The August 26 Monday night weekly campaign call of the two independent LaRouche candidates in New York State, Diane Sare for U.S. Senate and Jose Vega for U.S. Congress, was joined by special guests, Ohio’s independent Congressional candidate Dennis Kucinich, Scott Ritter, and Dennis Fritz of the Eisenhower Media Network. They issued a clarion call to Americans to make two existential issues—preventing thermonuclear war, and defending free thought from despotic censorship—the centerpiece of the 2024 election campaign. During the discussion, peace activist Ben Wesley of Connecticut, now on the ballot for U.S. Congress on the Independent Party ticket, stated his intention to also do the same in his campaign.
Former UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons instructor and U.S. Marine Scott Ritter presented these two issues—actually, two legs of one unfolding breakdown—most dramatically to the 150 or so activists, connected from New York State online to around the nation. He reported how he had been saying for years that preventing nuclear war is the existential issue of our time. He had planned to dedicate this summer to the cause of peace, by trying to prevent nuclear war, including by traveling to Russia. It was to be a trip whose international centerpiece he intended would be JFK’s famous June 10, 1963 peace speech at American University. The State Department stopped that trip, and on August 7, Ritter’s home was raided by the FBI.
At one point, he observed, “I am being investigated for supposed criminal conduct, because I am trying to stop a nuclear war! ... Because I dare challenge the gospel of the nuclear industry, the war party, that says that we not only need nuclear weapons, but to change our nuclear employment doctrine to make it easier to use those nuclear weapons. Simply talking about this has become criminal, because it is supposedly political, designed to alter the minds of the American public. But isn’t that what free speech is all about?” Ritter asked. Our founding fathers did not insist on free speech “so that we could talk baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolets.” Americans have the Constitutional right to challenge our government on failed and bad policies. Either we stop this assault on the Constitution, or we will cease to exist, he argued.
