this way, put pressure on the Prussian representative to sign the second Paris Treaty on Sept. 8, 1808, which had outrageous conditions for Prussia.
When the Tsar renewed his partnership with Napoleon in Erfurt, the idea of a patriotic liberation war was out of the question for the time being. Vom Stein was kicked out of office on Nov. 24, and on Dec. 16, Napoleon banned him, and he was declared to be the enemy of France. Napoleon expropriated his land; an arrest warrant was issued and an execution order. And even then, under Napoleonic rule, the idea of hot pursuit was completely illegal—but still a warrant, "dead or alive," was issued. Vom Stein managed to escape to Bohemia. But the banning of vom Stein infuriated the population, and this was the main reason why vom Stein became the symbol of resistance, as a leading power in the resistance against Napoleon.
The Prussian King fell into a kind of apathy, under the pressure of the Napoleonic demands. Then, there were efforts by Austria, under the instigation of the leading minister, Philip Stadion, to resist and organize a national war in 1808-09. There was a wave of a patriotic mood, but this was not enough. Vienna was occupied by Napoleon. And after his victory in the Battle of Wagram, in which Austria lost huge territories, it had to make vast payments as a compensation for the war. There was a tremendous up and down: appeasement, collaboration, resistance—how to deal with Napoleon?
Then, at the end of May 1812, Napoleon moved 600,000 men, the so-called Grande Armée, into Russia. One-third of them were captured Germans, who were forced to be in the army. And whereas Napoleon already had Spain, France, large parts of Italy, Austria, Germany (what today is Germany), he also wanted Russia. But he wanted to go from there into India, and eventually establish a world dictatorship.
Now, it is very interesting that von Wolzogen, the brother-in-law of Schiller, had studied the historical writings by Schiller, The Thirty Years' War and The Revolt of the Netherlands Against Spanish Rule, to actually see how, using the plan of strategic defense, to force Napoleon into a logistical overreach, to lure him into the vast territories of Russia, so that he could actually be defeated. And that's exactly what the Prussian reformers advised the Tsar to do.
During this campaign, vom Stein was completely preoccupied with how to get Germany unified and how to get Germany a constitution. Then, after the defeat of Napoleon in Russia, it came in 1813 to the Liberation Wars in Germany itself. And only in the reality of the war, were the Prussian reformers able to move. On Feb. 9, 1813, they could eliminate the exceptions to the draft, because, up to that point, only noblemen could become officers, and under the threat of the war, that rule was eliminated.
It came in Germany to a total mobilization of all men between 15 and 60 years old, and it became a national movement against world dictatorship, which involved state officials, officers, educated layers, journalists, writers, and so forth; but especially a youth movement—volunteers, students, who were completely immersed in the works of Schiller. And before they would go into battle, they would go to the widow of Schiller, to ask her for lines of his poems, which they would put on their breast over their heart, when they were going into the battle. The German people have never been closer to the establishment of a true republic, than in this period. And, in Germany, there never was a higher level of culture, than during the Liberation Wars. Now, the liberation would never have been possible, without an upheaval of the people, and especially the young; but it was the entire population.
Congress of Vienna: Root of Two World Wars
The big tragedy of Europe, is what happened then, at the Congress of Vienna, and the Restoration afterwards, where rule remained with the monarchies, and the princes, and the oligarchs. And the reason why it is important to look at the Congress of Vienna, and the period after that, is because this serves as a model for what is happening today, in the United States and in other places of the world. At the Congress of Vienna, with the conspiracy, the collaboration, of people like Castlereagh and Metternich, especially—but also Talleyrand, the Tsar, and others—they were able to bring the situation back to the status quo ante, before 1792, and even before 1789.
But, ideologically, something much worse happened. It's a real tragedy, because I still maintain, that vom Stein, and von Humboldt, were the best statesmen which Germany ever had, and they represented the German cause at the Vienna Congress. But they failed, vis-à-vis the intrigues of Metternich, Castlereagh, Talleyrand, and the reactionary circles in Prussia. As a result, the accomplishments of the Congress of Vienna remained far below the expectation of the population, which had the rightful expectation, that after the defeat of Napoleon, the German state could be unified, it would be one nation, and one constitution.
The Congress of Vienna was a total abomination, and it sheds light on why Europe today is so relatively impotent. The Congress of Vienna also contained the roots of the two world wars in the 20th Century. People say Europe is weak, because we had two world wars; but the reality is, the root of these two world wars was the Congress of Vienna, and the fact that Europe was not able to get rid of the oligarchical system, which the American Revolution had so successfully gotten rid of before. Castlereagh, Metternich, the nobility in Prussia, the princes of Europe, were all determined, that what is the point of defeating Napoleon, if instead, you have a national republican force and a constitution? That had to be prevented by all means.
Now, the Congress took place from Sept. 18, 1814 until June 9, 1815. All European powers participated, except Turkey. The assumption which went into the Congress was, from the beginning, that there was an innate difference between the nobility and the people, as God-given. The reactionary forces totally won. The kings and the princes, and exactly those princes who had gotten their status from Napoleon, could keep it. The real mastermind, however, of these procedures was Metternich, who was called "Papillon Metternich," "Butterfly Metternich," who spent 40 million francs in five months on behalf of the Habsburg Empire, and for the meals alone—they spent 50,000 francs a day. Naturally, this was gotten by a tax increase of 50% on the population.
The world went around, the Congress danced. And, the Congress of Vienna is, probably in all of world history, the example of intrigues, a war of diplomacy, banquets, boudoirs, affairs, balls, parties, hunts, amusements, sleigh rides, and such things, and an enormous number of agents were deployed from France, Austria, and Russia. The servants were turned into agents. Pub owners were turned into spies. They were busy emptying the wastepaper baskets in the evening, to find out what were the plans drawn up by the different factions; they were cleaning out the chimneys, to put together burned or half-burned letters, to find out what was going on. There was an absolute atmosphere of spying, and interception of letters, and such things. They recruited even nobility, persons in high positions, to be police spies or "confidants," as they were called.
One of those "confidants," the Abbott Giuseppe Carpani, gave a very dark description of the territorial greed of Russia, France, England, the Vatican, and Spain, saying there was no hope for any outcome of this Congress. Count Carl von Nostiz, a Prussian called into the Russian services, wrote that they were using the same methods as under Napoleon, of egoism, narrow-mindedness, mediocrity, stupidity, and a total neglect for the interest of the people, and that they were completely lazy on top of it; he contrasted that to the high spirit of the congress of the Peace of Westphalia.
Wilhelm von Humboldt wrote to his wife, "In order to suppress the evil principle, the war should have been conducted in a different way. A second one will be necessary, which sooner or later will come for sure, but which will involve the risk that the good principle will go under, because only very few have developed an understanding." What that evil principle was, I will discuss shortly, but Wilhelm von Humboldt's remarks were absolutely prophetic, because the unresolved oligarchical question of the Congress of Vienna, was the reason why Germany later became unified in the war against France in 1870-71, which led then to the terrible world wars of the 20th Century.
The aim of the Congress was to prevent the sovereignty of the people and the constitution. Talleyrand wrote already in September 1814, that it was in the interest of France to play on the small states: "France's interest is the interest of the small states. They want to keep their independent existence, and we have to encourage them." And then he went into a total ranting and raving against Prussia. In every letter he wrote to the King, he wrote: "Those Germans, they always talk about German unity. That's their battle cry, their doctrine, their religion, their fanaticism." On Oct. 31, a certain Baron Türkheim, the representative of Hessen Darmstadt, wrote about how Talleyrand was courting the Saxonians, the Badenseer, the Darmstadter, and so forth, all small governments, in private meetings, that they should refuse a German demand for a constitution, if it should come up. And, they said, it will not happen. Friedrich Gentz, the personal secretary of Metternich, wrote after a dinner at his house, with Metternich, Talleyrand, and others: "Everybody was awed by my house, and my dinner, and my food. Meanwhile, I reflected on the triviality of human affairs and the weakness of the individuals who hold the fate of the world in their hands. And I was aware of my own superiority only semi-consciously, given the fog, which the blather of my guests put around my brain."
However, at another party at Gentz's house, a certain Dr. Justus Erich Bollmann—a German-American doctor who spent the time of the Vienna Congress in Vienna—one evening, this Dr. Bollmann spent at Gentz's house, together with Wilhelm von Humboldt and others; and he reports that the company became totally silent, to listen to the miracles which Bollmann had reported about the United States. "Fantastic! He gave horrible examples, how common citizens achieved a power and a greatness, as in Europe are only associated with nobility and kings. Through the naiveté of the question of a diplomat, whose never-ending curiosity was never satisfied, the presentation became a complete course on republican principles and ideas, enriched with many proofs as one never could have imagined to hear at this congress of monarchs. Gentz felt completely smashed under the weight of the matter, and he felt as worried as if an attentat, a terrorist act, had been committed in his presence," so reports Bollmann in a letter to General Lafayette on Jan. 3, 1815.
The Restoration and the Holy Alliance
The result of all of these intrigues and manipulations was, that the question of the German constitution was never seriously addressed. What was attempted by vom Stein and von Humboldt: They were never able to put a draft on the table. And new borders were drawn up between states on the map, as though with scissors; the interests of the people were completely trampled upon. The result of the Congress of Vienna was, instead, the so-called German Alliance. Castlereagh and Metternich had succeeded. And what followed was the Restoration, the Holy Alliance, leading to a period of repression, in which the beautiful cultural optimism of the Weimar Classic, eventually was turned into cultural pessimism, especially after the Carlsbad Decrees—an early form of a Patriot II Act, in which terror and fear was spread among the population.
But the ideological foundations of this Restoration, were nobody else but Edmund Burke, and, to my great surprise, Joseph de Maistre. But also Vicomte de Bonald, Chateaubriand; and a mixture of what we call today Synarchism and Romanticism.
Lord Castlereagh and Lord Metternich had agreed in the assessment of the situation: The American example had to be prevented at all costs. And the outcome of the French Revolution, instigated by the counterinsurgency operations of Lord Shelburne, had demonstrated what an uproar was leading to. Edmund Burke, in 1790, wrote Reflections on the Revolution in France, which was causing a complete uproar in Europe at the time. And it had a lasting effect on the counter-revolution in Europe. His philosophy, or ideology rather, was based on the English Enlightenment, namely the idea that man is a beast of the senses; cognition can only occur through sense experience; man is evil by nature, and so forth. And he warned of the consequences, if abstract law and theory become the guidance of action. Instead, he said, we have to adhere to the people's spirit, the Volksgeist tradition. The state is like an organism becoming and going. And we need a close alliance between the church and the state.
On the continent, the entire counter-revolution based their theories, among others, on Burke, and he gave them a full arsenal of ideological weapons. Already in 1793, Friedrich Gentz, who was a Prussian civil servant at the time, produced a translation of Burke's book, and wrote a commentary, which became the standard literature on state theory of the Conservative Revolution.
De Maistre's Evil Influence
But, there was only one ideologue of the Conservative Revolution, who built on the ideas of Burke, and who became the single most important influence of the Congress of Vienna and the Restoration afterwards, and the Holy Alliance: Joseph de Maistre. When we developed the research about Synarchism today, I became aware of his role for France, his influence on Napoleon. But, I must say, I was absolutely shocked to discover that he was the single most important thinker for the Restoration of the Holy Alliance as well. He was born in 1753, in Chambéry in Savoy, whose dukes were also the Kings of Sardinia. When France occupied Savoy in 1792, de Maistre had to go into exile to Lausanne, then to Turin, and in 1803, the King sent him as the ambassador of the Kingdom of Sardinia to St. Petersburg, where he stayed until he was expelled for proselytizing in 1817, when he went back to Turin, where he became the supreme judge, and he died there in 1829.
His most radical views he wrote in the so-called St. Petersburg Soirées, and the Letters to a Russian Nobleman on the Spanish Inquisition. He had an image of man, that man is evil by nature; his evil is limitless. Evil is the break of the unity desired by God. Redemption can only come through the authority of the Pope and the princes, and through punishment, through purifying violence, through the blood of the innocent. The political order comes from the Pope, who is the authority for the rulers. And, according to him, the problem started with the Reformation, which is why one has to go back to the Donation of Constantine, a myth according to which the Emperor received the power from the Pope. (Now, already, Nicolaus of Cusa, in the 15th Century, had denounced this myth of the Donation of Constantine as a complete fraud, used by evil forces to simply have rationalization of their earthly power.) According to de Maistre, everything is pre-programmed through Divine Providence; even evil is willed by Providence, and works for the good. The Jacobin Revolution, therefore, was good, because it punished the evil church. This obviously represented the complete perversion of Leibniz's idea of the best of all possible worlds. But, despite the authority of the Pope and the rulers, man still commits evil, and therefore needs penance through blood. The Executioner is therefore an envoy of God. In all the wars in the world, the blood spilled on the battlefields, are all means of Divine Providence. The whole world, covered by battlegrounds, is therefore an altar, where, in order to eliminate evil, everything must be sacrificed. Since blood sacrifices exist in many cultures, obviously, that is part of human nature.
Now, as we know, Napoleon was very impressed by de Maistre and vice versa, because of Napoleon's contempt for the liberals and the intellectuals. De Maistre wrote in his Reflections on France: "History proves that war is a quasi-normal state of mankind. It is not such a big evil as is generally believed. When the human soul is corrupted through too much civilization, only the spilling of blood can strengthen it again."
Defense of the Inquisition
De Maistre developed the core of what, to the present day, is the basic ideological concept of the Conservative Revolution, the Synarchist, and the fascist belief, today. The problem, according to him, started with the Reformation, when the God-given order that all authority comes from God, through the Pope, to the rulers, was broken. From that standpoint it was completely in order, what the Spanish Inquisition did; they did the right thing. And, in his Letters to a Russian Nobleman in 1815, he writes, how the origin of the Inquisition goes back to 1184 at the Church Council of Verona, when the Albigensian sect threatened the unity of the Church. Then, in 1204 Pope Innocent III gave the Inquisition into the hands of the Dominicans. And, he says, "By nature the Inquisition is good, gentle, and maintaining."
"In the 15th Century," he writes in a letter, "Judaism had developed such deep roots in Spain that it almost suffocated the national plant [of Spain, that is]. The Jewish-minded were horrible through their wealth, influence, and connection with the noble families of the monarchy. They were actually a nation within a nation. The danger was dramatically heightened through Islam. It was a question, whether Spain would survive, if the Jews and the Muslims would divide up the rich provinces among themselves." Therefore, according to de Maistre, it was totally okay, "that Ferdinand used the Inquisition to save Spain, since great dangers to the state can only be fought through equally violent means. This is a basic principle of politics. Concerning the means, the best is that which succeeds. One is astonished to see how the Inquisition loads up questions on the accused, to find out if in their heritage, there is even one drop of Jewish or Muslim blood. `What about it?' some not so thoughtful people may say. `What does it matter to know who is the grandfather or great-grandfather of an accused?' But, in that time, it did matter, because these two outlawed tribes had still a lot of connections in the state through their relatives, which is why they had to be afraid. It was, therefore, necessary to set the power of imagination into fear and fright, by permanently demonstrating the banishment associated with the mere suspicion of Jewishness or Muslimness. So, if the Inquisition concluded the guilt of the heretic, or the helper of the heretic, they would transfer him to the royal apparatus, which confiscated their possessions."
"There was a lot of noise in Europe about the use of torture or the fire penalty," he writes. "But what about it? Everybody used it—the Greeks, the Romans, and today, everybody uses torture to find out the truth."
Now, a very famous German Jesuit priest, Friedrich von Spee, investigated the Inquisition's practices, and he came to the conclusion that torture is not a means to find out the truth at all, because under torture, people admit almost everything.
But de Maistre said, that, after all, "hardened heretics belong in the line of the worst criminals."
He said, "What is misleading us, today, is the indifference in our century concerning religious matters. While we take the old zeal, which some may call fanaticism, today's sophists are not concerned with the fact that Luther's arguments caused the Thirty Years' War. But the old law-givers knew what price people had to pay for such unfortunate teachings, and gave the death penalty for this crime. Just consider that the court of the Inquisition could have prevented the French Revolution. Then you understand, that the ruler who gives up such an instrument, would give a deadly blow to mankind."
Now, for de Maistre, the Reign of Terror by the Jacobins was the deserved punishment for the Church in France, and part of their salvation. And naturally, Napoleon was, for him, sent by the gods directly.
All modern history books, which mention de Maistre as the most important thinker of the period of the Restoration, absolutely omit what he said about the Inquisition, because that may upset the public view a little bit. But he was the clearest counter-pole to the idea of a constitution of a sovereign people. For him, all power came from God, and by birth. "The monarch is, through birth, a higher being, is distinguished from normal mortals, as a tree from the bush." (I don't mean this Bush!) "Legitimacy comes from being a tree," he says. "One believes that a family is royal, because they rule; the opposite is true: They rule, because they are royal. And, since God would not possibly set the laws of society in contradiction with nature, the revelations are identical with the laws of the world. And no society can be without a government; no government can be without sovereignty; no sovereignty without unrestrained power, or else chaos is certain. That is why the Supreme Court can not be judged, because there has to be a point where everything stops. Every government is unrestrained, and at the moment when, under the pretext of an error or an injustice, one can resist it, it ceases to exist."
Now, if you compare that to the Declaration of Independence, which explicitly says, that every people has the right to get rid of the government which violates their common good over a very long period of time, you can see the intention.
"Sure, the absolute power of the ruler has disadvantages. But resistance does the people no good. All efforts to gain more freedom, end up by putting them more in chains." He represented the so-called ultramontanism, the idea that all power comes from the other side of the mountains (meaning the Alps), namely the Pope. He said, "Man is incapable of recognizing good and evil."
And it is incredible, and I really had to swallow this, and think about it: that de Maistre's ideas became the dominant historical force in the 19th Century. He was the most important intellectual influence in this, helped, naturally, by Romanticism, which had similar ideas, that Europe should be unified under one emperor by the grace of God, modelled on the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages: an alliance of the throne and the altar; solidarity of all thrones among themselves; and nobilities against the potentiality of an insubordinate, inferior mass of people.
Another thinker in that line, was Carl Ludwig von Halle, who, in 1816, wrote The Restoration of State Science, which was the idea to eventually eliminate the entire notion of the state, to go back to the idea of the monarch as the owner of the state; to have no state, everything is private, and basically go back to feudalism. Now, this is at the core of what the neo-cons and the liberals mean by privatization: no state, nobody to represent the common good and the interests of the people. For de Maistre and Halle, the constitution was only a piece of trash paper. There were different shades of the same thing, but essentially they all had this idea of the Volksgeist and the Romantic state conception.
And these people are not something which were there [only] in Europe, but they had active links to the United States. A certain Ludwig Gerlach, who, together with his brother, had formed the Christian Germanic Circle, was not ashamed to praise the absolute power of the North American slave-owners, as having a law justified by God's grace. Now, the collaboration between the forces of the Holy Alliance and the Confederacy, is something which we should really have in mind. And they were not peacefully staying in their own country, but they had an active interventionist policy. The forces of the Holy Alliance, under the leadership of Castlereagh and Metternich, wanted to export their system, because they were convinced that the fire of upheaval was glowing under the surface, everywhere in the world—which would break out, one time here and one time there: in Latin America, in Spain, in Naples, in Greece. Burke compared their task with that of the firefighters and the police, who had to intervene everywhere.
Those who felt responsible for mankind and its culture had to conclude that the internal affairs of a country concerned Europe a lot; and when in one country, a wrong system existed, or when there were riots, or there was a rogue state, the whole world was involved and they had the right to intervene. They felt the threat from the spirit of insubordination, which had moved into the people. All these demands for a nation, freedom, reforms. At the Congress of Troppau, they agreed, in the name of legitimacy of the princes and the fight against the sovereignty of the people, on the right to intervene into the internal affairs of other countries. So, Austria intervened in Naples; Spain, in France, acted on behalf of Europe. And eventually the question of interventions led to a breakup of the alliance of the five powers; because Castlereagh's opponent—the Tory, Canning—split England out of the alliance, and recognized the governments of Latin America, and sabotaged, in this way, the planned French intervention in Latin America. That England would consider a French expedition to America as casus belli, forced the French Minister Polignac to issue the memo named after him.
On Dec. 2, 1823, the United States declared the Monroe Doctrine, according to which the United States regarded any efforts by European powers to [make claims on] any part of the Americas as dangerous for peace and the security of the Union.
A Youth Movement
But the Restoration and the Holy Alliance did not only carry out a policy of intervention against the rogue states internationally, but they also invented the predecessor of the Patriot Act of internal suppression. While the destiny of the German people was horse-traded at the Vienna Congress, that was not the whole reality, because the young people, who had returned from the Liberation Wars, who were filled with the highest ideals, and many of them had given their blood for these ideals, and they had matured in the face of death—they did not want to go back to normality. After 1815, these young people kept the spirit of the reforms alive. While the "Boomers" of their time had sunk back into the sorrows of daily life, they were dedicated to improving themselves. They felt themselves morally better than the older ones, and they felt that they could create a new youth culture, and through that, transform the entire population to a higher level of culture and morality. These young people consciously objected to the cold, and professional wisdom, of the older generation, and the injustices of social life, as it developed after 1815. The young people had proven themselves in the face of the enemy, and they were full of contempt for the Boomers of their time, the noblemen, who had been the hangers-on to the power of the system which kept the people in oppressed conditions. They became a youth movement much more powerful and effective for the nation, than the later youth movement before World War I, which liked to compare itself to the youth movement of this period. But, naturally it was not a homogeneous movement, and there were elements of previous typical student life—drinking, partying—and Metternich's police developed a system of spies, or so-called "confidants, provocateurs," in order to penetrate this youth movement.
But overall, they were the revolutionary progressive element, and in order to demonstrate the unity of all student fraternities, they wanted to have one single reunion. They chose the Wartburg, in Eisenach. It was the year 1817, and the 300th anniversary of the Reformation was approaching. They delayed their meeting until Oct. 18, in order not to disturb the Reformation celebrations, because they wanted to celebrate the "outer" liberation from the foreign occupation, and the "inner" liberation, which they attributed to Luther. And out of both, came the commitment to political freedom and national unity. Four hundred sixty-eight students gathered in Eisenach that day, and they made speeches, prayers, and they praised General Blücher, the famous "attack, attack, attack!" general of the Liberation Wars, and Luther, as their heroes. At the end, one group put on a satire play, which was an imitation of Luther who had burned the Papal banishment papers; and so they burned certain papers of reactionary authors—Halle, the poet Kotzebue, and the Prussian civil servants Schmaltz and Kamps—as symbols of the reaction. And that was all; it was not a big deal. But, for the participants, it was a tremendous experience. It was the first time in Germany, that youth of all parts of Germany were united. And it meant a fantastic memory for them for the rest of their lives.
It didn't have a big political meaning, but the liberal press played it up as a great political deed. And Metternich saw it as an absolutely big disturbance, the way these youth had disrespectfully thrown out conventions. The nobility was outraged. The princes everywhere saw it as a huge threat. For example, Prince Wittgenstein, the Police Minister in Berlin, saw the aim of the fraternities as "to kill the actual love for the Fatherland, to fancy a unified Germany, and to let the different German states disintegrate and disappear in chaos."
Repression and the Carlsbad Decrees
When the news came about the book-burning, the outrage in the various courts about this utmost insubordination grew gigantic. In some interesting books written recently, the authors have investigated the incomplete letters and documents of the period, and have come up with the hypothesis, that Metternich's spy system, which already had the youth movement under surveillance long before this scandal erupted, actually did this. And I think it's a very probable thing, that the incident of the book-burning itself was a covert operation by Metternich agents, to have a pretext for counter-measures. There are many footprints, hints, which give room for the suspicion to believe, that the effort was made to infiltrate or influence the fraternities, for example, around the question of whether membership should only be for Christians, or whether Jews be should allowed: Which, given the fact that many Jews had sacrificed their lives in the Liberation Wars, was obviously an outrage. But, especially also, the question of dueling. Dueling was at that time a highly favored means for the oligarchs to get rid of people they didn't like, such as Alexander Hamilton, Pushkin, and many others.
But, also subversion. A big question mark, for example, has to be raised about a certain professor from Giessen, who taught law: Karl Follen, who taught that for a moral purpose, all means are allowed. In records, he is described as a demonic character, who attracted a group of students around him, who called themselves the "Unconditional Ones." And their aim was to topple thrones, and they had a mixture of Christian ideas, Jacobin ideas, and the idea of martyrdom, which should bring about a blood-born "ethical republic."
To be more at the center of the fraternities, he moved to Jena and there a certain Karl Ludwig Sand became his pupil, who was a young student of theology who was deeply de-rooted through the war experience and disappointment about the peace afterwards, and who proved to be ready for martyrdom. When a vicious slander campaign targetted the playwright August von Kotzebue, the author of frivolous comedies, as a Russian spy and the enemy of the Fatherland, Sand carefully prepared to murder him, and then did it. It could not be completely clarified if this Professor Follen inspired the deed directly, or knew about it. But for Metternich, this was the perfect pretext to move against the whole movement. Serious questions have to be asked, whether this was inspired by the system, or at least not prevented, since Sand's preparations were quite visible. Metternich in his own writings says, "The pretext was given by the excellent Sand, at the cost of poor Kotzebue."
His instruction to Gentz, his secretary, was to use the murder to the hilt. Metternich contacted the King of Prussia, to move together, who was more than willing to launch a crusade against the revolutionary spirit. A secret agreement was made against the students, the press, the universities, the Parliament; and after Austria and Prussia had agreed, they contacted Hanover, Saxony, Mecklenburg, Nassau, and the three South German states, which all went for a "cure," so-called, to Carlsbad, the most fashionable health spa of the time.
And the result was the famous, or infamous, Carlsbad Decrees, announced on Dec. 20, 1819. All teachers were kicked out, who had the wrong views. University lectures were only conducted with a supervisor. The fraternities were forbidden. The Carlsbad Decrees were the sharpest measures of the Metternich system against the national and constitutional movement, and it lasted until 1848. It was a terrible period: police actions, an atmosphere of fear, political professors disappeared from the scene, and all the supporters of the youth movement were targetted. And it should be noted that the famous philosopher Hegel was on the side of the Metternich system throughout this entire period, and Kissinger wrote his famous book about it [A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-22]. Here [see photo] you have him contemplating not his navel, but his left nostril. He wrote his dissertation about this period, praising Castlereagh and Metternich; and he actually manages not to mention vom Stein and von Humboldt in the entire period, until sometime in 1840 or so, when they were already about to die. He didn't mention the Prussian reforms; he didn't mention their role at the Congress of Vienna. And if you never have seen falsification of history writing, then you have it in that book.
The Mind of the Grand Inquisitor
Now, let's go back to the fact that the most important ideologue of the Restoration was the Synarchist Joseph de Maistre, who had such praise for the Spanish Inquisition, as the final basis for the authority of the state. And the undeniable fact that the method of the Inquisition was the method of the Nazis, of Hitler, and of other fascist movements, which openly refer to themselves as being in that tradition, gives you a very useful insight of what it is, that these conservatives are afraid of.
And I want to show you the inside of their minds through the eyes of another person; namely, the Russian author Dostoevsky, who in his last novel, The Brothers Karamazov, narrates the story of the Grand Inquisitor, which is a story within the story.
This is an unbelievable story. It plays in Seville in the 16th Century. That day, nearly 100 heretics had been burned alive at the stake. Then, Jesus comes back to Earth. The people recognize him, and they ask him to do miracles. He makes one blind man see. He reawakens a dead girl. And, in his heart is hope and compassion, which radiates to the people. Then the Grand Inquisitor, a cardinal—obviously modeled on the great Cardinal Torquemada—passes by. He is a 90-year-old man, described as of great height, with deeply sunken eyes, and a dried-out face. He observes what is happening, and obviously, Dostoevsky takes this from Schiller's Don Carlos, which was translated by Dostoevsky's brother Mikhail in 1848. So, when he sees what Jesus does, the miracles he performs, his face darkens, his eyes light up with malice. He points his finger to Jesus, and orders the guards to grab Him. And, his power is so great, that the people are so subservient, that they make room for the guards, who take Him away. The crowd becomes like a single man: They bow their heads to the ground before the Inquisitor. Quietly he blesses them, and leaves. Very eerie.
The Inquisitor visits Jesus, during the night, in His cell. And he then has a long monologue, since Jesus remains silent. So, the Inquisitor says, "Why did you come to disturb us? Because you did come to disturb us. But, tomorrow, I will burn you as the most malicious of heretics. And the same people who kissed your feet today, will put the coal under the stake." He then accuses Jesus as having promised freedom to the people. "Did you not say, again and again, `I will make you free'? But, have you seen yourself, just now, these free people? This has caused us enormous trouble. But we have carried the job in your name, to the end. Fifteen centuries, we have plagued ourselves with your freedom. But now we are finished with it—completely finished. You don't believe that it is over with your freedom, for all time. You should know, today and now, these people are completely convinced they are totally free. In reality, they themselves brought us their freedom, and laid it obediently at our feet. And that was our accomplishment.
"And you, you go among them with empty hands, with your promise of freedom, which they in their naiveté and their innate evil cannot grasp, which only throws them into fear and awe; because there has never been, for the individual, nor all of mankind, anything less bearable than freedom. Do you see the stones here in the naked and glowing desert? Transform them into bread, and mankind will follow you like a herd, thankful and obedient, but also trembling the whole time, because you could remove your hand and the bread. And in the end, they will put their freedom at our feet, and they will say, `Rather, make us your slaves, but give us something to eat.' They will convince themselves that they can never be free, because they are weak, evil, worth nothing, and rebellious.
"You promised them Heavenly bread. But I repeat, how can this Heavenly bread compare in the eyes of this weak, sinful, ungrateful mankind with the Earthly bread? And even if, because of the Heavenly bread, thousands and thousands will follow you—but what about the millions, and hundreds of millions, who don't have the strength to turn away from the Earthly bread, in order to receive the Heavenly one? Do you only care about the thousands who are strong and great? But the millions who are innumerable as the sands in the ocean, who are weak, but who love you nevertheless, are they only material for the great and the strong?
"No, we also care for the weak. Sure, they are sinful, rebellious, but they will submit. They will adore us as gods, because we were willing to take away their freedom, which frightened them, and agreed to rule over them, so awful would it have become for them to be free. And we will say, that `we are obedient to You, and we rule in Your Name.' We will fool them again, because you, you will not ever get back to them again. In this fraud lies our suffering, because we are forced to lie.
"You have thought too highly of them, because they are nothing but slaves, even if capable of rebellion. Look around and judge for yourself: Fifteen centuries have passed, and look at them, the people. Whom have you elevated? I guarantee, man is weaker and lower than you believe. This rebellion is pitiful. They are not capable of taking away their own rebellion. They will think that he who has made them rebellious, just mocked them, and they will become blasphemous. And that will make them even more unhappy.
"Do you want to know the secret? We are not allied with you, but with him. That is our secret. Since eight centuries, when we took from him, what you refused." And there he refers to the Temptation of Christ by Satan shortly before the end of Jesus' life, when Satan comes and offers Jesus the riches of the world, and Jesus refuses. So, this Grand Inquisitor says, "We took what you refused, and since that time, we are with him"; namely, we took the riches of the world.
"We will give the people the quiet, the peaceful luck, the luck of the weak, for which they were made. We will convince them to give up their pride, which you taught them, when you elevated them above themselves. We will prove to them that they are just miserable children. They will admire us, be fearful, and proud that our power and wisdom is enabling them to tame such a rebellious herd of hundreds of millions. Happy will be all of them, these millions of beings, except the hundred thousand who rule over them. Because only we, who guard the secret, will be unhappy. And there will be thousands of millions of happy children, and a hundred thousand of martyrs, who have accepted the curse of cognition, and the ability to differentiate between good and evil."
Mel Gibson: The Synarchist Mindset
Now, Dostoevsky is a pretty sinister character, and I would say, if you want to look into a Synarchist mind, here, you have a very good example. But, that this is not an issue of the past, but a question very much of the present—that such Satanic minds do exist today, and they function today—you can see in a movie and a scandal which has erupted and will become much, much bigger in the next period, because this movie is going to open in the United States in two weeks. It's the movie by Mel Gibson, "The Passion of the Christ."
Now, I have been only told about this, but people who have seen short clips of this movie, 30-second clips, report that it demonstrates an absolutely revolting, unbelievable violence, which shows how Christ is kicked in the face, beaten in the face, with typical Hollywood special effects. And since I have, in the past, studied the effect of violence on the mind, just normal violence—the fact that this is done to Christ, is a completely offensive matter, especially to all Christians. But, it has a real Satanic aim on top of it, because there is one scene in it, where Pontius Pilate says that he does not have the power for the execution of Christ, but it is the Jewish priests who have this power. Now, obviously this is historically completely absurd, because every historian knows, that only the Romans had the power to execute people. But, the film is obviously designed to cause anti-Semitic feelings, and it is known that the father of Mel Gibson is actually a negationist, who rejects that the Holocaust ever took place.
Now, it is very interesting, that among other people, among those who promote this movie, are the so-called Legionaires of Christ, an organization which was founded in Mexico by a certain Marcial Maciel, who's presently in his eighties. And, it is praised by the Cardinal Castrillón Hoyos from Colombia, that it could be compared to Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel.
Now, it is very interesting that Mel Gibson, who according to himself is a great sinner, and went through the entire pit of Hollywood, said that he made this movie because his sins were so great, that only through cathartic violence, by portraying the character of Christ, could he free himself of these sins. Now, this idea of cathartic violence, you know through de Maistre, Donoso Cortés, Kojève, and other such Synarchists. In any case, we will do more research about this movie. But, it definitely has a very bad smell, because it already was used to set the secretary of the Pope and the press spokesman of the Vatican, Navarro Valls, against the Pope. And the movie, on its webpage, claims that during the shooting of the film, miracles happened: People who were blind could all of a sudden see; people who couldn't hear, could hear; that a person was struck by lightning, and could just march on. So, I'm just saying, the mindset of the Synarchist is there.
Schiller's `Don Carlos'
Now, in Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor, he accused Christ of having promised freedom to the people. Now, think of the scene with the Grand Inquisitor in Schiller's Don Carlos, of which you have seen some scenes, last night.
King Philip, after having killed Posa at the end of the play, goes to the Grand Inquisitor to ask him for advice. He says, "I was just deceived, in an unbelievable story." And then the Grand Inquisitor says, "I knew all about it." King Philip says, "How did you know? From whom? Since when?" And the Grand Inquisitor says, "What you knew since sunset, I have known for years. We had the facts about him, from the beginning of his life till the end of his life." And the King says, "Why did you not warn me?" The Grand Inquisitor says, "I give the question back. Why did you not come to me to ask, before you threw yourself into the arms of this man? One look should have been enough, to reveal to you the heretic. How did you dare to play this way with the Holy Office? To cheat us of our victim, whom we had carefully groomed, for our purposes? You cheated us of the work of many years. What could this man have given to you? What could you have expected from him?" So the King says, "I needed a human being." The Grand Inquisitor says, "What human beings? Human beings are just numbers for you, nothing else!"
Then, the question is, what should happen with Don Carlos, King Philip's own son. And the King says, "He is my only son. For whom have I amassed?" And the Grand Inquisitor says, "Far better putrefaction, decay, than freedom."
Defeat the Synarchists Today
So, let's look back at the period of the last 250 years: the American Revolution, which was the incarnation of the best traditions of European philosophy—the image of man, coming from Plato; the idea of inalienable rights of all human beings, as developed by Nicolaus of Cusa; of Leibniz, the pursuit of happiness. The absolute failure to repeat this American Revolution in Europe, because of the failure of the French Revolution, the Jacobin Terror, the first modern fascist, Napoleon, the miserable Congress of Vienna, and terrible Restoration. The image of man which reduces man to a fearful creature, which the oligarchs have—which de Maistre, Dostoevsky, and so forth, are so insightful of—contrast that with the powerful idea of Friedrich Schiller, and the method Friedrich Schiller has developed, a method how to set man free, how to locate your identity, not in your physical existence, where you are vulnerable, but in the Sublime. To connect your own identity with those ideas which connect you to your own immortality, and that of all of mankind. Schiller has developed a method, and he has demonstrated it in his "Jeanne d'Arc" [The Maid of Orleans] and in many other plays; a method Martin Luther King lived: How you can be free, not because you are not a physical human being, but because you have an identity which is located, connected to universal principles. And how, as Schiller says, you can be "morally free."
Now, the Synarchists have subverted the American Revolution into the actual opposite. And that's what we are faced with, and that is why it is not a futile exercise to look at the Congress of Vienna and the Restoration, because that is what you are looking at in America, today. And, as Lyn was saying yesterday, in a rather chilling remark, that he was standing by the bedside of a dying empire that started in the 18th Century.
Now, what does the future bring? Well, I think there is only one alternative acceptable. We have to recruit the whole human race to the image of man, which goes from the idea, that every human being is a cognitive being; that every human being can develop their cognitive and spiritual powers; and it is that which sets him free, and that which constitutes his happiness. And that is obviously what the internationally growing LaRouche Youth Movement is absolutely committed to do: To recruit the whole human race to that image of man, because everything else is not acceptable.
We face a period of dramatic changes, changes compared to which the collapse of the Soviet Union will look like peanuts. That was the collapse of a system, but the globalization system—what is coming down, now—is going to be much more fundamental. And, as Lyn was saying, there is no master plan, there is no recipe book, there is no prescription, how this is going to be. All I know, is that the only outcome which is acceptable, is that we will turn this absolutely fundamental crisis of civilization into a just, new world economic order, which will allow that every human being on this planet can live. And that we will make a foreign policy in the tradition of John Quincy Adams: a community of principle of perfectly sovereign nation-states, which obviously can only function if we put Lyn in the White House.
Therefore, I think that the lesson to draw out of this, out of the laws of 250 years of history, is: We have to make a Second American Revolution, not only in the United States, but also in Europe. And in other countries, they have to revitalize their best traditions, because we can not impose something which is alien to them; they have to come up with whatever is best in their history. And, I think if we do this, in a Dialogue of Cultures, a new Renaissance will be possible.
I think it is us, and our power of imagination to give this vision to the world, which will make the difference. Schiller, in a letter to Countess Schimmelman, wrote in 1795, "The highest philosophy ends and is culminated by a poetical idea. So does the highest morality and the highest politics. It is the poetical mind, which gives the ideal to all three of them. And to approximate that, is the highest perfection." So, let's have a beautiful, poetical idea about the future. And let's have a Second American Revolution, and say, with Schiller: "Let's recruit a million kings, because freedom is better than decay."