LPAC Policy Committee with Lyndon LaRouche · June 15, 2015

TRANSCRIPT

Matthew OGDEN: Good afternoon, it’s June 15th, 2015.  My name is Matthew Ogden, and you’re joining us for the LaRouche PAC Policy Committee discussion. We’re broadcasting as usual over Google on Air. I’m joined via video by Bill Roberts, from Detroit, Michigan; Dave Christie, from Seattle, Washington; Kesha Rogers, from Houston, Texas; Michael Steger from San Francisco, California; and Rachel Brinkley from Boston, Massachusetts.  And here in the studio, we’re joined by Diane Sare, as well as Megan Beets from the LaRouche PAC Basement team, and Mr. LaRouche.  And I know coming off of this conference over the weekend, and your ongoing series of Thursday night calls, we have a lot to discuss.

Lyndon LAROUCHE:  Yes.  Well, I would say that the Thursday evening — we’ve done four so far, and we’ll be doing this week Thursday, the fifth case; and I have to shoo some of our members away from trying to muscle in, on that operation.  Because what that is, is a very carefully crafted operation which we’ve been, and I’ve been especially assigned to. I didn’t start this, but I was assigned to do that.  So we have someone who’s actually the stay, who maintains the standard and management of the show, and I come in on Thursday.  And so we find out that the characteristics of the show are really —  you can understand them.  You can understand them; they make sense, doing it that way.  And what we’ve done, we’ve finally begun — people who see one week’s show who in part will react on that for their part, in the next show and so forth and so on. And so that’s what’s happening.

And so we’re having an evolution. You know, first of all, we were starting from an organization, a concept for an organization, which was a failure.  It was completely obvious:  a failure.  Because what they were doing would produce nothing. They were trying to go on individual contacts, trying to talk them into something or something like that; that kind of approach.  It doesn’t work, obviously!  And it’s only when people are participating in a fairly large volume of population, that we were talking about 80 people or something like that, going into that range now, so they’re all on the same show.  They’re in different locations, but they’re all on the same show.

And then you find there’s quite a bit of variegation, in terms of what the talents are, the responses are and so forth. But then you find, because they react to each other, in the exchange of the process, now you’re actually having something, and I just insisted, nobody in this area immediately, or in any other area, should actually try to muscle in on this thing, because that’ll ruin it.  Because what’s happening, you’re developing a mass of people who’ve been associated with us in large degree all over the United States, and what’s happened is, the interchange which goes on in that process has produced a development of the minds of people. Because now they have a sense of what the identity is of what their mission orientation is, and what we’re really concentrating on is mission-orientation.

I mean different people have different mission-orientations, naturally.  They may change in those, but they have that orientation.  … and unique.  For example in Manhattan.  Now Manhattan is the most sane area in the United States, with all the other things which are not always so sane in Manhattan.

But if you go into a selection, of the kind of people we think should be the leaders of the culture in Manhattan, you know, that works.  Because now you produce a population which can talk with each other — we don’t want a bunch of individual people, each are working separately.  That doesn’t work.  You want a concert idea.  You want like a rehearsal in concert.  And we’re trying to do with these Thursday events, my purpose is to get the idea of a concert, produce a concert with various people, and we’re talking about now 50, 60, or 60 or 70  right now, who are hearing each other!  And many of them are coming back, some are not there at certain times, but the overall process is that.

So it’s an organization, which is participating with me directly,  — with me directly; not somebody going out and saying, I’m going to go out in the street, and go in the gutter and find a client on that basis. [laughter] And that’s the way it has to work.  And our organization was going to die, if we continued to do what we were doing.  And so, we had a key member who was struggling with this thing, and he said,  “I need help.” And so, I said, of course I’ll do it. And it was just meet.

But the problem is, you get everyone wants to muscle in, and say our little group is going to take a part of this action.  I say, “bull — no more of this crap.”  Because what we’re trying to do, is create an active coherence, among people who are coming from different geological and other parts of the planet! And that means you’re developing a population.  All these guys who think they were organizing people, were talking about one individual at a time, or maybe a married couple at a time.  It was not causing the effect you have to create if you want to create a movement.

So, I just said:  You are not allowed to do that, to take this over, because you don’t know how to do that.  You’re not competent to do this job.  I’m competent, you’re not.  And they don’t really like that too much, but it has to be done that way.

Because it’s like a chorus, like a musical chorus.  And what you have, is you’re having a number of people who learning how to play in concert.  But this is not the musical thing as such, but it’s the same thing as the musical thing:  You’re developing a principle of concept, and concert, and that’s what you depend upon if you want to really build an organization.

Like the thing, with our commitment now is to development, professionally, with people who are some professional and some not, but who have an inclination for musical performance, and who can show that they have a potentiality of becoming successful, or induced to become successful.  And you’ve got to say that that musical idea, of like a musical chorus, as if you can imagine, all of Manhattan suddenly has become a musical chorus, resonating from the top to the bottom, and on the seas beyond.

And that’s the way you want to organize people, you want to organize society.  Because, the idea is this idea of individual propriety, which is highly overrated.  Humanity is its own existence.  And people are living and dying, aging, and so forth, and growing up.  So, This is a process.  So, what’re you going to do?  Take one person at a time, and say, you’re our man or woman for the week, or something?  That’s nonsense!  What you have to do is bring a consonance, a symphony of consonance, together, of people, where they all are speaking, more or less converging on a common understanding of each other, which is a correct one. So if you take the musical thing, the Classical musical composition and performance operation, you have an ideal model for developing the minds of people.

And the popular music of today, is the thing that produces idiots, but dangerous idiots.  And that’s what the problem is. So if you don’t have a harmony, in that sense, of the people at large, or most of the people at large, you’re not going to be successful in trying to build a society.  You’re going to be a failure.  And Wall Street is a bunch of failures!  They’re brainless idiots.  They may have some tissue up there in the place of brains, but, they’re idiots:  They have no orientation, towards humanity, human qualities.  None!  Their thing is greed. Their thing is stealing.  They don’t know anything, but they know how to steal, but they don’t always have good judgment in stealing, they just grab something.  And they try to sell it at an inflated price.

So the important thing is, you have bring about, which we’ve lost in the United States, you have to build a certain kind of harmony, a human harmony, where people of different talents, become part of a common chorus, and the idea of the parts, the unity of the parts, the cooperation of the parts, of the common chorus, is the principle a republican nation.  And that’s been lost.

And so, fortunately our own organization is full with people who have absolutely no competent understanding of this whole process.  Probably some of the people on the screen there, is included with people who do have a sense of that.  But when you go beyond that kind of part of our organization, and go outside, there’re very few areas; you don’t really want people singing from the Southern states.  Because the result is not satisfactory; the results are not exactly attractive.  And that point is that sometimes — that whole thing is a destructive process.

Because when you have the former slaves, who are talented as Classical musicians, which is a whole category of them, most of whom are being dwindled, shall we say; but they had great capabilities.  I’ve worked closely with some of them, on these things, very great capabilities, masterful ones!  And often, in the international field, they were discriminated against.  If you weren’t useful, if you were an African-American and you had the best singing voice in the world, you were in trouble!  Because they won’t honor it.  And the only way we got good performance, was by creating the American Black Classical musician:  They were the only ones who were any good.

The jazz players and so forth were way off the bat; they were really bats, in disguise.  But the point is, the great Classical musicians of a generation  — you know, my generation, these musicians were among the best in the world.  And so, that’s the point:  You’ve got to bring, you use the idea of music, or Classical musical composition, and you use that as a way of saying, “What d’you mean, ‘we’re united’?”  And you want to see what the riots are in various parts of the streets in the United States today, and some of the rubbish that goes on in Texas, and the worst rubbish has now piling in, in terms of California — or Californication, as I guess it’s being turned into?

That’s what the problem is.  And that’s what I have to deal with, with our own organization.  Because they have this idea of going out and recruiting somebody.  It’s an idiotic idea! Because the idea is, what’s the social process? What’s the context of the social process, which creates the unity, the actual, functional unity, of a nation? Or a section of the nation?

And that’s where the problem arises, and I think that’s what we have to deal with as of now.  Because I think one of the themes right now, the practical theme which arose from what we did on Sunday, raised the question: Why don’t we have a unified concept of chorus?  Why don’t we have a deep understanding, of the ancient Greek notion of chorus, because all great music comes, either from China or from Europe, in terms of the idea of the chorus.  And the idea of the chorus is the unifying of a whole population to a common sense of reality and mission, whatever their other skills are.  And they rejoice, they come together, and rejoice that they are coming together.  And they go from whatever meetings they do and experience they have, and they feel refreshed by getting in that meeting, getting in that discussion, getting in that event, that musical performance.

And that’s what we’ve lost, essentially, because of jazz. And jazz is something which is sexually ugly.  We don’t want any more of that.

OGDEN:  Well, I have to say, this is precisely the idea around which you formed this body, the Policy Committee three years ago, or more; as a body which would represent the nation, but among a number of people, in harmony with each other, in a commonality of mission, to shape the institution of the Presidency.  And now what you’re doing, with these Thursday night discussions, these Thursday night calls, is doing that in the large, an expansion of that to include a much broader cross-section of the American population, to bring that mission around shaping the Presidency, as a real way, as you were saying, to restore the republican idea.

LAROUCHE:  Well, the problem is the so-called “leaders” of our organization, as such, are incompetent, in  just that basis. Very few leaders of our organization, are actually competent from that standpoint.  Because what they think is competence, is not competence; but what they think it is, they think “my idea, my idea.”  This thing, I got this deal.  I got this secret.

But they don’t understand what democracy should mean; they talk about democracy, but they’re talking about controversy. They’re talking about destruction, conflict.  And when people are in a state of harmony, and the idea, the principle of music is based on this idea of harmony, what the principle of harmony is, and the principle of harmony is not something which is restricted to singing a particular thing.  Usually the result of that thing is bad, very bad!  The person who’s just a singer and says, “I can sing,” is probably incompetent musically — and otherwise, also morally in many cases.

The jazz thing!  The way it’s done is immoral, absolutely immoral.  Because it denies the principle of humanity, and goes on with the individualist theory.  Every individual.  Mankind is what?  A collection of individuals.  Well, that’s a zoo!  Not a human population.  [laughter]

And then, our Congress is largely populated by a zoo of that nature.  Look at the typical thing of the Senate:  How many members of the Senate are actually zoo animals? [laughter]  And others as well.  And people in the Senate who are good, will have a sense of that, because they have a sense of a social responsibility, a true sense of taking, or trying to pull a population into a self-integration, where they have a sense of unity. Which is not some kind of lockstep operation, but it’s creating things which are variegated in detail, but which are unified in overall conception.

OGDEN:  Speaking of zoo animals, an old friend of yours, Andy Jacobs, who was a former Congressman, used to write a book that he called The Bestiary which was “What animal is this congressman?  What zoo animal is that senator?”  And that’s a good view of… [laughter]

LAROUCHE:  Absolutely, I would say so.  But this is the problem we have to address, because we’re really dealing with this thing.  We’re on the edge of thermonuclear war.  And the people of Europe, the people of the United States in general, have no harmony; so how can you have music without harmony?

Megan BEETS:  Stravinsky.

One thing that came up when we were discussing this last night, exactly on the music question was, the way you put it was that music is a necessary power within society to give people, not only access to truth, but the ability to convey truth to other people and throughout society.  And in terms of the ability to pull the nation together, particularly via Manhattan, as we’re doing, that the chorus is actually not, just as you’re saying, a collection of people, or some kind of extracurricular activity, but it is actually a principle within society whereby people can come together and have access to the experience of a discovery of truth.  Which goes completely against popular opinion.  The idea that there’s truth in music, there’s truth which is behind the notes, behind the score as such, and that exemplifies the principle by which we can bring the nation together.

LAROUCHE:  There’s a model in the 20th century for this: Furtwängler.  And you take his adaptation of the score provided by Schubert, that that performance contains all the elements, necessary elements, of the very principle, the most profound underlying principle, of musical performance and composition. Because he was always changing, he was not repeating notes.  He was always changing; the stress was it.  He moved them, everything moved. So you have the element parts, which seem to be different parts of the chorus, but they’re not!  They’re all the same thing, but they distinguish the part aspect, into these separate parts — what seem to be separate parts, but you have about five beats between each separation in the development of each phase of the completed work.  And Furtwängler just took this operation, and took this as a point which he worked from, to perfect the intention of Schubert.

OGDEN:  With Schubert, also his treatment of Beethoven:  I mean, with these composers in particular, you have what’s seemingly a very simple material, but he’s able to bring out the subtle differences between one of those pieces of material versus another, and you have the interstices, as you were saying last night, between these things, which is by no means represented by what you were calling the “transcript,”  or the score, just the notes on the score.

And Furtwängler was unique in his dedication, to doing that, as opposed to what you were denouncing Toscanini, last night.

LAROUCHE:  Oh God, what an idiot!  [laughter] A noisy idiot. A blusterer. And an evil man, actually, as the way he lived in life.

But that’s the point, that humanity has to be based on that notion, and the function of Classical musical composition, or the basis of that form of composition, is actually the moral principle, which distinguishes man most efficiently, from apes. Or baboons, especially.

Diane SARE:  Well, speaking of that, I was very struck by one aspect of the report from Helga and Jacques Cheminade on the conference this weekend [in Paris], which was an extraordinary conference, both from the standpoint of the optimism of what was presented from some of the African speakers of what the potential is, but also, the very real threat of thermonuclear war, and the question of the United States and our ability to succeed in throwing out Obama, and taking this off the table.

Because, it was clear, the last week, there were several interesting shifts in the dynamic:  Obama got smashed on his TPP. You had the Conyers-Yoho bill that we’re not going to give weapons to the Nazi Azov Battalion [in Ukraine]; and I guess [Rep.] Walter Jones prepared a video or something [for the conference], so that they could see that there is, indeed, a resistance in the United States, which you have been the key spokesman and leader of.  But what Jacques reported is their question is, are they actually going to succeed?  It’s not enough to just oppose, we actually have to get this thermonuclear war off the table.

LAROUCHE:  My role in this process as a whole is sometimes misestimated.  My role lies in what I understand.  What most people don’t understand, unfortunately, in society.  But the point is, the idea of harmony, the principles of harmony.  And you must perfect harmony and you have to do it honestly.  You can’t say “this is harmony,” you can’t say “this is harmony,” “that’s harmony,” you can’t do that!  that’s nonsense, it’s just screws everything up, as the word goes.

The point is, that mankind has to find a means, which we call that of harmony, and musical harmony, Classical musical harmony is the best expression of that, the model.  When you bring people into  that state of harmony, when it includes a true musical harmony, in terms of Classical human harmony of composition, since Bach, for example, in particular; there were things earlier, but this is typical.  Leibniz and Bach:  Typical.

Leibniz of course, is an extremely important and relevant person in this respect, especially on the question of harmony. So the question is, we have to live, on the adoption of a principle of harmony, in those terms of reference.  We have to have a point of reference, which is the point where harmony per se, is perceived.  Then the harmony per se, when perceived, becomes the medium of inducing people to become human.

Otherwise they lose humanity when they get the raw individualism, or these fake — then you lose harmony.  And therefore, that was the purpose, among other things, of the British Empire, to destroy the true principle of human harmony, in song.  The British were clever, in a sense, in certain cases. They did all kinds of evil things to various people, but when it came to Britain itself, the hard-core British policy in its population, the point was, is to fake it.

It’s like the people among the “upper clahsses,” shall we say, who went to, in adolescence, and became homosexual, so you couldn’t tell which sex was which, which is typical of the British, you know.  And I think the Queen, Her Majesty as she’s called (I think we call it something else), but that’s the point!

And so therefore, the idea is having the idea of true harmony, which resides in something which is a characteristic feature of the human mind; the human mind is prepared only to function, with the concept of harmony.  And the idea of harmony, as harmony in the form of Classical song, choral work, is the model for all harmony in mankind, and everything in life that’s harmonical!  The machine tool, everything around, you’re playing with, is all part of harmony.  And if you don’t have harmony, then you have disjunction, and you have degeneration.

It’s that simple!  But the point, the principle by name is very simple: it’s called Classical artistic composition:  music, in music.  Music is the medium for typifying, Classical harmonic composition.  Other media adapt to that principle, as the ancient Greeks did.  And therefore, that’s how mankind becomes human. He’s no longer a wild animal, or a baboon, and that’s the difference.

And that’s what’s required.  And that’s what the big fight is.  And therefore, our efforts now is largely concentrated as an organization, in Manhattan.  Because Manhattan inherently contains probably the best intellectual capabilities of any concentration in the United States.  Despite all the bad things in Manhattan, you can get, say 30% or 35% or so forth of the population of Manhattan, whatever class appearance they have, tend to be human in this way.  Other people who are, you know, the ragged evil ones, do not do that.

But the one area, particularly in Manhattan, is unique, in the degree of concentration, of variegated players in the game, for our nation.  New York is not the heart of the nation, but it contains the heart of the nation.

OGDEN:  I don’t think, just for your emphasis here, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Abraham Lincoln’s leading economic advisor Henry C. Carey, wrote a book called The Harmony of Interests.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah, right.

OGDEN:  It’s the principle of republican economics.

LAROUCHE:  Exactly.  But that’s what we’ve lost. And we’ve lost it in the 20th century, beginning with guess who — two characters.

OGDEN:  Hilbert and Bertrand Russell.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah, who destroyed the 20th century. And are destroying the 21st century right now.  They’re eating away at it like a monster, chewing on you!

So, we are in that stage where this becomes the crucial thing.  And the fact that we are doing this, in respect to Manhattan, as such, and using that as a reference point, does not mean it’s limited to Manhattan.  It means we’re using the Manhattan case, as the example, for creating the harmony of the people of the United States, and other nations beyond that.

OGDEN:  Xi Jinping has also been explicit about that principle, in terms of the BRICS nations, and this emerging new relationship…

LAROUCHE: The “win-win” concept.

OGDEN: Right!  And he’s made it as explicit as this is “a symphonic composition,” or a “symphonic collaboration” between nations.

LAROUCHE:  We have, on the piano, at that house, you have this fragmented model of the harmonic principle.

OGDEN:  Of the bells, the ancient Chinese bells, right. Yeah.

LAROUCHE:  Well, these are the important things to start from.  I mean, you want to get the baby to stop the howling and to have some fun.  And that’s what we require. And I think our whole approach has to be that idea of the Harmony of the Worlds, and if we don’t understand that principle of the Harmony of the Worlds we should shut our mouths until we find out what that’s all about.  You have ’em going around, you know, [lips pursed] “hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm!” [laughter]

OGDEN:  Sounds like a character from a Mozart opera!

LAROUCHE: Yeah right!  I think we should probably get people doing that.  They can’t talk, they can only go “hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm!”  as Mozart  wanted it. [laughter]

Kesha ROGERS:  I think — you really think about it from the fact that, what you see as he emerging principle embodied in what China and the BRICS nations are doing, is exemplary of this conception of a community of principle, a community of harmony. And it also is, I think that what has to be expressed, it’s also the freeing of a population, you know of societies and peoples who have been oppressed.  And so, that’s what you’re talking about, when your expression of “true Classical composition” and participation in this.

Because it’s not just a matter of the beauty of it, and something that people can listen to and like, but it has to be something that you embody, that becomes a part of your identity. And it’s the example of, in the South, what the slavery, what people were brought out of in terms of the conditions of oppression in slavery.  The music was the embodiment of what made them human, what made them free.  And when you look at the expression of the Classical compositions of the American Negro Spiritual, you can really get an understanding that this was something that you didn’t just go and read notes, it was something that you embodied.  It was something that it was a sense of an expression of passion, to “I am a human being. I will be considered as a human being.”  And when they’re singing this music, it’s in their soul, it’s in their body.

That’s the same thing whether or not you’re expressing through Bach or Beethoven, or any other great Classical composer. You can’t just do it from the standpoint of a succession of notes, you’re doing it from the standpoint that it lives within you.  And so, that’s the expression of how this harmony of principle comes together:  It’s that you have a conception of mankind which lives within you, that every single human being is a creative, unique creature, that has contributions to offer to the improvement and the betterment of the conditions of mankind.

LAROUCHE:  You make a very important point on this issue. First of all, on the history of the Negro Spiritual.  Now, the Negro Spiritual was a phenomenon, but the point was that the phenomenon had to be based on freedom.  In other words, without freedom, the Negro singer could not really achieve the humanity that they deserved.  You found that the leadership in this process, was actually a former slave who killed his master, and became the greatest leader in that period, Frederick Douglass, and that’s how it worked.

Now, what you had then, you had from that point of departure, you had the greatest collection of spiritual singers, who were not just spiritual singers.  They were not stereotypes, limited to the Negro — they were not stereotypes, they were human beings!  They were no longer to be called “Negro.”  They’re human beings. And the Negro thing is the fact we had been enslaved, by Presidents of the United States!  From this state! That’s And what’s wrong, and the curse of this state, right now to the present day! Despite all the changes that have occurred, this state, in the United States, is the chief author and emblem of corruption, and it’s on exactly that basis.

And what happened is, when you get the jazz player, the jazz player is actually imperfect creature, because they don’t have any understanding of music.  They’re going back, not to the Negro slave, who’s freed himself and become a musician, because he had access to it and they learned this stuff;  they wanted to learn, and they did!  And I have a whole collection of people, most of whom are dead now, who were great singers!  And you wouldn’t say “Negro singers,” you would simply — you might mention it, but it would not be category; it would be a phenomenon of a revolution, of a part of the American population, to assert the talent it had.  And the talent they had by freeing themselves, of the restriction which was the slave system.  So the slaves would sing, yes, but it was a defective singing; why was it defective?  Because they slaves!  They had no power to express themselves creatively, and so therefore the music was arbitrary.  It was necessary but arbitrary.  It was a self-defense mechanism, to get some semblance of an identity.

But then you had the revolt, and when a Negro slave assassinated his master, and became famous for that, that was the beginning of freedom.

ROGERS:  Yes, and Frederick Douglass gave the slaves the entryway, for lack of better words, into that true identity of music.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah, exactly.

BEETS:  Yeah, there’s a beautiful story, that exemplifies what you’re both saying, about Roland Hayes, who was an African-American great singer; and he was giving a concert in Germany early in the century, and there was an incredible amount of racism in the audience.  And when he came out on stage, he was jeered, and yelled and booed.  And he calmly waited, for, I think up to 20 minutes while this went on, and at a certain point, the noise died down, and he opened his mouth and began singing a German Lied.  And at that point, he completely won over the audience, because of the beauty and universality of himself, of his identity and of the passion of these artistic ideas.

LAROUCHE:  We knew him!  Yeah.  We knew him as a living person.  He’s died recently, in terms of my generation.  No, he was a great man.

But even in the opera, in New York, there was real, almost a genocide thing about the Negro singer — even New York!  In the opera in New York.

SARE:  Silvia Olden Lee always told the story of her mother, who was very light-complected, who was a gorgeous soprano, and the mother was invited to sing with the Metropolitan Opera Company, as long as she pretended she was white, and dumped the guy she was engaged to, who was a slightly darker complexion.

LAROUCHE:  Exactly!  That’s what I’m talking about, that’s the case I’m talking about! And they were never able to live together, after that point.  Because the New York opera prevented her; she’d be thrown off the program if she’d tried to continue her marriage to him.  And that’s how — it’s a real story.

But these kinds of stories sometimes clear away the nonsense of people trying to interpret things, they do not …  And the case like the Negro Spiritual, people don’t understand it.  And even people who were some of the greatest singers, were pushed aside and pushed into niches from which they could operate, instead of being honored for what they are, their talent, and honor their development.  And this is part of the same thing!  That racism as such, as this expresses what’s called racism, shows exactly what’s wrong with this society.  It’s not that the Negro, so-called, is this or that, the problem is it’s a wrongness, a wrongness by the majority of the population in the United States, themselves, who make asses of themselves, when they think they are filled up with charm.  Which misleading idea on their parts.

SARE: Well, this was really deliberate. I mean, you had the Congress for Cultural Freedom,  which is addressed in Mindy Pechenuk’s article in the latest EIR,  but if you think about Theodor Adorno and his plan for what modern music would do to the population, what could be induced, which is totally in keeping with Bertrand Russell, in the Impact of Science in Society, how much would it cost verses in tone to music, how much would it cost per child to make children believe snow is black?  And what Adorno said is, with this modern music, we can induce several states of disassociation into the population, the ultimate state being necrophilia.  And that was the object!  So, that is genocide.  I mean, that is the exact opposite of the Classical principle.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah.  That’s like Gov. Jerry Brown in California right now, whose father was a very honorable person and a good person.  The son is a wretch and a mass-murderous wretch in terms of what his practices of policy are.

OGDEN:  I think if you look at the case of Eleanor Roosevelt, for example, who put her entire reputation and career on the line to invite Marian Anderson to sing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial when she was excluded from Constitution Hall, which was an incredible statement, right there, in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln —

LAROUCHE:  You’ve heard that?

OGDEN:  I’ve heard the record of the concert, it’s an incredible concert.

LAROUCHE:  Beautiful piece of opera.

OGDEN:  Yeah.  Or your friend William Warfield, who was also —

LAROUCHE:  Yeah, he got his start earlier.  And he was one who was victimized by the new Metropolitan Opera.

OGDEN:  Right.

LAROUCHE:  But he died, you know, under conditions,  — he went into a period of decline, from age.  And he was famous in Europe!  But he could hardly get the right time, in terms of the Metropolitan Opera in the United States.

OGDEN:  Paul Robeson had a similar experience.

LAROUCHE:  His was a more violent experience; but he was a pioneer in the process, and the fact — you know, he was a football hero, and he was internationally known; he was one of the greatest intellects in the United States during that period. And he was destroyed by the post-Franklin Roosevelt government of the United States.

OGDEN:  By the FBI.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah.  The Federal Bureau of Investigation was the greatest criminal of that period inside the United States. Because they weren’t human!  J. Edgar Hoover was not really human, at least I can say, I have no knowledge of anything about him that is human.

But that’s what we’re dealing here, with, is to put what we’re talking about in this particular issue that we introduced here, we’re talking about what is the implication, that follows, in the larger things that we normally deal with here?  How do you put the two things together, to bring forth the notion of harmony, in its true sense? That’s the thing that the United States’ existence now depends upon.

Rachel BRINKLEY:  On the FBI operations, you made that point last week, that the effect of these, is to make people think practically, and small.  So it’s not just the fear for their life or their family or something like that, which you think of, in terms of FBI and IRS operations and all these various things. But the real effect is that people lose their vision, they lose their optimism.  So what we’re discussing in the sense of what is the necessary next step for mankind as a whole, and that is how we have to think.  And no more of this little, practical “little me” stuff.

And just going to this discussion we’ve been having, one of the articles in our EIR package, which is looking at the cultural collapse in the 20th century, has a quote from President Grant, who traveled around the world and looked at Asia, and said, there’s two countries in Asia which have the potential right now with a little bit of effort and development to persevere, and those are Japan and China.  And those two countries, he said, imagine if they start to develop and become commercialized in the world, what that would do for the world, and for them?  But, there was a sense, even then, from the American Presidency, that it was not “us against them,” but there was this idea of the development of the productive powers of the entire planet.

LAROUCHE:  That’s what the BRICS principle is, what has become known as the BRICS principle, is exactly that.  Which is the same thing as the China “win-win” concept.  Same thing.  We don’t concede of the human being as being divided by different species, in the name of nationality.  What we realize is “win-win”:  Is each must develop the best they can do, at that time, try to get improvements over what they had been able to do, and go on to perfect which would be more and more converging upon mankind as a whole.

And we can start thinking about Kepler’s idea about how the Solar System is organized, which is still little understood, still today, in most quarters.  And then, go further, to the Galactic conception, which is the higher level we have to get to. We don’t think of mankind as an animal, just another animal parading around on Earth.  We think of mankind as growing up to become beyond practical, as happened in the case of Kepler.

Kepler created the understanding of the existence of the Solar System.  And what we’re doing now, is to perfect the idea of how the Galactic complement of the Solar System is under man’s control!  And that’s it. We don’t know where this is all going. We’re living in shadow-land on many of these issues.  But we know certain things are definitely trends, and they establish themselves as solid trends.  This is one of them.

Our destiny as mankind, now, is no longer what it was before.  It’s now Galactic.  Because we know, it’s the Galactic forces within the system, with which we are now becoming familiar.

And you can imagine what the problem is, how stupid most Americans are; how stupid most of the scientists in the United States are, for example.  They’re not all really stupid, but they’re hesitant to do anything which might upset the applecart for Washington.  I think we should get the applecart, sort them out, the rotten apples should be thrown away, and we eat the good ones.  [laughter]

Michael STEGER:  Lyn, this discussion’s been fairly striking:  because what you started with was this conception of harmony on a social level, on a broad scale within a human society as its expressed in a musical chorus.  But then, what’s probably most provocative is that the role of the individual, someone like Kepler in science, or someone with real political leadership, — I mean, the example of Greece today, where there’s now an increasing harmony within that nation; but I think Frederick Douglass’s role in demonstrating the individual’s contribution to harmony within human society, is maybe  at least the most concentrated expression of the same quality of emotional content that you have from someone like Kepler or Einstein or Beethoven in the questions of the science or the art, because there was a quality of sublime within Frederick Douglass, but it was also a triumph that he accomplished, that really set a new standard.  It really is a remarkable factor within the United States, that the role of the individual, then, in someone like Frederick Douglass to create a new harmony within society, that could inspire Lincoln and inspire that process.  And that relationship between the individual and society in that way, I just found very striking in this discussion.

LAROUCHE:  Yeah.  I echo that, precisely.

Dave CHRISTIE:  Well, just to follow up, I think what you had said, Lyn, we don’t know where this is all going.  We don’t have some blueprint handed down from God, about what the course of humanity is supposed to be.  We know that there’s the basic principle, and that the universe, in all of its expressions that it unfolds, in the domain of sense-perception gives light to the generating principle which is that of progress.

And I think, it struck me on this question of the dialogue process that you’ve been referring to, and this idea of harmony and what you’re doing with this discussion process with our activists around the country, is, it’s not the case that there’s some “party line.”  You got the party line and all you’re doing is assembling people, and training them like monkeys to learn the party line or something, but rather, what is the conceptual — how do you develop the sense of potential in their mind, which unfolds the actual?  And you made that commitment to discovering the domain of principle which then unfolds the action.  And that, I think, is  an important aspect of this concept of harmony and the dialogue process around it.

LAROUCHE:  It’s crucial.  Absolutely crucial.  That’s the problem, that it is crucial.  And the so-called conception of the individual human person of the United States, they’re idiots! In fact, they’re idiots.  You have two kinds of idiots, or three kinds:  You have malicious idiots; you have dumb idiots; and you have idiots who are questioning what the idiot means?

OGDEN:  It sounds like the three generations of the Bush family to me.

LAROUCHE:  Except, yes, but I think that the Bush family is more rotten, than any form of human society! Because, Prescott Bush?  Prescott Bush was a Nazi, in fact.  He was a Nazi before the time of the Nazis, that’s what the confusion was all about. But Bertrand Russell, however, was the patron devil. [laughter]

No, that’s it.  The point is you can’t simplify things. You’ve got to see where there’s a principle of mankind.  Don’t try to interpret an object called “man.”  But understand what the existence of mankind is, historically.  And what the mission of mankind is.  You go from the primitive condition of mankind who is actually, still a vital human being as distinct from an animal; but then you go through steps, which scientific progress typifies in its best expression.

But it also means that you don’t select some people for this treatment.  You have to realize that you have to bring the human population in general, into a process of developing progress among them all!  And that’s what’s needed.

The mission of mankind is mysterious.  And the very idea of the name of God itself, is mysterious on that account. Because the identity of God is something that mankind begins to come to understand, sometimes.  But it never has reached an end result. There’s never been an end result which presented God in a finished form!

There are people who react to what the mission of humanity is, and they don’t know what the mission is leading to; but they know the direction they should go in!  That’s the point.  They know they’re not developed, they’ve not solved the problem of development of what’s the meaning of God? They don’t know!  But they do know there’s something out there that corresponds to that.  So they don’t try to put clothing on God.  They don’t demand that God come in in some kind of formal dress.  Therefore you cannot apply that to the name of God; you have to say what you’re talking about as God is a process out there somewhere, beyond the Galaxy, where the mystery of what God means, as a practical, active force,  — not as something which is a little old man somehow’s going to come out and become this or that. [laughter]

But the idea that mankind itself, mankind has to develop, indefinitely, to higher states of existence within the universe, as far as we know it.  That’s God!  Because everything which requires an explanation, is confronted with the question of what is God?  And if you try to say “I just invented God,” you’d turn around and say, “where’d this nut come from?” [laughter]  Because it’s the obligation of man to respond to the responsibilities which mankind has placed before it at this stage as a mission-orientation.  That’s what God is.  That’s what man knows of God, is that!  And every time you learn something, you get a little closer to God — but He’s still, still far beyond you.

Bill ROBERTS:  Well, I think that faith in using the potential that exists to  — that there is a potential for a perfection process, is, if we think about what was done in the 20th century to remove that sense that there is an ability to organize a perfection process, on the basis of entirely new human ideas.  You know, you can get a sense of how precious those individuals who do have that sort of confidence are.  And I think that becomes important — especially, we were discussing what you had raised in the NEC discussion, that individuals do not generally have an individual capability to resonate with the political process outside of the sort of process that you’ve initiated with these Thursday night calls.  And we just went through a rundown of our contact base, and realized that outside of these types of meetings in a social process, the only individuals that we could think of that recently have developed and resonate immediately with this sense of political urgency, are some of the skilled workers. Or relatively similar skilled people.  And it’s very rare though, outside of this higher social process of harmony, which used to exist in society itself. There’s actually a park in downtown Detroit called “Harmony Park,” where all the German skilled immigrants would get together to sing German Classical men’s choral songs.  Of course, this went into disrepair, but that’s the sort of process we did have in the 19th century.

LAROUCHE:  Well, there’s one thing that has to be added on that, just a qualification:  The question of the unity of human beings in society is the crucial question.  The problem we have, as we have in our own organization, for example, only a tiny minority, of our actual membership, exists in a harmonic relationship.  And most of them can’t sing anyway, so that’s — that’s one of the problems!  If they can sing you don’t want to hear it!

But the point is, there’s a certain wholeness to this process, and it’s not just looking at corrections of opinion, it’s realizing in oneself — it’s not discovering something, and saying, “oh, I just found out yesterday.”  Finding out is not the answer.  It’s creating the answer, in the person’s own mind, but correcting it properly, accurately.  And the ability to do it accurate is what the problem is.

The best example of that, is Classical artistic composition. When you look at the mystery which is intrinsic in Classical musical performance, actually Classical performance, like my deceased friend Norbert Brainin, because he had the capability of doing what had not been done before, except by Beethoven. Brainin’s leadership was the most perfect expression of the legacy of Classical musical composition.  But he understood what the subtlety was, of that thing.  He would not say he was a perfect person in understanding, because he was not an immodest person when it came to that kind of issue;  but it was this thing.

And Furtwängler, the case of Furtwängler is the more general example of exactly the greatest musical composition, so far in European history, and beyond.  If you just take the Furtwängler treatment, of the Schubert Ninth Symphony, that itself gives you a perfect example, for anyone who’s got any musical competence, to recognize exactly, what the principle is.  And he was a hero and successful.  And that’s why some people hated him! Not because he some in this; he was good.  And he tried to operate under Nazi conditions, which were continuing, and stayed on the mission focus then.  He put up with Hitler, for the sake of what?  to get rid of Hitler!  To create the basis for getting rid of Hitler.

And what happened?  All the freaks who themselves were intrinsically Nazis in their legacy, their actual personal legacy, were the ones who quickly sailed into German music in the new way.  And he had to go largely outside Germany.  He did some work in the United States, and then he was kicked out of there!  And he produced a couple of great pieces and a lot of incidental things as well.

And I had enough knowledge about this thing from various people I was working with and so forth, and that’s what it was. His history is known, or should be known.  But that’s an example.

So but you have to understand, think about creating the discoverer, and what he was.  He was one of the discoverers, in the advancement of music.  And he went back to Schubert, to get a leading thematic approach.  How was he going to do that?  So he produced this Schubert Symphony version and he was a master!  If you want to understand what he did, you have to go through the various steps, of how he composed this thing in process! Following Schubert’s design, but, there was something fresh, more profound that he contributed.

And that’s what we have to be:  We have to find ourselves, first of all, to be universal, especially universal in our own country.  We have to represent that.  We have to stimulate that. When we have to build the whole thing on the general concept, of what?  Universal harmony.

And that’s what’s needed!  And without that, you cannot efficiently withstand the wear and tear of man’s condition at this time.

OGDEN: Well, let me say in conclusion:  We do have another in the series of Thursday night telephone calls coming up this week which we want to just continue to expand in terms of its scope and participation.  And also the proceedings of this very significant conference that Diane mentioned that occurred in Paris over the weekend, which involved Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Jacques Cheminade, others, which really was an encapsulation of this kind of emerging new harmony among nations, internationally. The proceedings of that will be available via the Schiller Institute website.  on the front page of the LaRouche PAC website today. So we advise people to take a look at that.

So, that said, I think now is a good place to bring a conclusion to our discussion here today.  Thank you for joining us and please stay tuned.