TRANSCRIPT OF ABC-TV NATIONAL BROADCAST October 21 and October 25, 1992 The following program is authorized and paid for by LaRouche for President Independents for Economic Recovery TITLE: The Crisis in Education ANNOUNCER: Ladies and gentlemen, independent Presidential candidate and political prisoner, Lyndon H. LaRouche, speaking from Rochester, Minnesota: LYNDON LAROUCHE: I am told that there is hardly one citizen today, who thinks that our schools are doing an adequate job. Around the nation, groups of parents and teachers are fighting to reduce class size, to better the curriculum, and to bring morality back into the classroom. Unfortunately, those reforms, by parents and others, however commendable, will not be enough to reverse the virtual collapse into a dark age of irrationality which has overtaken our school system over the course of the 25-odd years since the assassination of President John Kennedy. Today, let us look at the problem of education from a practical standpoint. Let us consider the way in which miseducation has contributed in two ways to bringing our economy over the past 25 years to its present state of collapse, in what seems to most a hopeless, worldwide deep economic depression. First, let us look at the effect of miseducation concerning history and ideas of political economy upon the way you, the citizen, judge the economic policies of our government. Second, let us look at the way in which miseducation, or lack of education, affects the ability of our average citizen to produce, to compete against the better educated Japanese, Germans, and so forth, in the world of today. In response to a recent program broadcast nationwide, many citizens have said that my program sounds fine, but it won't work, because I seem to be ignorant of certain principles of economics. When I hear more from these listeners who write in or call in, I find that it is THEY who are terribly ignorant of economics; who say that my program would be inflationary -- which is not true -- which indicates that they believe in the myths that they're told from Washington, the myths which are told regularly in our classrooms. The center of the objection to my proposals for action, to get us out of a depression, is my proposal for monetary reform. Specifically, I have proposed that we must -- I repeat, we must -- nationalize, federalize, or shall we say, Constitutionalize, the Federal Reserve system to bring it into conformity with Article I of the U.S. Constitution. ("The Congress shall have the power to...coin money...." Art. I, Sec. 8) It is now in violation of Article I of the U.S. Constitution, and that's been known ever since the Warburgs induced Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson to conspire, in effect, to create the Federal Reserve system, to impose it upon us -- a private bank chartered by the U.S. government, which gives international financial interests not under the control of government a kind of dictatorial power over our banking and financial system. And that, my friends, is unconstitutional. And that is what the Federal Reserve system is today. Now, the problem arises if I try as President, or if any other President tries, to get a boom going in the United States, a recovery from the present depression spiral which is already going on. There's never been a recovery. We're in a depression. It's just a matter of how fast we go down, how steep the slope -- we're going downhill. To reverse that, if a President were to try to use the Federal Reserve mechanism as a way of funding growth, he would unleash an inflationary spiral. And that is what I am determined not to do. To avoid inflation, you must federalize, Constitutionalize, the Federal Reserve system; otherwise, my friends, no economic recovery, because inflation of that type does not mean recovery; that's just another big bust. The difference is, when the United States government funds a recovery program, it does not do so by going into the public market to buy debt. As you may be aware, we already have too much Federal government debt to outsiders, including foreigners. We should have less growth of debt, but still have growth. The only way to do that, is to use the currency, printed and issued by the U.S. Treasury, as authorized by the Congress -- we're back to Article I of the Constitution -- to loan that money through its deposits with the Federal Reserve system made into a National Bank, Constitutionalized, to loan that money at low interest rates to highly selected, but crucial projects and private firms; to loan it to the Federal and State infrastructure building authorities; ($300 Billion to public and state authorities) to loan it as credit to firms which are contract vendors, essential to State and Federal authorized projects; and also to loan it to several kinds of private enterprise to get the economy going. ($300 Billion to the private sector) And, to loan it to the point that we get at least 8 million new jobs started in the United States right away -- that means within the first months, the first year at most. Then we have a recovery. If we do not do that, my friends, then we do not have a recovery. So, therefore, it is important that you know why, if you took economics in school, or if you believe what you are told by so-called experts, why, in most cases, you were miseducated -- you were lied to. Who are the political forces that imposed fraud upon your school system? Because you have to know who they are, in order to get them out of there; otherwise you're going to get the same old hokum and buncomb all over again. In the history of the United States, beginning with the period leading up to the American War of Independence, our quarrel with Britain, was that Britain was controlled, including the monarch, King George III, who was virtually owned by the British East India Company, which controlled the economy of Britain, with the Bank of England, and Barings' Bank. These fellows were determined from 1763 on, up to the point of the Revolution, to destroy the political independence of the English colonies in North America, and to deny us the right to engage in technological progress in agriculture or industry. They wished to keep us backward, relying upon black chattel slavery, indentured servants, as opposed to black chattel slavery, as a basic mode of life. We said: No! Franklin, one of our leaders, together with Washington, went to London, to meet with the British Parliament, and said, after meeting with the Parliament and other people: the situation here in London is hopeless; this is headed toward an irrepressible conflict; these people are determined to keep us barefoot and backward; and we won't stand for it! So we conspired, Franklin did with others, to establish a republic in this continent which could do several things: which could have industry, have technological progress in agriculture; which could have roads, canals, and, eventually later on, railroads; which could have the most modern technologies from Europe. Then came the time of our Federal Constitution, and the Confederation didn't work, because we couldn't have infrastructure: we couldn't have highways; we couldn't have canal systems built among states; we couldn't coordinate anything; we weren't safe; we were divided; we couldn't organize our own interstate trade. So, people were convinced that, in the face of our British enemy -- who was still determined to crush us, reconquer us, and enslave us -- we had to have a federal union. And, a federal union that would not only defend us, but would subordinate the role of the states to a central agency which would organize national infrastructure, regulate interstate commerce, as well as providing for a common defense -- for creating, as the Constitution says, "a more perfect Union," so that, as the 14th Amendment provides, you are not just a citizen of a State, you are a citizen of the federal United States. Then, the British were still determined to destroy us. That led to a number of things. First of all, under Jefferson and Madison, two Presidents in their 16 years in office, we had a fellow in there by the name of Albert Gallatin, who was actually a British spy -- of Swiss-French origin, but who became a British spy -- and who became Secretary of the Treasury, and so forth, and who became the key influence, the evil influence behind the throne, so to speak, in both the Jefferson and Madison Administrations. Now, he introduced policies which were directly contrary to our Founding Fathers. He introduced the policies of the British East India Company against which the War of Independence was fought. Now, those policies were known as the policies of the chief apologist, hired apologist, chief hack writer, propaganda hack writer on economics for the British East India Company -- a fellow called Adam Smith, who wrote a book which is popularly known as The Wealth of Nations. So, although in the first ten years of the Federal republic, under Washington, particularly, and Adams, we prospered as a nation, we had a miraculous growth, we were already becoming the envy of foreign nations because of our success. Particularly in Jefferson's second term in office, and under Madison, all this was ruined. Now, what happened is, some patriots came along, and recognized that Gallatin was the enemy of the United States. The patriots, who were called Warhawks, were led by a young fellow from Virginia, called Henry Clay. Henry Clay became immediately the Speaker of the House of Representatives in his first term. And, these fellows forced the United States to defend the vital interests of our citizens against our enemy, Britain. And so, we fought successfully, a second war against Great Britain. We beat them. We beat them on the high seas, with American superiority in naval technology, using small ships called frigates, such as the U.S.S. Constitution, and superior seamanship and navigation, and superior gunnery, to beat the British Navy. And then after that, under James Monroe, the man who defended Washington, DC from the British, who burned it, when President James Madison and his wife fled to Virginia, we began a recovery. This recovery took off under John Quincy Adams. National banking was reestablished; American policies were reestablished; Adam Smith was recognized for the enemy he was. Until along came Jackson. President Andrew Jackson, who was close to a traitor named Aaron Burr, brought in the policies of the British. The result of Jackson's policies, particularly in his second term, led to the total collapse of the U.S. banking system in what's called the Great Panic of 1837. And, he was run by New York bankers, on behalf of London. We were restored as a nation during the time of Abraham Lincoln, when we went back to American policies, as opposed to British, or Adam Smith, or free trade policies. Nonetheless, we continued, despite these corrupt influences, into the beginning of this century. We were being looted in various ways by the British, through the stupidity of the Specie Resumpiton Act we adopted in the 1870's, but were were growing. We were constantly in trouble, we were constantly broke, but we were growing. And, the reason we were broke was that we were being looted by these foreigners, these British, all the way along. We could never keep anthing for ourselves, to invest ourselves, because of this arrangement with Britain. Then came Teddy Roosevelt, who was a total British agent. As a matter of fact, his mother was a part of the Confederacy, came from from a Confederate family, which means the same thing as British. Then came Woodrow Wilson, a man of the same persuasion. And, these two fellows brought us under the Adam Smith system, at least to the greatest degree. And that weakened us. We remained powerful only because Europe was largely destroyed in World War I, and again in World War II. We continued to grow, and during wartime we abandoned the Adam Smith policies, as in World War I and World War II, and we used policies more like those which de Gaulle used when he was President of France, which were called "dirigist" policies, or what some people in this country these days call, "command economy" policies. That got us through. At the end of the war, we were back to Adam Smith policy. We had a major crisis as a result of that. Eisenhower's Adminstration was almost ruined by that. Kennedy took us a bit out of it, and put us on the road to recovery, but after that, Johnson was pressured to capitulate, and we went back to the policies -- Adam Smith policies -- in a very radical form, which have brought us to the present degree of ruin we have today. But let me emphasize: the problems of the United States are in no way caused by foreigners. The economic problems of the United States are caused entirely by our government and ourselves, in adopting over the last 28 years, particularly over the last 25-26 years, adopting policies, one after the other, in the direction of free trade, in the direction of deregulation, and so forth, and against technological progress -- for a so-called post-industrial society, or a so-called services economy society. It is these policies that have ruined us. And unless we get rid of free trade policies, go back to regulation -- get rid of deregulation -- and get rid of these Adam Smith policies in general, we are never going to recover. But what has your school been teaching you? Your university? Your children's school? The textbooks? They've been teaching you, along with the press in Washington, that free trade is the way to go. And, as long as we go that way, we're going to be ruined. That typifies the first problem in education. Let's now turn away from economics as such for a moment, to look at the other side of education. Let's turn to an address that was made recently to an audience in a southern state, by my Vice-Presidential running mate, the Rev. Jim Bevel. REV. JAMES BEVEL: Now, we're going to work on education in this country. Let me just tell you what education is. See, the first thing, you've always got to know what something is. Education is the science that man employs upon himself, his fellow man, and his children, to allow him to accomplish the objective that God created him for. Let's look how God created you. He made you a living soul, according to the Bible, (2:7) Genesis, in His image and likeness, to have dominion over the Earth. He did NOT create you to work for white people, and when white people do not work full-time, to set up an education system, to make sure that you have your businesses -- tell white folks -- look, that they all got them. You see, education is as old as Man. All white men know about education -- the man know about education -- and, he knows that your boy is not being educated! I've always been amazed by these white men, who would come around and would give your boy a toy for Christmas, while his son is learning how to make tools. And then, you're so stupid, you say: "He's a NICE white man!" He teaches his son to make tools, and gives your boy a toy. And you claim he's a NICE WHITE MAN! When does he set the school up, to make sure that the school teaches EVERY boy SCIENCE? When does he set the school up, so that OUR boys have the opportunity -- and girls -- to be engaged in research and development, production, and marketing in industrial processing? WHEN DOES HE DO THAT? Let me just tell you all this: When I was in Mississippi -- I'm a muleskinner by trade -- men who break mules, and make them work. We had these mules, and I used to plow -- and I plowed from early in the morning to late at night -- and by 12:00, I'd take the mules out and feed them; but, we fed our mules alfalfa-hay, oats, corn, and molasses. Now, Mr. Tolston had some mules; he only gave his mules grass; by 9:30 his mules would go like this: (collapses at the podium) If you take -- listen to me good -- if you take math, physics, chemistry, science, technical information out of your boy's academic diet, he has to be a criminal when he gets older. Every white man in here knows that! Every white man in Alabama KNOWS that. Every one of them knows that; and they go around acting like they're crazy. Are y'all listening to me? So, we've got to, then, get rid of that stuff. Let's cut the game. If we are going to save this nation, we must see to it that all of our children are educated. (From a speech at Demopolis, Alabama, August 21, 1992) LAROUCHE: There are two reasons for a public education, in the traditional sense. Its function, in the most general way, is not to produce a bricklayer, or a physicist, or a chemist, or an astronomer, or a college professor. The objective is to produce a mature human being, who is a competent representative of our civilization; who is able to make decisions, to understand problems, and to participate as a citizen in shaping the policy, and choosing his or her representatives, in discussing policy questions in all areas with his or her representatives. We want to produce a high quality of individual citizen. And the first function of education is not to produce someone who's able to earn a living. Any person is hireable for a job at the age of 18 or 25, if they've had a good education, even if that involved no specific job specialty training, just on the basis of the development of their intelligence, their powers of intelligence. That comes later; that comes on the college level, in a good society. Our general purpose is to develop a quality of citizenship, so that all citizens are able to enjoy POLITICAL equality of education, to be neighbors in more or less equal political standing with one another as they become mature members of new families. The second thing, is to lay the foundations in knowledge for an individual who's caapable of coping with the technology, and the problems that entails, of current and emerging society. Now let's talk about what Jim is talking about in that excerpt you've seen, from that standpoint. What does education do? Let's focus on the secondary education -- what we used to think of as high school, or part of junior high school, education. What's the difference between Man and the animals? What's the thing that defines HUMAN education, or human knowledge, as distinct from animal experience, animal learning? Well, if human beings were animals, like the lower animals, we would be pretty much like our ancestors many millions of years ago. We would be like baboons, running around gathering things to eat, as baboons do. We'd probably have pretty much the same disposition, and family relations, and life expectancies of baboons. But, human beings have another quality, a quality which Christians in particular call, "imago viva dei," the quality of the individual which is in the living image of God. That is, God as the Creator. That doesn't mean that we can become God, but that means that we have some quality which is sacred, which makes human life sacred, which makes the developent of the individual person's mind sacred. Which means that there is only one race, not many races, human races; there is only one human race. We all have the same potential for this "imago viva dei," this living-image-of-God quality. And, the function we are concerned about, is to develop that. Now, how does this pertain to the way in which society functions in earning its daily bread? Well, what happened is, that we, as Mankind, have changed our ways, we've made discoveries, typified by scientific discoveries, which enabled us to change our way of behaving, to increase our power over Nature, so that more of us can live on the same area of land, and, with the same physical effort, we can each have more even though we give ourselves less land to do it with, as population becomes more dense. In other words, the potential population density of Mankind increases. So, whereas primitive Mankind -- if he ever were primitive, in that sense -- could never exceed a world population of about ten million living individuals, we have well over five billion living human beings today. And they could all live well, if our technology had been available to all of them. This five-billion-odd population is not the cause of poverty. It's the lack of technology for most of humanity which denies them the ability to use the resources available to them in an effective way. So, this creative power to make scientific discoveries, and kindred discoveries, to improve our ways, is what characterizes Man. And, human knowledge is the sum total of this intellectual process of discovery, which is rightly called creative discovery. It is this power of creative discovery which makes each of us in the living image of the Creator. We are in the image of God when we act creatively and lovingly toward Mankind with our individual powers of creative discovery -- or simply to assimilate and transmit discoveries as a mother to an infant child does. That is the purpose of education: to develop that. Now, what do we want to give a child? We wish that child, by the age of 16 or 17, to have experienced in his or her own mind, the experience, the mental experience, of going through the process of discovery, for at least some of the most important discoveries of all Mankind. We don't wish that child to come out knowing a bunch of formulas, although he or she will; we wish that child to have experienced other people going through creative discoveries -- the greatest minds we know of in all history -- to repeat their experiences of discovery. So that our child has developed in his or her mind, that quality of the ability to discover. That is true human knowledge, and that is the true, proper purpose of education. If we give the child that, and if we give the child the ideas of physics, the ideas of chemistry; if we give the child the ability to perform experiments which re-experience some of the great discoveries in history, then as Jim proposes, that child is not simply a mule nor a jackass; that child is a human being who is endowed with all the qualiities of great human beings before us -- who KNOWS that he or she has a mind developed to echo the greatest achievements of the minds before him, or before her. That is the fundamental pupose of education, and a nation which is educated in that way, in which that standard of compulsory education is provided to all, to all young people, to all children, that nation is a nation that can't be beat. And that is a nation which is an inspiration to other nations, a nation which is envied in the best possible way -- envied with the desire to imitate and to cooperate. For more information, write LaRouche for President P.O. Box 266 Leesburg, VA 22075 The preceding program was authorized and paid for by: LaRouche for President Independents for Economic Recovery