We could recover successfully from the presently deepening world economic depression, but only if we now choose to do so. It is Hamlet’s challenge again: To be, or not to be. To accept the deadly heritage of our nation’s recently habituated folly, or to free ourselves from the deadly shackles of prevailing opinion, that we might ascend to the sublime, and triumph over the fatal error of our recent times.—Lyndon LaRouche, “Economics: At the End of a Delusion,” EIR, Jan. 12, 2002.
Nearly a quarter-century ago, the world’s leading economist and statesman, Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., wrote the above words as a preface to a special report published by Executive Intelligence Review on the nature of the collapse hitting the United States and what needed to be done about it. The publication included a substantial report on the measures taken by President Franklin Roosevelt, who harnessed the powers of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation to build thousands of hospitals, libraries, schools, parks, and great infrastructure projects across the United States.
Readers will not be surprised to know that during FDR’s presidency, American suicide rates dropped from a high of 22 per 100,000 in 1932, to 10 per 100,000 in 1944. It is unlikely that this substantial increase in happiness was caused by the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor and America’s official entry into World War II, but rather by the extraordinary measures taken by the President to employ millions of people in productive labor, enabling them to support their families, but, perhaps more importantly, restoring their personal sense of self-worth as contributors to the general welfare for themselves and their posterity.
Such an approach is urgently needed today.
Imagine the relief and even jubilation that would erupt if the President of the United States were to announce that he had not only decided to accept Russian President Vladimir Putin’s offer to extend New START by one year, but that he was going to declare a “no first use” nuclear doctrine and was calling on all nuclear weapons-possessing nations, including Israel, to do the same.
Imagine if the President of the United States were to announce that he (or she) had consulted with Russia, China, and India about combining efforts to establish an industrial base on the Moon, not only for mining helium-3, but as a launch pad for the first manned landing on Mars, powered by fusion-propelled rockets, by 2050, and that they recognized that continuing to bail out the monstrous bubble of fictitious gambling debts would prevent them from achieving this goal, so they decided to declare the old system bankrupt, and establish a new system and a new order of relations among nations, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche proposed in her Ten Principles.
Imagine if it were commonly believed by world leaders that every child has the potential to contribute to this mission by making crucial scientific discoveries, and that this potential must be protected by ending war and poverty in every nation and by encouraging cultural endeavors that develop the mind and character of each human being.
Imagine how prosperous the United States would be with 1 billion people in a world with 25 billion people.
If you find it hard to imagine these things, or if you don’t think getting to Mars is a worthwhile goal for the human species, you are suffering under a delusion.
The truth of the matter is that what I have just outlined above is far more reasonable than trying to sustain a $2.4 quadrillion bubble of derivatives obligations by threatening “preemptive strikes” on Iran, or by declaring a state of martial law in the United States.
Launching a crash program to establish a manned colony on Mars is much more reasonable than producing billions of dollars worth of weapons and using them to kill people who have done nothing to hurt anyone, and going to Mars is certainly far more rational than creating enough nuclear bombs to destroy our little planet dozens of times over.
Why do we accept aberrant behavior which will lead to the destruction of humanity as normal, and reject the great things that our species could potentially do as insane?
You can stop thinking that way now, and your grandchildren will be more likely to survive if you do.
