This article appears in the March 4, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (1922-2019)
Video Excerpts
Winning the Ecumenical Battle for the Common Good
[Print version of this article]
The two focal points of this conference will turn out to be, at the end, as they are at the beginning, the issue of Eurasian recovery, Eurasian development, as the pivot for world recovery, including the role of Russia as a very special part of any such recovery effort, and the relationship of this Eurasian commitment, to the contrasting situation of Africa.
In other words, to understand the world as a whole, in the simplest terms of reference, look at the possibility of what we can do in Eurasia, and then look at the needs of Africa, in order to see humanity in its wholeness. Those who have the means to lift themselves up, and those on whose behalf, in the larger term, they must act, to lift them up too. Because the idea of the general welfare, while it’s a notion of government of each nation, also must be a notion of the relationships among nations of the world.
We must find a community of principle in the notion of the general welfare, to unite nations for a common good. The common good is the general welfare of the nations, of the people in each, and of the community of nations as a group. It’s the only chance for this planet.
LaRouche’s full 2001 keynote presentation is available here.
The Idea of ‘the Good’ in the Year of Augustine
What is the Good? The Good is the power of mind to recognize a principle of reason as the lawful ordering of the entire universe; to recognize that a process of development is associated with this; and to recognize that the continuation, and acceleration of the takeover of the personality by elaborated reason, is the Good. The elevation of the moral condition of mankind, in correspondence with this principle, and in actions congruent with that principle, is the Good.
Such was the principle of Solon at Athens. Such was the principle of the Platonic Academy, the concept of the republic. And such were the principles of the founding of the modern European republic by the writings of Saint Augustine. That is the Good.
The republic is the only natural condition of mankind. This was proven by Dante and his followers, that the only natural form of republic is a totally sovereign nation-state, not subject to the IMF or World Bank or UNO; a sovereign nation-state, a republic, which is based upon the employment of a literate form of common language by its citizens—a literate form of language, which imparts to those citizens, in the words of Shelley, “the power of imparting and receiving profound and impassioned conceptions respecting man and nature”; conceptions organized in the form of reason, the form of reason as exemplified by the Socrates of Plato’s Dialogues.
That is the natural condition of mankind. All other features of a natural condition of mankind pertain to the development of the republic and the citizen, rather than as to its form and its essence.
LaRouche’s full 1985 keynote presentation is available here
