For the Love of Mankind: Agape Is the Highest Reason for the Exploration of Space

“We have to build up fast, very fast, the greatest growth of productivity inside nations, now. In other words, we have to understand what mankind is and what mankind must become, fast. We have not yet caught the idea. But we can. So, why don’t you start doing it?”
—Lyndon LaRouche

What happened to the higher mission of our space program? This very question is fundamental to our continued existence as the human species. This is the subject that subsumes Lyndon LaRouche’s “Four New Laws” to now save the United States, which he introduced in June 2014. What LaRouche presents in this economic platform is not a matter of mere banking policy or of breaking up the big banks. What he prescribes is what is needed to end Wall Street and the financial oligarchy once and for all. What is required is the unleashing of the potential for human creative progress and productivity, a principle embedded in our nation’s Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, and its Preamble, and it is expressed in the work of the first Treasury Secretary of our nation, Alexander Hamilton.

LaRouche’s Four Laws are these:

1. The immediate re-enactment of the Glass-Steagall law instituted by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, without modification, as to principle of action.

2. A return to a system of top-down National Banking, and thoroughly so defined. The precedents for this shall be taken from the banking and credit system established by Alexander Hamilton, as well as Abraham Lincoln’s action of creating a national currency (or “Greenbacks”), under Presidential authority.

3.The deployment of a new Federal Credit system to generate high-productivity trends in improvements of employment, with the accompanying intention to increase the physical-economic productivity and the standard of living of the persons and households of the United States. An increase in productive employment, as accomplished under Franklin Roosevelt, must reflect an increase in real productivity, coherent with an increase in energy-flux density in the nation’s economic practice.

4. The adoption a Fusion-Driver Crash Program. The essential distinction of man from all lower forms of life, and hence, in practice, is that it presents the means for the perfection of the specifically affirmative aims and needs of the human individual and social life.

The Passion Flows from Understanding Man

What is required at this very moment, for this nation and the world, is not merely an economic recovery. We must have a LaRouche-Hamilton vision for an Economic Renaissance. In its essence, it goes far beyond merely building infrastructure and putting people back to work. We must rekindle a passion to create the future! What is required is a complete revolution in science in the terms that LaRouche is demanding today and in what is now being set as a cultural standard in China, as exemplified by the direction of its space program and its commitment to a win-win strategy for mankind.

This revolution in science starts with a renewed conception and understanding of the true nature of mankind—what it means to be truly human. How do we advance the conception of mankind as capable of acting for the benefit of all, from the standpoint that we are thereby going to advance and share in the greatest potentials for mankind that ever existed? This is expressed most poetically in the combination of 1 Corinthians-13 and in Krafft Ehricke’s Three Laws of Astronautics.

This memorable chapter of 1 Corinthians unfolds the concept of agapic love: “Charity [agape] suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.”

Krafft Ehricke addressed this question of the common aims of mankind in fulfilling its greatest potentials, and saw that the pathway is through “leaving the confines of one small planet” to expand our exploration and settlement to other worlds. To that end, he formulated these Three Laws of Astronautics:

1. Nobody and nothing under the natural laws of this universe can impose any limitations on man, except man himself.

2. Not only the Earth, but the entire Solar system, and as much of the universe as he can reach under the laws of nature, are man’s rightful field of activity.

3. By expanding throughout the universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life, endowed with the power of reason and the wisdom of the moral law within himself.

The Love of the Other

The subsuming process of all these works—and what lies at the heart of LaRouche’s proposal—is mankind’s discovery of the meaning of mankind. What is the purpose for which we exist? How do we implement and advance the creative power which is uniquely human? LaRouche developed his four laws from a Hamiltonian standard based on an underlying principle of an unconditional love for mankind to create the future—that is, agape.

The Hamiltonian principles which set the standard for our nation’s economic policies do not arise from the standpoint of money as having some intrinsic value, but from an understanding of the value of the human mind and of an increase in the productive powers of mind. Hamilton’s principles of economics come from the idea of happiness, a principle of agape adopted in our Declaration of Independence from the German philosopher and economist Gottfried Leibniz. This is what you would find when you read Alexander Hamilton’s three major reports to the Congress on manufacturing, credit, and a national bank.

This is the essence of what the British Empire and its financial oligarchy—represented by Wall Street and its stooges—have intended to destroy since the murder of Hamilton by the British asset Aaron Burr. Our nation’s greatest leaders—including John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy—understood and consciously engaged in this fight to defeat the very enemy of the creative progress of mankind.

These Presidents understood more than simply Hamilton’s conception of national credit or of banking. They understood the unique principle of the United States, i.e. the commitment to advance the productive and creative powers of every living human being in this nation and on this planet—what Lyndon LaRouche would later define in his science of physical economy as the increase in relative potential population density.

Only Yesterday

President Franklin Roosevelt, a devout student of Alexander Hamilton, was inspired by his great-grandfather, Isaac Roosevelt, who worked directly with Hamilton, to fulfill this commitment. This very principle enabled FDR’s ultimate victory over the Wall Street looters of his day and his ability to unleash the greatest productive engine the world had ever seen. The period of Franklin Roosevelt through that of John F. Kennedy was known as the Golden Age of Productivity. Today we need a golden age of productivity for the world, and this is just the future China intends to create with more than half of the world already joining in. The United States must take its rightful place and make its due contribution in bringing about this very future.

Our Golden Age of Productivity, initiated by FDR, continued with the development of our space program under the visionary leadership of great space pioneers such as the little known genius, the German-American aeronautical engineer, Krafft Ehricke.

When the National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed by Congress in 1958, creating NASA, the declaration of purpose stated: “The Congress hereby declares that it is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.” The Act goes on to define that the aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be so conducted as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

1. The expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere and space.

2. The improvement of the usefulness, performance, speed, safety, and efficiency of aeronautical and space vehicles.

3. The development and operation of vehicles capable of carrying instruments, equipment, supplies, and living organisms through space.

4. The establishment of long-range studies of the potential benefits to be gained from, the opportunities for, and the problems involved in the utilization of aeronautical and space activities for peaceful and scientific purposes.

5. The preservation of the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere.

6. The making available to agencies directly concerned with national defenses of discoveries that have military value or significance, and the furnishing by such agencies, to the civilian agency established to direct and control non-military aeronautical and space activities, of information as to discoveries which have value or significance to that agency.

7. Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations in work done pursuant to this Act and in the peaceful application of the results, thereof.

8. The most effective utilization of the scientific and engineering resources of the United States, with close cooperation among all interested agencies of the United States in order to avoid unnecessary duplication of effort, facilities, and equipment.

Devotion to the exploration of space must start with a love for, and commitment to the creative development of all mankind. The vision for space exploration and settlement was never merely a race or a matter of military dominance, contrary to the wild ideas of some in the scientific community. The space program as envisioned by Krafft Ehricke was a commitment to the future of mankind. When NASA was established, Ehricke had already written profound works on the idea of space travel and what he called mankind’s extraterrestrial imperative, including an imaginary account of space travel in the year 2050, written in 1948—ten years before NASA.

Ehricke understood the unique quality of mankind that defies the oligarchy’s rejection of our creative human identity—that creative identity which is essential for mankind’s mission to develop our Universe. He states, “By expanding through the Universe, man fulfills his destiny as an element of life; endowed with the power of reason and the wisdom of the moral law within himself.”

Nuclear Power and Fusion Power

President Kennedy’s policies intersected Ehricke’s concept of mankind. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the Hanford nuclear generating plant in Hanford, Washington, on September 26, 1963, the President said, “This great, rich country of ours has a long, unfinished agenda, but it has always had that agenda in creative times, and this is a creative time in our country and throughout the world.”

LaRouche’s fourth law calls for a Fusion-Driver Crash Program. Obama’s rejection of the essential distinction of man from all lower forms of life was the very premise of his attack on our nation’s space program and his rejection of a revolution in science through a fusion driver program. His attacks on our nation’s manned space program and our fusion research programs have been brutal. Obama had the nerve to even say that, “We don’t need any fancy fusion,”!

Now we have seen not only the shutdown of our manned space program, but the termination of work towards breakthroughs in advanced scientific programs, such as the fusion research and development program at MIT, and with serious repercussions for the fusion program at Princeton, along with the U.S. rejection of cooperation with other nations on such projects, such as ITER.

It is all being shut down because we have failed to reimplement Glass-Steagall. We have not insisted on the Hamiltonian credit system to put the necessary credit into these great scientific endeavors and large-scale infrastructure projects. We chose instead to bail out Wall Street, to protect the looters, and to let more and more people die. This was not the standard of Hamilton, nor of Franklin Roosevelt, nor of John F. Kennedy.

Kennedy understood the importance of the nation’s space program as a science driver program for progress in the economy across a broad front. And he understood nuclear power production as the complement to the space program, in terms of its effects on the economy as a whole. At the Hanford groundbreaking ceremony, he said, “We must hasten the development of low-cost atomic power. I think we should lead the world in this. … Our experts estimate that half of all electric energy generated in the United States will come from nuclear sources.”

Kennedy knew that it was essential to unleash the creative powers of every person in this nation. At Hanford, he stated, “All of the trained and educated men and women who are making our country over, who are building a better standard of living for our people—this is a time when we wish to encourage the release of energy, human energy, which is the most extraordinary of all.” Today that vision for human development and cooperation is being carried out by what China is doing in the development of its space and nuclear programs.

Implement LaRouche’s Four Laws!

LaRouche is emphatic that China has to be a model from the standpoint of the space program. The standard that China has set for itself and the world reflects nothing less than a renaissance and a new paradigm for the progress of all mankind. China’s space program is organized around a national commitment to cultural and scientific advancement, and because of this, China is now embarking on a mission to the far side of the Moon, unlike any other nation—they are accomplishing something that no other nation has ever done. What does this mean? This is a breakthrough toward a revolution in science, a breakthrough for the benefit and progress of all mankind. This is the very principle of LaRouche’s Four Laws, it is the principle of agape.

What China represents for the world today is what the United States and its founding principles once represented. What is required of our nation today is the revolution in science that LaRouche is calling for—a revolution in the conception of the nature of mankind: what it means to be human, what we are as a species.

We have to pull our nation out of the depths of the dark age conditions that have dominated much of the trans-Atlantic world in the recent decades. We must stop the mass killings and reverse the upward trend in suicides in the United States and around the world. That is why we are going to implement LaRouche’s Four Laws now. It is time to shut down Wall Street now! End the financial speculation! We must redefine our national commitment to humanity. We have the potential to bring about a Renaissance for all of mankind, if we choose to do so—based on a true understanding of what mankind is, and what our future must be.

It is time to begin our nation’s revival and return to this sacred principle of agape. This starts with the implementation of LaRouche’s Four Laws, and first, by reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act. Demand that Congress get back to Washington now, to pass Glass-Steagall! It has a responsibility to this nation and to mankind, as do we all.