Manhattan Town Hall event with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Megan Beets

TRANSCRIPT

DENNIS SPEED:  On behalf of the LaRouche Political Action Committee I’d like to welcome everybody here today.  My name is Dennis Speed.  And despite the various forms of scare tactics underway, including around this meeting,  we’re going ahead.

Some of you know that we’re involved in another event which is going to happen a little later today; many of our members at least are involved in an event that involves a concert that will be happening in the evening.  But you also know that we have a certain context in which we’re operating; and that context is not defined by the peculiar and sometimes insane actions of certain heads of state.  For example, Barack Obama and his recent claims about Russia.  It’s really defined by something much larger; and I just want to refer here to a statement made by Dr. Martin Luther King.  It’s not well-known, it’s contained in one of the sermons that he gave called “Strength to Love.”  So, I’m going to quote it; it’s not the entire statement, but it’s most of the statement.  He said:

“Man can think a poem and write it.  He can think a symphony and compose it.  He can think of a great civilization and produce it. … He can be a Handel moving into the highest heavens and transcribing the glad thunders and gentle sightings of the great Messiah.  By his ability to reason, by his power and memory and his gift of imagination, man transcends time and space.  As marvelous as are the stars, as great as is Handel’s Messiah is the mind of the man that studies them.”

That statement pretty much summarizes, I think, the actual orientation we take to what people often call “politics”.  Many years ago, Lyndon LaRouche wrote an article called “Politics as Art” in which he talked about this, but we’ve asked — I’ve asked — that Helga LaRouche address us today as we go into that later event from the standpoint that there’s a need that Americans have to consider a completely new, if you will, cultural and intellectual platform for their behavior in politics.  She has worked for over 30 years to get this point across to Americans; and I thought it was an important point to be made to all of us prior to those activities.  So, it’s always my honor to present Helga LaRouche; and we will hopefully have some time for questions and answers.  So, Helga?

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Yes, hello; good day.  I think everybody is under an enormous state of tension, because the world is not in safe corners yet.  I watched yesterday the live press conference, supposedly the last press conference of President Obama; and what he said there was really incredibly evil.  Because he claims that they have evidence — no, he didn’t even claim that; they said that Russia would have hacked the DNC and other computers and interfered with the election process in the United States.  Up to the present moment, there has not been any evidence presented.  Then he threatened actions against Russia in retaliation; both obviously open, but also hidden, but that Russia would find out what the message was.  That is a rather unveiled threat; and there is a real hysteria on the side of those people who had lost the election.  Hillary today came out and says basically that this was the personal revenge of Putin, because Putin didn’t like what she did as Secretary of State.  Now, it needs to be stressed that a very respectable group, the Veterans of Intelligence for Sanity (VIPS), such people as Senator Mike Gravel and Ray McGovern and others put out a statement that their long years of experience as cyber security experts caused them to look at these emails; and that they have no doubt that these were not hacks, but leaks like the kind of leaks Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning had done from the inside.  Anyway, there is a big hype, and I think we should be very aware that this is very dangerous.

The other thing which could happen between now and the actual taking of office of President-elect Trump, you could have still a confrontation with Russia, with China.  The recent developments in the South China Sea speak to that.  We are not in a safe world by any means.  The hysteria about the so-called “fall” of Aleppo, as it is being characterized by the media, is not less.  Here you have a military solution to a problem which obviously was not possible to solve politically; among other things, because of the sabotage by the United States of the talks in Geneva.  So, the military option was the only remaining one; and now people are liberated.  People should be happy that ISIS has been suffering a terrible defeat.  I mean, I’m just saying, these incredible spins of events really show you that we are not in a safe situation by no means.  You have practically the United States, but also people in Europe, almost can be separated into two groups: those who have not yet recovered from the so-called “shock” about the Trump election.  These are the people who believe in geopolitics, in globalization, who believe in the present system which has brought the world to the point where it is.  Then, you have those people who are very happy that Trump won; and they basically hope that he will stick it to Wall Street, which we have to see, given his class and Goldman-Sachs appointments.  Or that he will stick it to the establishment in general.

I want to just reference these circumstances very briefly to point to the situation that I don’t think that neither of those mindsets — neither the first one, the people who are freaked out about Hillary losing; nor the ones who say that Trump will stick it to the establishment — that this is an adequate mindset.  I think that we have to introduce a completely different level of thinking into the political  process; which is why the performance of the Messiah and a long series of other concerts, is so extremely important.  We have discussed this many times, but let me say it again.  Why is Classical art and Classical music in particular so absolutely crucial if mankind is supposed to get out of this crisis?  The problem is — and I think most of you agree with me — that for many years, almost 50 years since the assassination of John F Kennedy and the cover-up of his murder, the paradigm of the Western world and especially the United States has really led to an incredible brutalization of the population.  Many people are still not happy about the future.  The fact that the life expectancy in the United States is going down for the first time since a very long time; and there is simply no other indicator for living standard and well-being of a people than the life expectancy.  If the life expectancy goes down in a civilized nation, that is a sure proof it is in a total crisis and decay.

Now, how do we get people out of this?  How do we get people to be their more noble selves?  How do you get people to be more elevated than just saying, “Let’s hope Trump will stick it to them”?  Because that is still an emotion of anger, frustration and so forth.  The problem is, we have discussed in these meetings many times that the oligarchy rules over society by reducing people to beings of just feelings, emotions; and they are very good at manipulating these emotions.  That people are angry; that people are depressed; that people have rage; that people have joy in decadent pleasures.  All of these are tools of the oligarchy.  When man is on that level, he is not truly human. The first one who really described this quite efficiently was Plato in his famous cave example.  He said the people who are only believing in their emotions are like those people who are sitting in a cave where they see only dimly-lit shadows of events which take place outside of the cave; and they take these shadows for the real thing.  People who only believe in sense certainty, they have different forms.  For example, monetarism is one such; believing in the senses.  Or utilitarianism; that only what is useful is valid.  Or nominalism; positivism.  There are all these varieties of “isms”, but they basically mean that people are not really thinking.

Now, what great Classical art does is it show a way how people can first of all, learn to understand real principles; those principles which are behind the sensuous appearance.  And they can learn how to become truly free.  Now, that is the quality which has been very much a rare commodity in these periods.  That people are really innerly free; that they have their own judgement; that they develop their inner voice; that they learn to listen to their inner voice — you can also call it conscience.  It is generally great art which allows people to sort of train that quality in a playful way.  Because when you are looking or listening to great art, this is not the seriousness of real life; this is like the existential in that sense.  But you can study what is creativity in a playful way.  I think it is extremely important that we don’t forget that unless mankind makes the jump to a completely new paradigm where we are not just thinking about one nation.  Trump has promised America first.  Well, that may be a good antidote to what happened with this so-called globalization until now; but what is required is a completely different thinking, which is why I like Friedrich Schiller so very much.  And why I think his ideas are such a richness of concepts that we need to get to the New Paradigm.

Schiller, for example, said it is not a contradiction to be a patriot and a world citizen; and I think we have reached a state in human history where we must establish that no nation can express a self interest if it is in contradiction to the goals of humanity as a whole.  Therefore, this quality of becoming a world citizen and love your nation, not as a contradiction; this is something we have to introduce into this debate.  Only then can the American people ally with the New Paradigm of the New Silk Road and common goals of humanity for the community of destiny for the future of mankind, as Xi Jinping always calls it.

I think that Schiller is very important for another reason; and that is that he, under the terrible collapse of the French Revolution leading to the Jacobin terror, the killing of people through the guillotine; he was completely appalled.  Schiller, as a reaction to this whole thing, wrote the Aesthetical Letters; where he basically said that the only way you can have an improvement in the political life is through the ennoblement of the individual.  Now, I know that that is not exactly what people think about politics; and they don’t think about — the only way mankind moves forward, is that each of us; you, me, everybody ennobles themselves or tries to do so throughout their entire life. I think the idea of mankind which Schiller developed, is the notion of the beautiful soul; because I think that it’s the key to a lot of things.

The way Schiller developed this idea of the beautiful soul is, he said this is a person for whom freedom and necessity, passion and duty, are one.  I think this is a concept one has to think about, because freedom and necessity — what does it mean? It means no matter what the circumstances of your life are, if you do what is necessary not only for yourself, your family, but for mankind as a whole — which may have different shapes and different requirements at different times.  Right now, it means to bring the United States into the paradigm with the rest of the world and overcome this terrible danger of a confrontation with Russia and China; which would surely mean the extinction of civilization.  Now, what does it mean to find your freedom in what is necessary?  I want you to think about it, because most people have not thought about it; and it is the key to be truly free.  Freedom does not just mean the absence of chains and the absence of containments.  It means that you are completely a self-determining person, and that you at the same time do your duty with passion.  You are not a Kantian who says, “Oh, I have to do my duty and therefore I’m truly sour; but I’m a moral person and I’m doing what I’m supposed to.”  You see many of those people, but you have to joyfully what is necessary.  That requires the education of your emotions so that, as Schiller demands, you can always trust them blindly, because your impulses will never tell you anything different than what Reason would command.

Now, that is a big standard, but I think it is absolutely possible to accomplish that.  It is the great Classical art which is the field where you can rehearse what this requires. Schiller, in the very interesting piece of drama which he wrote which used a Classical Greek example, namely The Bride of Messina, he wrote an introduction where he discusses the function and the power of great Art.  He says when people are listening to a great piece of art — in that case, he talked about the Greek chorus; not the musical chorus, the chorus in the Greek drama.  He said for people who are exposed to this, it sets a power free inside them; a power which sets people truly free, internally free.  And that freedom remains even when the performance is over.

Some of you have experienced that already, during the great celebrations on the 15th anniversary of September 11th, with the performances we had in four cathedrals in New York.  Obviously, this is a very precious gift which we have to really fight to make the more dominant culture.  And while I’m perfectly happy to give the President-elect a lot of credit that he will do interesting things; at least half of what he has posed will come true.  Namely to renew the relationship with Russia and China and put that on a good basis; that would be gigantic.  But I have the most severe doubts that this question of a Classical education and the aesthetical improvement of man can be expected from this Trump administration.  But it is the absolute necessary requirement to make America great again; which he has promised. I think you need a kind of spirit of ennoblement, of the sublime; and that level you do not find in any of the utterings.  At least, I haven’t heard anything even close to that.  But you have heard it from such people as Benjamin Franklin, as George Washington, as Alexander Hamilton, John Quincy Adams, and especially Lincoln.  If you think about the Gettysburg Address, and the beautiful spirit which is expressed in that, that is the mind set — not in the predicates, but in the spirit — which people should be at all times if they are truly free.

So, in that sense, I think we have a tremendous chance to over this Christmas period and the holiday season, people always have some time to read, to think, to listen to music.  I would encourage you that you do not just do the things you usually do in this period like going to the mall and buying gifts for people.  All this is fine, but the real meaning of this period to find for yourself and find this really higher identity which we have to mobilize to get the world into a safer place.  So, that’s really all I wanted to address, and that’s what my remarks to you are at this moment.  [applause]

SPEED:  Thank you, Helga.  I know you have limitations on your time, so let me just ask: Are you able to take any questions?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Yes, a few.

Q:  Good afternoon.  How are you?  This is Jessica from Brooklyn.  First I wanted to say that I’m very glad that we’re having this meeting.  I was a little worried about attendance; people coming with the snow and rain and this and that.  It’s a little earlier time, but I see that we have a nice group of people here; and I’m glad to be here, and I’m really happy that you are addressing us and changing the way we’re thinking about going forward with making what we want to happen really happen. With this situation Obama did the other day, yesterday, his speech and all that; I saw that.  I just wanted to say that, first of all, that I’m very happy that you’re here addressing us; and I think everyone in this room is.  My question is not so much an actual question, but I’m a teacher and I’m seeing a lot of different things happening in  my school and in my union. People, like you said, are tense; there’s some hysteria going on. There’s a lot of stuff happening.  Would comment please on what you feel is a Classical education.  In many different ways, we can talk about education; we can talk about the actual subjects, the intent of what education should bring about.  I’ve been thinking about that in watching other people — my parents, my fellow teachers.  So, if you could please comment on what you feel we should be doing, or what should be meant by a Classical education.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Obviously, my husband Lyn is somebody who has developed that method in many ways.  There is a great reference in Germany, which has — apart from my husband — developed the best education system I know of; and that’s Wilhelm von Humboldt.  Who, by the way, not only designed the German education system and university system, but in the 19th Century, there was not one professor in the United States who was not either educated by this method or by somebody who had studied it in Germany.  The influence of Humboldt in the 19th Century in the United States was tremendous.  The reason why I think he is still extremely important today, maybe more than ever before, is because he defined as the goal of education not any particular skill.  He said if you learn how to learn, you can improve your skills throughout your life.  What he defined as the goal of education is the beauty of the character.  I don’t know of any school today that has a goal that the end result of the pupils going to the school should be that they have beautiful characters.  But if you look at the violence, the meanness, the brutality, all of the behaviors people retain — especially in the schools, where many teachers are afraid of their pupils; this is common phenomena these days.  The idea that the end goal should be a beautiful character, I think is more important than at any time before.

Schiller, who was a close friend of Humboldt, and shared these ideas; but Humboldt had a very clear idea of how you reach that goal.  He said that there are certain subjects which are more suited than others to have this effect to develop all potentialities which are in a young person to a harmonious totality.  He said, first of all, you have to have a command over your own language in its highest expressions.  Obviously the highest expressions of your own language are the most beautiful Classical poets, because they can express concepts which you do find just in prose.  There is a big difference between lyrics and poetry and prose; because lyrics and poetry force the mind to conceptualize those higher levels where new concepts are being formed.  Naturally, you cannot think what you cannot express in words; and therefore, the study of the best examples of poetry is the key to all other subjects.  If you don’t have the language — like Britney Spears once proudly said that she only has a vocabulary of 80 words.  That obviously limits the amount of what she can think.

Humboldt then also said, you have to have universal history; because only if you are able to place your own identity and your own life in the context not only of the history of your nation, but in the history of universal mankind that you can find the right place.  Schiller expressed that you have to connect your dwindling existence, which is very short because people live a very short life, to the long chain of generations before you and generations after you.  And that is what gives you your identity; it makes you grateful to the generations before you and gives you a vision, what you have to contribute to make better generations after you possible. Then, naturally, geography, music, natural sciences, other languages.

So I think to really go with the Humboldt conception and reintroduce Humboldt would be such an extremely important start because it is not just science, it is not just art as such, but it is the combination of both, the two things absolutely have to go together.  Because scientists and artists are the only two professions, so to speak, that believe in universal principles. Natural science — physics, biology, chemistry — these are areas where if you make an adequate experiment, you can repeat it anywhere around the globe.  If you find a discovery in the United States and if it’s a true physical principle, any Chinese or any African can repeat it in Africa, or in Luxembourg, or in some other place, because it’s a universal principle.

And the same goes for great Classical art, but especially music, which is why you find in orchestras, people of from all over the world, working together, performing a concert, and you don’t even notice that they come from different countries and cultures, because they have one universal languages.

So science and music in particular are really important because they free you from opinion, they free you from the liberal notion that “my opinion is as good as yours,” which is commonplace now, that people don’t accept the idea that there is truth and that you have to be truthful; because people say, “it doesn’t matter, what I think is as good as what you say, and therefore, there is no criterion for truth at all,” which obviously prevents people from finding this key I’m talking about.

So I think this idea that the future paradigm will mean that people think like creative scientists; that’s why Lyn puts such an emphasis on people like Vernadsky, or Einstein; and naturally, thinking like Beethoven, thinking like Mozart, or Handel for that matter, that is what is truth; that’s how you can find truth. And I think for the children today who are so — you know, the children today have almost no chance, because if they look at TV, if they look at the games like PlayStation, they have no chance to have this love for truth.  So I think that would be the most important to accomplish, because once you accomplish that they start to seek truth and become truth seeking people, then it’s the key for everything.

Q:  I’m G.  from Massachusetts.  I’m trying to narrow down my thoughts here:  Of course.  First we have Congresswoman Gabbard’s bill about the U.S. interfering with Syria.  We should really push to get that passed so we’re not supporting ISIS anymore.  And along with the current situation still in the White House, what should we be doing in the next week or so to turn the country around?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  I think Tulsi Gabbard is really a very courageous and outstanding person.  She is the kind of person who gives integrity to the United States, and hope that all of these terrible developments of the last 16 years in particular can be overcome.

So why don’t you all send her messages of congratulation and tell her to keep up the fight.  Not that that would solve the problem, but I think it is important to strengthen her effort as much as possible.

Otherwise, I think do outreach, outreach, outreach.  Because the Trump appointments are a mixed bag:  On the one side there are people who are for sure are the promise that the conflict with Russia and China will be overcome; but then you have all these Goldman Sachs people, so it’s not so clear.  And I think, my personal thinking is that if Trump would not fulfil the promise he has given to the people who voted for him, they will move against him, as they moved against Obama and Hillary Clinton.  But that would obviously be a danger we cannot allow, and the only way you can work against it, is to create an environment where a lot of people are debating what has to be the future of the United States.

The idea, the Four Laws of Mr. LaRouche are obviously the key.  We have discussed them many times:  Glass-Steagall, National Bank, credit system, and especially the fourth law, a crash program for fusion power, space cooperation with all other international space-faring nations, and even bringing those onboard for space research who are not yet space faring nations, which is what China and India and Russia are doing.

I think the best thing you can do, is do not internalize, but go to meetings:  Deploy with us, do outreach.  The more people we can mobilize, to demand what this program has to be the better, because only if you have a functioning citizenry do you have any guarantee that this will really be the beginning of a new era.  Get involved in as many activities with us as you can, get your friends onboard, family members, colleagues, just join the mobilization as if your life depends on it.

Q: Helga, I’m from the city of Philadelphia, the city of Brotherly Love, the city of churches.  I’m calling in reference to the health department issue.  I haven’t heard anything mentioned at all in this candidacy about delivering a better health program for the United States.  I myself, I had taken in my niece and her three children, and they’re on this so-called Change Pac [ph], or something like that for low-income families and all that.  But anything else that might be a backup for more money, that’s relied on by the rest of the family that would like to help out.  Could you speak on some of this?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Well, we have to see.  It’s definitely important that Trump announce that he would overturn Obamacare. But he has, to my knowledge — maybe people on the U.S. side of the Atlantic know better, but at least to my knowledge he has not yet clearly said how he wants to improve the health system, and that obviously remains a big battle.  Because if the United States is supposed to become great again, it cannot be without emphasizing the creativity of the American people; and you cannot be creative if you are poor, if you are sick, if you have drug addiction, alcoholism, depression, all the things which have led to the decrease of the life expectancy.

Now, if Trump is serious, then he has to upgrade the healthcare system; he has to basically make sure that there is equal health care for everybody; I don’t know if he has said anything to this effect.  You can’t have a class system where only the rich have good health care and the poor have poor health care.

I think it would be very important to do away with all of this bureaucracy, where the doctors spend 90% of their time filling out formulas, rather than looking at and investigating the patient.  But I think the most important thing is to recognize, what is the source of wealth in a society?  It is not raw materials, it is not speculation, it’s not money, it’s not “buying cheap, selling dear”; all of these things mean absolutely nothing.  The only source of wealth is the creativity and wellbeing of the people.

Now, if America  wants to be great again, which I really hope, he means, well, then the Americans have to do at least the same thing as the Chinese are doing.  Because the Chinese are spending a lot of effort on the excellence of their education, on the brilliance of their youth, of transforming the labor power in the rural areas, developing the interior, undeveloped areas of China.  I mean, there are many undeveloped areas of the United States; you are lucky you come from Philadelphia.  But at the time when Amelia [Boynton Robinson] was still alive, I traveled to Alabama to visit her, and there are areas of the United States which are like the Third World!  Not far from where she lived, she took me to the countryside, and we went to the only store in an environment of 50 miles, and the only food you could buy there was canned food, no fresh vegetables, no fresh foods, and obviously the living conditions for the people was very poor!  In the summer, they were sitting in containers, with 100 degrees F, no air conditioning.  So there are pockets of Third World conditions in the United States.  And the poverty rate, you have all of these things which you all are aware of.

So that has to be improved, and the test, if Trump will be successful in making America great again, is will he focus on the creativity of the people; and I think that that is the kind of debate we absolutely initiate.  Because, as I said, I mean, Trump himself has said, it’s not him, he’s only the messenger.  And turning to his voters he said, “you are the movement,” so we have to make sure that the movement demands these things from him, and that we keep this moment to have an educated citizenry and that’s the only way how you can keep your government straight.

SPEED:  We actually are up to time now.  Helga the only thing I wanted to say is,  before when you were talking about Lincoln, I was thinking about, at the end of his First Inaugural speech has this phrase which has become very famous:  “The mystic cords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriotic grave, to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

I remember, this must be back in 1986, at a conference where various of us of the Schiller Institute were, you made the point that the great poet of the United States is Abraham Lincoln. And you also referenced it earlier, and in your conclusion to us, I just wanted to ask you, if you would, tell us why you say that, why you think that, and how you think we might be able to use the example of Lincoln, particularly now with this new Presidency, and this new opportunity?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  Because, he has this quality of noble thinking. And if you study what he has been saying at various points, you have that quality.  And in a certain sense, it is this ideas to, what is expressed in the Gettysburg Address, in particular, that you cannot just think in the moment: That you have to connect your personal life with what contributed — you can live the way you live because of all your ancestry, and you have this idea that you, with your life, contribute something so that mankind is richer when you are no longer here, because of what you have done.  And that quality, which is sort of an impulsive, Good Samaritan, that’s what Schiller called the Good Samaritan who does the good without thinking what advantage you may have, or what’s in it for you; none of these thoughts enter your thinking.  And at the same time, you have a vision for the future, and Lincoln for sure had that.  So in one sense, he may have been the greatest President of the United States, and he is the measurement for any President from now on.

So all of you should think like that:  Because a republic only functions when everybody takes the same kind of responsibility as the President, and a republic only functions when you have a sufficient number of people who also have the demand on themselves that they qualify themselves that they could become President!  You should study economics, foreign policy, science, art, so that if for some reason, you would have to be President, you could do it.  And then you have a functioning republic.  If many, many people are thinking like that, even if they don’t become President, that’s the way to look at the world and to look at your nation.  [applause]

SPEED:  That’s certainly a worthwhile task for the Manhattan Project to take up, it’s a good way for people think about what we’ve got to do today as well.

Thank you very much Helga, and you’ll be getting a report some time tomorrow morning on our work with the Messiah down in Brooklyn.

ZEPP-LAROUCHE:  OK.  I wish you a very good performance.

SPEED: The next speaker, I asked to speak actually a couple people here; José is here, he gets to see her every week.  That’s because for approximately more than a year and a half, Megan has been conducting a seminar with some young people, and this seminar has been intended to go through the work of Johannes Kepler, a great scientist and somebody she can say a lot more about than I can.  But more importantly, for today and for what we’re confronted by, as you know if you’ve been looking at some of the LaRouche programs, we’ve consolidated a certain orientation to our presentations, with our Policy Committee and the Basement Science Team.  And the idea here is there’s a set of principles, a single set of principles that define the Four Laws, the work of Einstein, the work we do on music: They’re all one set of principles.  And while we are somewhat restricted because of time, I thought it was important, since she was going to be here, to assist in singing the Messiah, that she get a chance to talk to everybody here at the Manhattan Project.

MEGAN BEETS:  I just want to say a couple of brief things and then open it up for questions, for the time remaining which is pretty short.  Those of us alive today are presented with a really incredible opportunity, which is the opportunity, though not the guarantee, of leaving for the next 50, 100, perhaps thousands of years ahead, a new paradigm, which has never existed among mankind before, a new system established based on the true nature of mankind. And you think about the implications of that, that means that the empire system is over forever, relegated to a past and long-dead, never to return, era of mankind.  And I think that this is a very challenging idea.  It’s a very big idea.  And it’s one that those of us assembled here, and everywhere, should take up as our mission, for the rest of the time allotted to us on this planet.

Now that opportunity presented us, to establish a new paradigm, obviously comes with a great responsibility, and I want to reference back to this quote that Dennis read at the opening, of Martin Luther King, and he said, that “Mankind can think of a great civilization and produce it.”  So, upon what principles do you base that civilization?  What is the most truthful notion of the nature of mankind that we can strive for, upon which we will be confident in establishing this new paradigm?

The human mind, is a completely unique form of existence, on this planet, and anywhere else in this Universe, as far as we’re aware.  Human beings are a form of life which can study the Universe, which can confront paradoxes, which can confront problems which challenge our knowledge, and which can imagine solutions, which can imagine notions of a principle which is generating the kind of paradoxical effect we see in the Universe. We can imagine solutions to scientific problems, and generate them from the human mind, and these notions are so true, that they allow human beings to exert a great power over nature than we had before.  That’s an incredible form of existence.  An example of what I’m referring to:  We’ve never seen an atom. We’ve certainly never seen the nucleus of an atom; no microscope can image for us, the nucleus of an atom.  And yet, our vision of the organization of the atomic nucleus is so close to nature, that with this notion, with this idea, we’re able to split the atom; we’re able to fuse the atomic nuclei to create new elements; we’re able to create fusion plasmas, manufacturing new elements, breaking down current materials, and exerting a finely tuned control over nature, that allows us to first of all, unleash enormous amounts of power and energy, to generate electricity, to generate explosions for infrastructure construction; but also allows us to fine-tune materials like steel, to create steels that are stronger than anything we could have produced from purely natural elements.

Now, for me, the most inspiring notion that’s given us the most inspiring power over nature, up to this point, for me, is Johannes Kepler’s poetic notion of the planetary orbits; his poetic notion of the Solar System.  Because that has allowed us, to create artificial orbits, intentionally, to put satellites to orbit and to put mankind into orbit. And for me, it’s mankind it’s mankind’s potential to leave this planet and bring that process of creativity to other bodies of the Solar System, to begin improving them: bringing them to a higher state of organization than ever before; giving them a new meaning in the Solar System, something they could not have had without the presence of creative life, in the form of human beings.  To me, that’s the most inspiring power over nature that we’ve achieved up to this point, and it absolutely defines something which is the common aims of mankind.

Mankind on this planet must unite in our scientific capabilities and our scientific insight, and our economic power to get mankind off of the planet, out onto the Moon and to Mars beyond,  — and we’ll see when beyond that — to come together to establish this new era of mankind.

So I think I will leave it at that, because we only have a few minutes, and if people have questions or discussion we’ll take it.

SPEED:  That was nice! [applause]

Q: [Renée Sigerson]  I just wanted to bring something up in connection with what you were saying and also the way that Helga presented this beautiful perspective.  Which is that with all the people that we talk to around the country, and in the New York area, but also all around the country, it’s been the case for quite a while that the matter around which people are most emotionally wrenched, is what is happening with children in this country.  This comes up all the time.  I was just talking to a new member of LaRouche PAC, a rather enthusiastic guy who works for the city and actually likes his job; he stands out in my mind, because he’s the only person I’ve spoken to in ages who said, “I really like my job, it’s a lot of fun…” I thought, “Omigod, I always thought I’d hate somebody who would say that!” But as soon as we started having a conversation about the whole world situation, what immediately came up, and it always happens, is “my 14-year-old daughter is my biggest problem. She’s out of it.  She’s just unhappy, we don’t know what to do.” This goes on all day, actually.

And it really is, the incredible revenge of this “one-child left behind” and then whatever Obama called his thing, “race to the bottom”!  [laughter]  And living in New York, and being involved with New York now, the whole thing really shocks me, because I can remember, and probably Jessica can confirm this, having grown up in New York and going to New York City schools: before the 1968 schoolteachers’ strike, New York was proud of the fact that it had probably one of the best educational systems in the United States, and that was because of a certain environment around the UFT [United Federation of Teachers], which had to do with the fact that this was a union where people were debating education all the time.  And often they were really out of their minds in what they believed in; but they were talking about it all the time.  And the usual thing, in the classroom was that at the beginning of the year, or periodically, they would either make it implicit or explicit, that the achievement tests that were being given were on such a low level and were so stupid, that it would be ignored until the very last minute, and if the education was organized properly, the students would do fantastically.  And New York City students always did fantastically on these tests.  And they led the country in these test results.

And now, you hear what’s going on, it’s just unbelievably shocking.  And it’s only happening in 35 years or so.  The strike was 1968, when they busted the union, but it didn’t die overnight; it took a while for the whole thing to trickle down.

But anyway, I think we’ve got to put a name on the bad policy:  We’ve got to actually begin calling for a complete cancellation of these insane agendas. And name them, and get them out of the way.  Because older people can get incredibly excited about these ideas, but these younger people have actually been pounded down within themselves; the axis point to reach out to this, and I think all of this really demands that we really start a fight to just cancel the whole damned thing. I just wanted to say that.

BEETS:  Yeah, I think you’re absolutely right.  I think, you know, you named these things, but I’ll just them again.  What’s afflicting our children, and young people  is compound:  It’s the educational system which is intentionally designed to destroy creativity and curiosity.  It’s the drug problem.  It’s the fact that this President has legalized drugs.  It’s the suicide problem, which is not disconnected from the drug problem either. It’s the violence, it’s the unemployment, it’s the fact that these people’s parents are working three jobs, if they can get a job!

And I think that absolutely, there has to be an explicit compound policy of attacking the drug problem, cancelling all of this insane legalization that’s gone on through these ballot initiatives over the past years; shutting down the drug trade; I think it has to come in the form of a real conscious attention to the so-called suicide problem, not as some isolated problem that seemed to come out of the blue:  We know exactly where this came from.  But I think overall, this generation has to be assigned a very special mission:  And that underscores the urgency of the United States joining the New Silk Road, and explicitly with the space program.

And I’ll say, from José and Katherine who are part of the summer program:  We had a lot of fun this summer with the Foundation’s summer program, and to see the faces of young people light up when you begin to show them what we’ve done in space, is incredible!  You know, even people, you can tell some of the children who participated, you can tell might have a hard time at home, or something like that; but you can see their faces just light up.  And I think the most important thing, is in addition to the explicit policies, we have to give this generation a mission, because that is human.  There is something very emotional and passionate elicited from a young person when they have a sense that their actions are going to be important for the future.

Q:  Whether one is religious or one is a philosopher, we can say in a mission here for truth, I help.  And that’s true whether — I seized this moment, I went through this week up to now, and I went through this week ago, and I feel that if we look at the teacher as having a job to take care of the republic in good reason, and to teach the week that just was, the week is the Civil Rights Week.  And you have on 12/10, did we read the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in our home?  Was there any public library doing the Civil Rights Week?  The 13th is when we have our state bank, state credit, state science:  12/13 is our Hamilton Day!  Did we do this in the Public Library?  Is the conversation on our telephones?  Are we helping the teachers do their job, in good reason, teaching how “to republic”?  How the public should “republic”? turning the noun into a verb.  How does one republic?  Here is your Civil Rights Week; look at your 12/10, look at your 12/13.

I was alone on 12/15 — I can’t believe this!  The U.S.A. gives its Bill of Rights.  It should be in every house read!  At a public library gone to!

And then, the exclamation mark is Beethoven’s birthday! And I’m calling Margaret on the phone saying “Happy Birthday Beethoven!”  Why?  Because he’s Classical.  And he does Classical Biblical, and he does Classical coffee shop; and if one were to say, “how does one do this Classical democrat/philosophe/scientist/statesman, how does one do this? Well, maybe our future here, loving the Classical sound, would be to sing the scientist Kepler, to sing a Darwin the Hero, to since the scientist-statesman, and do Classical Classical which probably has never been done, or never thought.  Because when you say “Classical” and you’re not doing scientist-statesman, then you’re not really doing Classical Classical.  To me that remains to be done.

The point is, not only do we have back-to-back the love for our teacher and our preacher, but to ask the preacher to do the teacher’s work?  I mean, we’re totally into the leadership; it’s a leadership situation, and it’s totally yang and yin.  And when you’re out of balance, you don’t have that teacher and preacher balance.

BEETS:  Well, let me get at what you brought up, because I think it’s important, and we have limited time:  I want to refer back to what Helga said.  We need a cultural Renaissance. And we need to revive the essential creative nature of all human beings in the nation.  That’s the basis for a republic.  You commit to fully developing all of the potentialities within every citizen; and that is in the scientific realm and that is in the cultural realm, and these are not separate.

And since Ben has brought them up, I want to give the example of Kepler, and Kepler’s Harmony of the World which is one of his last major works.  In this work, Kepler demonstrates that the principles which underlie Classical musical composition — not the sounds per se, not the numbers, but the actual principles which underlie Classical musical composition also underlie the composition of the planets of the Solar System.

Now, that opened a door for a  little bit down the line for the world of Johan Sebastian Bach, and I think that kind of optimistic, the optimistic idea that that kind of potential lies in every one of our citizens really is the moral responsibility of the government to develop.  So that’s what I’d say on that.

Q:  I just have one very quick question.  I agree 100%. I love everything you said. But, you mentioned the problem with legalizing drugs.  I think education is better than prohibition, because when you prohibit, you take someone’s free will away. You take someone’s choices away.  And when you take someone’s free will away, it’s a way of stealing a life.  Even if to a small degree.  So I think, in my sense, prohibiting anything doesn’t make sense.  It’s better to educate. That’s the only…

BEETS:  I think idea that people taking drugs today is because of their free choice is really  — I know you’re not saying it’s good — but I think the idea that what’s happening today in people taking drugs and people being so committed to this idea that they should have access to drugs, is their free choice is where the problem lies.  This is a deliberate policy. This goes back, if you want to take it back, this goes back hundreds and hundreds of years.  Look at what the British did to China with the Opium Wars.  Look at our fight in the United States in the 1970s, against Dope, Inc., which continued into the 1980s.  Forcing drugs on otherwise creatively thinking human beings, is a policy and it’s not people’s free choice to do this. And so this really has to be an explicit moral declaration of our nation, that we are not going to allow the creativity of our people to be destroyed by an Empire policy of growing and flooding drugs into our country and everywhere else.  [applause]

SPEED:  Well, there’s something to look at here, though. You’re saying what you’re saying, and I’m not really, merely responding to that, but sort of a broader point of everything we presented here today, I hope this will be clear.

To go back to this Obama issue:  Now, here’s a person, “an old, mad, diseased and dying king,” which he aspires to be; that’s not actually Obama.  Obama sort of is —  the negative that never existed. And people really just don’t get that.  The person Obama is not an existence.  [laughs]  And that’s not — that’s simply an objective evaluation about this character.

Who is going to be killing people next week, and kills people every Tuesday.  And has a list that does this, and has established a policy of doing this — a public policy of doing it, like the Pubic Executioner, back in the days of Joseph de Maistre, whom we used to talk about, like you have in the French Revolution.  That’s what this character is.

Now:  The problem on drugs in the United States, is that the government itself and the government of Obama, just referencing this, has a policy that they intend to drive Americans insane, with, for example, legalized marijuana, as has been done in Colorado, and Washington state and several other states.  And de facto legalized it.  What about marijuana cookies? What about marijuana sodas?  What about the people that have died, and there are various of them in various ways, unbeknownst to them, dosed!

Some of know about the phenomenon of dosing, I’m not going to go into.  But the easiest way to eliminate your political opposition in a population, as it begins to grow, as it begins to develop, is to dose them.  So between the drone policy, that is the commercial drone policy; for those who don’t know, Obama’s top financial supporter, Wolf, I think Robert Wolf, from Union Bank of Switzerland,  has now opened up a company which is specializing in the commercialization of the sale of drones.

Now, what’s going to happen, if you were to let these things occur — I don’t think this is going to occur — but this is the intent:  The intent is, you simply eliminate your opposition by dosing them, and then killing them, whether that be by drones or otherwise.  Now, all of this can be done right now, and will occur, if we’re stupid enough to act as though we’re debating things like Obama’s drone policy; or debating things like Obama’s drug policy.  Or debating things like Obama’s space policy.

See to “debate” it is to debase yourself.  What you want to do, is you want to eliminate it — and then discuss it!  You can say, “well, that sounds dictatorial.”  No, it’s not dictatorial.  Eliminate it, and then discuss it.  Eliminate Obama from office.  You know, we still call for Obama to be impeached — including today.  We’ll be calling for it — I’ll be calling for it on January 22nd! Because what I mean, and I think what Mr. LaRouche has meant the entire time is that there needs to be a trial!  Impeachment means an indictment;  there has to be a trial of this character!  Of what he has represented, because until the American people confront what he represents, they will never be free!

People are talking, and there’s Democratic Party individuals, I don’t want to overdo it, are talking about this idea that the election was stolen; they’re talking about ideas about Putin being something or other — hacking!  Of course Mike Gravel pointed out, that the NSA of course has all of these communications of whatever anyone is speaking about, because they have all communications of everyone, everywhere, at any time!  Now, that’s a bit of an exaggeration of what he said, but it’s not really an exaggeration as to what’s true.  You live right now, in an obscene bowl of delusion.  You live in the most dictatorial society that has ever existed in human history, not because it’s like that in terms of the idea chains on people, physical chains.  No!  But because of the way in which Americans accept, or, excuse me, a portion of the American population has been induced to delude themselves that they accept this character, for being anything other than the most destructive force ever to hit the American Presidency.

Now, it’s been rejected by the population, so I don’t want to go too far with this, and claim that’s what people think. Because that’s not the state of Americans.  That’s why Hillary didn’t get elected.  And as Helga already said, if Trump does not deliver on what he said he’s going to do, same thing’ll happen to Trump.  But the reason for this, and the importance of this is, if you look at Obama’s performance yesterday, the very idea that the 25th Amendment is not invoked, the next day, demonstrates the level of delusion — largely, by the way, drug-induced — that has occurred on the American population already.

Now, I’m not doing this as a way of doing more than just pointing out something.  Because this has come up several times, not only on drugs, but this issue of Obama.  What he really, actually represents: And what Obama actually represents, which is really the issue, is that there are Americans that are instead of getting with what the Chinese and what the Russians and others have done; instead of just taking the new frontier that has been offered to America, which is one that actually was initiated by Lyndon LaRouche and others decades ago, they’re in a situation where they have yet to actually break their own cultural commitment to failure.  And the drug issue is an expression of their cultural commission to failure. It’s true!

The substance is not the issue.  But the addiction is.  The issue is the American addiction to forms of culture which are destructive and self-destructive.  Now, that’s what we have to attack, and of course, you came to the right place if you want to talk about the idea of mobilizing people.  That’s the whole point of what we do; that’s the point of what we’re about to go do in Brooklyn. The whole conception that we have of what we’re doing in this music, is breaking the addiction.

And I just wanted to say this mainly because I always like to take any opportunity that I can to talk about my favorite subject, Barack Obama.  But also because I think what Megan and Helga have done together, fortifies us for what we’re about to go do.

Just to say, I had a friend who’s deceased now, James Bevel. And once Malcolm X came to Selma, some people are aware of this; it was in 1965, in February, the same month he got killed. Three weeks before he got killed.

Malcolm came there and the civil rights people were trying to convince Malcolm to stay in Selma, because it was clear he was threatened with assassination.  Malcolm didn’t want to do that, and he gave this speech, in which he said,  — the refrain in the speech was, “if the white man steps on my foot, one more time…” He just kept saying this phrase, right, and how militant he was, as opposed to the nonviolent civil rights movement, and you had to do this thing: “If the white man steps on my foot, one more time…”

So, when Bevel got up to speak, he said, “Well, Malcolm’s talking about the white man stepping on his foot one more time. Malcolm’s mother can’t get a job because of segregation. His father’s getting lynched.  His brother’s getting shot, and can’t vote.  And he’s waiting for the white man to step on his foot, one more time.

“Now, the rest of us are about to go down and get the right to vote.  Anybody coming?”

So we tell that story to make the following point:  We can talk about all the problems in American we want.  We can complain, we can talk about the ways in which to address anything.  But the real issue is, we’re doing something.  It’s very effective.  It’s a new cultural platform. It is devastatingly effective, and we invite everybody to work with us in this regard and in this spirit.  Because if you do, you will see miracles happen in the United States.  And that, of course, is the subject of the piece we’re about to all go sing.  So, we hope you’ll join us there, hopefully to sing, and if not, you’ll be listening.

And we’ll not being doing our regular meeting next week.  We are going to resume our meetings New Year’s Eve, 12:00 noon.  So, there won’t be a meeting next, and we’ll see you Dec. 31st. [applause]