EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY, JULY 9, 2021

Afghanistan, COVID, and the Moral Fitness To Survive

July 8, 2021 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche frequently made his audiences uncomfortable by posing to them the question of whether or not the United States, and Mankind as a whole, had lost the moral fitness to survive—that if the trajectory of current policies and thinking continued, our species might well disappear.

For example, in his Feb. 15, 2000 article, “U.S.A. v. LaRouche: ‘He’s a Bad Guy, But We Can’t Say Why,’ ” LaRouche wrote:

“Through the cult of popular opinion, Rome acquired its fatal loss of the moral fitness of its culture to survive. We as a nation, have been following that same road to Hell, during no less than the recent three decades. The leading, characteristic pathology of that self-doomed Roman culture was the corruption of the mass of the population by the methods of ‘bread and circuses.’ There is virtually no moral difference between the form of entertainment which the Romans enjoyed in the Coliseum under the worst of the Caesars, and popular mass-entertainment today, both TV entertainment, and such forms as mass-spectator stadium and related sports events. If one compares the pornography and blood-and-gore in mass entertainment, with what usually passes for mass-media news broadcasts, one should recognize, with a sense of horror, the systemic likeness of the moral depravity of ancient Roman culture and our own.”

LaRouche elaborated: “History punishes, or even weeds out nations and cultures which suffer a manifestly incurable want of the moral fitness to survive.”

Now consider today’s withdrawal from Afghanistan by the U.S. and allied NATO forces. Will we be able to debate out and change the disastrous policies which led us into that 20-year catastrophe? This is a crossroad for humanity, Helga Zepp-LaRouche told associates today. Will we allow Afghanistan to sink into a civil war, with an ensuing nightmare of terrorism, drugs and mass migration? Will we continue the same, failed policies? Or can we change those policies and cooperate with China, Russia, and other powers for the well-being of the entire area, by extending the Belt and Road Initiative across the region, as Lyndon LaRouche long advocated?

Or consider the COVID-19 crisis, where the world has just reached the terrible marker of 4 million deaths due to the pandemic, while the majority of the world’s population still has almost no access to life-saving vaccines and other health requirements. As Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the head of the World Health Organization, just stated: “Vaccine nationalism, where a handful of nations have taken the lion’s share, is morally indefensible and an ineffective public health strategy.” He further argued: “The fact that millions of health and care workers have still not been vaccinated is abhorrent.”

Will we find the moral fitness to at last adopt the necessary world health policy that Helga Zepp-LaRouche has championed, of quickly providing not only vaccines, but modern health capabilities in every nation on the planet, with the needed accompanying development of food, water, energy, infrastructure, and other physical economic requirements?

To best address the urgent strategic issue of mankind’s moral fitness to survive, the LaRouche Legacy Foundation has announced that it will be holding an international seminar “On the 50th Anniversary of LaRouche’s Stunning Forecast of August 15, 1971: So, Are You Finally Willing To Learn Economics?” The online seminar will bring together leading international experts to examine the unique contributions of Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019) to the science of physical economy, on the 50th anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s fateful announcement of the end of the Bretton Woods system on August 15, 1971.

As the announcement states: “This is also an urgent invitation to reflect on what went wrong with economic policy in the trans-Atlantic sector over the last five decades, in order to correct those persisting policy blunders and change course before we plunge into a breakdown crisis comparable only to the 14th century New Dark Age.”