This document is the introduction to the printed version, in EIR, for LaRouche's November 11th discussion with a private group of world leaders.
The subject is "dynamics":
THERE IS BUT ONE ISSUE!
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
November 15, 2008
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The
existing world monetary-financial system is in the end- phase of a
disintegration of that system into a breakdown- crisis. Only a
replacement of that useless monetary system by a credit-system in the
image of U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton's design could
prevent the plunge of the entire world into a prolonged dark age
comparable to that of Fourteenth-Century Europe, but far worse in depth
and duration. Foolish governments, led by the most foolish of all, that
of U.S. President George W. Bush, Jr., and the United Kingdom's Prime
Minister Gordon Brown, are leading the discussion of an assortment of
petty arrangements and sordid, global schemes, none of which address
the issue on which the fate of civilization now depends.
On this past Tuesday, I led a discussion,
among a select group assembled, partly in Washington, D.C. and partly
in New York City, at which I outlined the only possible escape from the
presently onrushing global, economic-breakdown- crisis currently in
accelerating progress. The essential features of my proposal are
published following the introductory remarks here.
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These days, as the worst U.S. Presidency in more than a century,
and the recent nearly two years of the worst session of the U.S.
Congress experienced in recent decades, come to their respective,
miserable ends, both the United States and the world at large are left
with only one chance for escaping from a presently ongoing, global "new
dark age," the worst such since the "New Dark Age" which occurred
during Europe's Fourteenth Century.
That is the alternative which I outlined to the special audiences in Washington, D.C., and New York, this past Tuesday.
On this occasion we should be reminded that there are no tragic
figures in real world history; there are, rather, tragic nations and
peoples, such as those described by the Homeric Iliad, and the
tragedies presented by Shakespeare and Friedrich Schiller, a virtual
Comedie Humaine, whose leaders have incurred the misfortune of being
what the people of that culture had, like the citizens of our U.S.A.,
chosen to place positions of leadership.
This is not to say that all such misleaders were bad people. Some,
like both George Bush administrations, were, admittedly, malicious. The
fault of others, is that they gave the people the administration which
it seemed that popular opinion desired; but, perhaps, they lacked the
will to do better, since they lacked the stuff of which a President
George Washington, a John Quincy Adams, an Abraham Lincoln, and a
Franklin Delano Roosevelt were made.
A qualified leader of a great republic, especially one with that
special quality of Constitution such as our own United States, is to
know what the destiny of the nation and its people require, as
Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt did, and to deliver
the effort needed to bring the nation to safety, and, also, to
contribute to the well-being of the community of nations generally.
I must concede the point, even as I must note the failures of the
performance of recent Presidents, since Franklin Roosevelt, who were
not bad, but who intended good, but lacked the standard of leadership.
Leadership, especially in times of grave crisis - - and this is now the
greatest crisis in the history of all modern civilization - - must be a
commitment to provide that mission which is required at that time, and,
more than that, the destiny of coming generations.
For this reason, while there is a hopeful escape from the present
general breakdown-crisis of the planet as a whole, there is only one
course of action which could plausibly enable the planet to escape a
global catastrophe now. I presented that option, in summary, in my
leading remarks this past Tuesday.
LaRouche's November 11th discussion
