LaRouche: State of the Union Address, 2003

The State of the Union: Discussion Period
page 35

The State of the Union: Discussion Period

with Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
January 28, 2003

This is a transcript of the question and answer session that took place after the speech that was given by Lyndon LaRouche, candidate for the Democratic nomination for President, to a live Washington and international Internet audiences on Jan. 28, hours before President Bush's State of the Union Address. The questions were read by National Campaign Spokeswoman Debra Hanania-Freeman. (Click here to read a transcript of the speech.)

Question: From a member of the staff of one of the Congressional Committees, specifically from someone who works for a member of the Congressional Black Caucus:

Mr. LaRouche, every great leader in the United States, from Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Delano Roosevelt to the great Dr. Martin Luther King, has addressed the principle of the common good and the common welfare. Today, what all of us are witnessing is outright murder in the name of austerity. We have argued against it, based on upholding that principle of the General Welfare. You gave us a broad understanding of that during the course of the fight to save D.C. General Hospital. But today, you seem to have added something to the view. You've actually said that, from an economic standpoint as well as a moral standpoint, austerity is a bad policy. I'm perfectly capable of understanding and explaining why austerity is bad from a moral standpoint, but I'm wondering if you would say a bit more as to why in fact budget-cutting is not a sound economic policy.

LaRouche: Again, we're back to the question of immortality. We are responsible for human beings, especially young ones, because as we develop young human beings, educate them and so forth, and provide them opportunities, we determine largely what they can become. So, therefore, our job in society is not to balance the budget--we have to balance the budget in a certain way, but balancing the budget is not a moral standard; it's simply something you may have to do. Balancing a real budget is: What quality of human beings are we creating?

Let's take the HMOs. What happens with this HMO business? What they're doing, is, we're looting people of the health care which is coming them, for the sake of enriching someone who's jumped in as a speculator to try to loot the health-care system. Therefore, we are taking away their lives. With our present educational system (which we'd better not call an educational system), we are taking away people's lives. I see people who don't know anything about this planet--young people who don't know anything about anything. They've been educated by talking about opinion. We don't teach history anymore, we teach current events. “Let's talk about current events. Everybody has their opinion, nobody knows anything. We all talk about it, we all agree to disagree. Okay, everybody talks; it's all good. good.” That's education? No knowledge of science.

Now, our responsibility is not just to show we don't treat people as if they were cattle. Our responsibility is how we develop people, what we do about their self-development and development. There's no need for austerity--not in the sense that it's being applied today. They may be saying, “You can be austere about not giving everybody a 24-room mansion.” That may not be particularly bad. But to deprive people of a decent place to live? Look on the streets of Washington, D.C. What about the homeless in the nation's capital, for example? What kind of austerity is that?

No, the issue of austerity should be understood. The problem is, the development of the individual person, and the effects of what we do upon the children and grandchildren of the people we directly impact. It's immortality, it's a sense of immortality. There's no justice on the basis of being treated fairly, as if you were an animal in a cage. You're a human being. And a human being's fundamental interest, whether they know it or not, is their investment in this sense of personal immortality. That does not mean that somebody's going to give them something because they begged for it. It means they've earned something. They've earned their immortality, by doing something, or living their lives in such a way that somebody in future generations is going to benefit. And they can sit in their grave, so to speak, and smile, to say, “I spent my talent well, because these people live, because I helped to make it possible.”

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