“God Has Blessed Me!”
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
Thursday, October 25, 2001
Since I am the only presently visible person intellectually qualified to be elected President of the U.S.A. in November 2004, it is important that I share my estimate of my personal situation with not only U.S. citizens, but also those of other nations whose fate will be greatly affected by the likely choice of the next U.S. President.
The historic setting in which all competent discussion of this topic will be situated at this time, is the currently onrushing collapse of the world's reigning, but doomed, present world monetary-financial system. Now, everything has been changed, fundamentally, from the way things were, even ten—even five years ago. For those who thought they understood how the world worked, at the time of the 1992 and 1996 U.S. Presidential elections, it is no longer the same world it appeared to be, to most people throughout the world, during the eight years William Clinton was U.S. President.
Those born after Spring 1945 have lived under three successive world systems. The first phase, covering 1945-1989, was the world ruled by the mixture of nuclear-weapons conflict and detente. The second phase, 1989-2001, was the now disintegrating post-Soviet period, in which the U.S.A., the British monarchy, and Israel functioned as a team, in the process of seeking to consolidate an Anglo-American system of world “ rule of law,” called by “ NAFTA” and other expressions of “ globalization.” The present, third period, was inaugurated in the aftermath of the U.S. Presidential election-crisis of Nov. 7, 2000, as the U.S.-led world monetary-financial system plunged into the greatest financial crisis in world history. The world is now trapped within the maelstrom of the transition from the second system, that of so-called “ globalization,” into whatever follows.
My previous campaigns for the U.S. Presidential nomination, over the 1975-2000 interval to date, were chiefly focussed upon the issues of the corresponding period of post-World War II world history. In 1976 and 1980, I campaigned against the follies which I rightly foresaw to be the destructive consequences of the Brzezinski-Carter Presidency. In the campaigns of 1984 and 1988, I fought against the risks involved in the post-1983 process of ongoing collapse of the Soviet economy. In 1992, 1996, and 2000, I gave my now fully confirmed forewarning of the coming collapse of the world's 1989-2000 monetary-financial system.
Now, all of the former leading assumptions of the leading political parties and popular opinion, from the entirety of the 1946-2000 interval, are in the process of disintegration. Thus, there has been such a process of elimination, of each of the widely accepted assumptions, against which I warned prior to 1971, and which I campaigned against, since 1971. If largely by default, I have been shown to be, presently, the only visibly qualified candidate to become the next President of the U.S.A. No alternative is in sight, or is likely to be produced during the few remaining years prior to November 2004.
Granted, even today, more than fifty years after the end of World War II, most political leaders and citizens would still strongly disagree with my insights and policies. That is no evidence of a shortfall in my qualifications as a candidate, but is additional proof of the absence of a visible competent rival for the election.
The fact that I have consistently opposed the leading opinion among both politicians and citizens generally, must be compared with the presently demonstrated evidence, that I have been farsightedly right on these issues at every step of my documented career as economist and Presidential candidate. In a time of crisis, should our nation choose a leader who has been consistently right, or follow the popular opinion shared by those former leaders, who events now show, have been rather consistently wrong?
For those who are serious about discussing real politics, real global strategy, my candidacy has a unique importance for all thinking U.S. citizens, and others, today.
What Are My Problems & Qualifications?
I have recently passed my 79th birthday, and am functioning in my current duties for 80 hours a week or more. Not only do I have the energy the present crisis will require from me as President. I am presently at what is fairly described as the height of my intellectual powers.
As in the case of any candidate for that office, there are certain potential drawbacks to be considered.
The only crucial drawback for my candidacy is biological, not intellectual. Fortunately, biologically, for genetic and other reasons, I have a life-expectancy of as much as more than fifteen years to come, provided there is successful management of the cardio-vascular and other risks inherent in the aging process. It is therefore reasonable to expect that, barring assassination or other biological trauma, I shall continue to be at the height of those powers relevant to the leadership functions of a U.S. President for a time of great crisis, for five to ten years.
I assure the citizens, that I do not expect to retire from active duty, to the status of senior statesman, earlier than at about the same age as one of the most famous military chiefs of staff of the Nineteenth Century, “ Old Moltke.”*
That general observation made, what should be of much greater importance to the present and future citizen, is the special nature of my intellectual qualifications. All my continued power to use those qualifications, must be considered by the intelligent voter; however, the far more important consideration is the specific, exceptional nature of the relevant kinds of intellectual powers I bring to my position as the best qualified candidate for the 2004 election.
The roots of my exceptional personal qualifications, are of a functional, rather than genetic character. First, from early in childhood, I recognized that my parents, teachers, peers, and public authorities, and virtually all others of those generations, were habituated liars, more often as a fear-driven matter of “ going along to get along,” rather than as lies flowing from a wellspring of personal malice. “ Either you learn to go along, or you will put our whole family into trouble! Either you learn to go along, or they will never let you get ahead!”
The myth to which the typical intellectual coward is emotionally attached, is the delusion that the “ establishment” will always decide the fate of the individual. In times of grave crisis, European history teaches, it is often the individual man of providence, acting in the image of Jesus Christ, such as Presidents Abraham Lincoln or Franklin Roosevelt, for example, who determines the fate of the “ establishment,” even the nation, even the entire culture. In that issue, lies the key to understanding the pervasive moral failure, until now, the grave moral failure which is commonplace among the great majority among my church-going and other fellow-citizens.
My stubborn refusal to submit to “ what was expected of me,” unless I knew that instruction to be correct, not only put me often into pitched battle with educational institutions I encountered, but caused me to suffer much personal abuse; it was a stubbornness which was nonetheless rewarded with an increase of my powers to distinguish truth from falsehood or illusion. I became, in the eyes of most relevant authorities and peers, like the “ black chick” in what often seemed to me to be a pen of clucking and nodding white pullets.
However, it was precisely my reliance on what seemed to peers and authorities my contentiously Socratic attitude toward arbitrary opinion, which has been the indispensable, fertile soil in which all of my specific intellectual and related achievements have been rooted. The world in general, as my republic in particular, have now come into a time of profound existential crisis, in which all those who have habitually “ gone along to get along” have failed, and will continue to fail, tragically.
It is important that at least a majority of my fellow-citizens come to understand the most essential features of my special accomplishments of this type.
My Scientific Qualifications, for Example
I am not only a life-long lover of science, but have contributed several closely related fundamental scientific discoveries of my own, to the field known as the science of physical economy. My misfortune on this account, has been the degree to which my peers have suffered the mis-teaching of science in most educational systems, in the United States, most notably. Even among most of those leading U.S. scientists who have genuine accomplishments in the fields of experimental physical science, their otherwise excellent work is too often spoiled by a prevalent, induced mental disorder, a disorder which usually manifests itself when that person proposes to prove a scientific principle mathematically, as at the blackboard or by digital-computer methods.
From early, I rejected the argument, that proof of principle is demonstrated by the method of deduction. By deduction, I signify the method mistaught in most traditional classes in Euclidean geometry. I have always rejected, even by instinct, the methods of empiricism, or, since mid-adolescence, of Kant's neo-empiricist variety of Aristotelean dogma, or logical positivism, and existentialism. This distaste for such academically popularized intellectual mediocrities, often put me at odds with my collaborators in the science community; but, I was never shown to be wrong on the issues which arose in this way.
The most relevant, and conclusive proof of the importance of my scientific work in opposition to popular conventions, is the consistent success of every long-term economic forecast I have published during more than three decades, including my early 1960s expectation, that a series of monetary crises erupting during the late 1960s, would lead into a general monetary breakdown of the type which actually occurred during mid-August 1971.
My discoveries in economics as a physical science, during the late 1940s and early 1950s, led to the result for which I am best known among economists and others, worldwide today: the so-called LaRouche-Riemann Method, on which all of my long-range economic forecasts have been premised.1 The details of these discoveries, and their application, are supplied at length in various published locations, in which I have identified both the similarities and differences between my own discoveries and the definition of the so-called “ noösphere” supplied by the famous Vladimir Vernadsky.2
There are chiefly two reasons, directly related to those discoveries, which have been chiefly responsible for my success in long-range forecasting, contrary to most other so-called authorities in this field. In the most frequent cases, the failures are the result of the intrinsic incompetence of what is taught as economics in universities today. In other, contrasting cases, in which the work of the economists is essentially competent as far as it goes, most otherwise competent economists have failed, so far, to take up the implications of the LaRouche-Riemann Method.
The success of these discoveries of mine are entirely due to the validity of my views on those matters of scientific method which have been the most frequent point of difference between me and other scientists.
I explain the core-issue as briefly as possible, as follows.
Most popular opinion, still today, shares the delusory belief that the human sense-organs are the virtually transparent windows of the mind, through which we know the universe as that universe exists outside our skins. That delusion is known as the cult of “ sense- certainty.” Contrary to that delusion, all progress in scientific knowledge proves that that widely accepted belief is false to reality.
The evidence which sets the human species apart from and above all other living species, is what Immanuel Kant, and the empiricists, have denied to exist: the individual human power of cognition, the distinction between actual knowledge and merely popular understanding. Vernadsky termed this quality, which he defined experimentally, as “ noësis,” which means the same thing as the properly used term “ cognition.” Another term sometimes used to identify noësis, or cognition, is “ insight.” This notion is one which has been most widely taught in European civilization, through the mastery of the Socratic method of Plato's dialogues; it is the method explicitly used by all of the greatest modern scientific minds, such as the Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa who founded modern experimental physical science. It is the method employed by such explicit followers of Cusa as Pacioli, Leonardo da Vinci, Kepler, Leibniz, Gauss, and Riemann; and it is my method, too.
Unfortunately, because of widespread defects in education as well as popular culture, this important distinction between man and beast is generally unknown among, not only the population at large, but most among today's university-educated adults. Most victims of contemporary higher education and popular opinion, are followers of the schools of relatively bestialized opinion—such as “ sense-certainty,” such as empiricism, Kantianism, logical positivism, pragmatism, and existentialism—as were the radical reductionists Galileo, Newton, Euler, Lambert, Lagrange, Laplace, Cauchy, Clausius, et al.
I now briefly explain that issue, and identify the importance of my own relatively unique qualities of political leadership in those terms.
True knowledge, especially knowledge in physical science, is the product of the recognition of the falseness of sense-certainty. Knowledge of this quality begins by recognizing the evidence showing that some feature of generally accepted popular opinion, such as supporting Al Gore's 2000 Presidential candidacy, is practically absurd, and can not lead to any good. In logic and in experimental physical science, these absurdities are often called “ paradoxes;” or, with greater terminological precision, “ ontological paradoxes.” Notable examples include the original discovery of universal gravitation, in his 1609 New Astronomy, by Kepler, and the discovery of the principle of relativistic time, rather than sense-certainty notions of clock time, by the succession of Fermat, Huyghens, Leibniz, and Riemann, among others. The same method was employed by Vladimir Vernadsky, to show that life is a principle which was not derived from the physics of non-living processes, and that cognition (noësis) was a quality of the human mind, which was not derived from lower forms of animal life.
These types of discoveries of what are rightly called, experimentally validated universal physical principles, originate as solutions to experimental kinds of ontological paradoxes, paradoxes which reveal a certain falseness in opinions based upon sense-certainty (“my personal experience”). These discoveries occur as an act of insight by the individual human mind. This act of insight can not be observed by the sense-perceptual apparatus of other persons; nonetheless, those insights can be known by other minds by means other than observation by the senses.
These acts of discovery involve three essential steps. First, there must be an experimentally demonstrated ontological paradox, as Kepler showed the significance of a more exacting study of the orbit of Mars. Second, there must be the cognitive act of insight, such as Kepler's discovery of the principle of universal gravitation in the form of a working hypothesis. Third, there must be a crucial kind of experimental proof, by means of which the hypothesis is proven to be a universal physical principle.
Thus, the first and last stages of the discovery of a universal physical principle, do involve the use of the senses. It is the middle step which escapes sense-perception. However, if a second person experiences the same act of insight leading to the generation of the successful hypothesis, both persons then know they have shared the same experience of an act of cognition.
Vernadsky, like others before him, recognized the fact of such proof of the existence of a universal physical principle of human cognition; he proved this in a strictly scientific, straight-forward way which has special significance to the present day. My own discovery on this point, went further; this special character and import of the discovery which I made, initially, many decades ago, has crucial bearing on my unique competence as a Presidential candidate at this time of crisis.
The cultural progress of the human species in European civilization since ancient Egypt, has depended upon the accumulated transmission of original acts of discovery of universal principles, by relay, through many successive generations. This cultural transmission of such acts of cognition, across successive generations, is what distinguishes actual human cultures from the behavioral traits of animal species and varieties.
Thus, whereas Vernadsky is correct, as far as he goes, in showing the impact of such individual discoveries of principle (noësis) on man's relationship to nature, his argument falls short of the indispensable, added point to be made. It is the impact of transmission of the cognitive experience of discovery of principle, over a succession of generations, which defines human cultures—not individual discoveries as such.
Those qualities of ideas, so transmitted within and across generations, have a quality of effect analogous to the genetic heritage of the particular type of an animal species; analogous, but of a different, higher order. It is not the genetic heritage of an individual human being which determines the quality of that individual mind; it is the cognitive development of that mind which produces the effect of elevating the individual, intellectually, to the quality of a relatively higher species than other persons, of the same genetic heritage, not so developed in a cognitive way.
All of those notable intellectual advantages I have, as reflected in my unique scientific success as a long-range economic forecaster, are the result of my stubborn commitment to the principle of truthfulness to which I have been committed, in opposition to most of my peers, and those of younger generations after me.
The Case of Sir Thomas More
Sir Thomas More was a unique man for his time of crisis. From his devotion to truth, even to the point of becoming a victim of judicial murder, like his predecessor Jeanne d'Arc, More inspired a current typified by William Shakespeare, in English culture. The inspiration of the most important initial English colonization of North America, reflected the influence of the current represented by More and his follower Shakespeare. Despite the abyss of decadence, to which the triumphalist and despicable Sir Francis Bacon condemned the reputation of Shakespeare during Shakespeare's last years, and despite the horrid decades of the age of Pope and Dryden; through the influence of Abraham Kästner and his student Gotthold Lessing, in Germany, the English Shakespeare was revived—in Britain, on the continent, and in North America—to form a crucial part in the revival of the Classical humanist cultural tradition in European civilization and beyond.
The impact of More on Shakespeare's work, including Shakespeare's treatment of the lessons of the history of England, from Henry II through the overthrow of the terrible Richard III, typifies the genetic quality of the cultural transmission of truthfulness, even at all risk, from one generation to its successors.
In what passes for ordinary times, all sorts of fools might come to occupy the highest positions of influence in government, and elsewhere, as we have seen in the U.S. itself during much of the recent 35 years. In ordinary times, it might seem that the nation survives despite the quality of the fools which are chosen to lead it. Then, comes a time of existential crisis of a nation, a culture, in which the individual of cognitive integrity and development of character may serve society as a man or woman of providence, necessary for the continued survival of that people at that time.
That is the role I have the special qualities to play at this juncture in our nation's history. Such is the nature of the time of crisis, a time of great, profound, and sweeping change in world affairs, in which we are lodged at present.
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NOTES:
* Helmuth von Moltke retired as chief of staff of Prussian armies at age 88.
1 The technical term, “ LaRouche-Riemann Method,” signifies the application of the principles of an anti-Euclidean, Riemannian physical geometry, to solve a problem posed by my earlier discoveries in the science of physical economy.
2 The single issue of scientific method as such, which I shall address in this location, later below, is the bearing of my point of difference with Vernadsky, on the definition of the biosphere. This will be taken up here as of crucial bearing on the special importance of my intellectual development on my unique qualifications to serve as President for this time of crisis.
