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IF AMERICANS UNDERSTOOD BEETHOVEN, WOULD BUSH BE PRESIDENT?from theLaRouche Youth MovementWhat follows is excerpted from a discussion with LYM leader Nick Walsh, from Boston, on the Aug. 21 webcast of "The LaRouche Show," moderated by Marcia Merry Baker.

Nick: What we've been doing here, in Boston, the main mission that we have: There's about 18 of us here, that LaRouche wanted to come in, as primarily a singing/recruiting contingent of youth. So, we have four people of each voice: We have four baritones, we have four tenors, four altos, and four sopranos. And then there's a couple others—we have a couple more than 16. And, we've been doing two-hour chorus rehearsals in a church across the street from the hostel here, where we're staying. And the priest of the church allows us to sing there, for two hours every morning.

So, we've been working through the Bach "Jesu, meine Freude," and then, taking this out onto the streets, into the population. And setting up on different street corners, where there's large amounts of people. Like at one prominent place, called Harvard Square, where we've been having meetings, every single night, at 10 p.m. And we sing, maybe every hour. And then we have different—we have a couple of whiteboards, or dry-marker boards, set up on easels, positioned all around the corner, where large numbers of people are passing through. And then we have, different scientific, pedagogical experiments. We have a very beautiful, the five Platonic solids, constructed out of wood. We have a large brachistochrone, which is a cycloid curve, compared to a straight-line ramp, where you roll both marbles down the ramp and the curve, and you see which one will get to the bottom first.

So, we have all these kinds of set-ups. And then, on the whiteboards, we've been asking people, "Do you know how to double the cube?"

So, imagine about 18 of us, on the same corner there, singing through Bach, drawing increasingly large crowds through the music. When it started, you know, three or four people would stop and listen, and most people would kind of walk by—everyone would be provoked, and their ears would perk up and they'd listen, but they'd keep walking. The last few days, especially, I've noticed—we've been doing it a lot at night—we've been drawing crowds of people, youth and Baby Boomers, and I guess what you would call senior citizens, or the World War II generation, of 30 to 35 people; standing around, actually listening somewhat intently, to the music. And then, asking people, as they pass through, "Do you know how to double the cube?"

Or, "What is the quickest path between two points?" And then, people say, "The straight line, of course." And we say, "Well, let's see," and we roll the marbles down each of these tracks, and people see that the marble going down the cycloid curve gets to the bottom the fastest. And they go, "What is this?" And we hand them the platform, LaRouche's "Real Democratic Party Platform." And we say, "These types of experiments, doubling the cube, the brachistochrone, Bach—these ideas are essential to being able to rebuild the United States economy!" And people say, "What're ya talkin' about!"

So, we're engaging people, and we say, "You don't understand Riemann, do you? You don't understand LaRouche. You don't know about physical economy." And this is what we're teaching. - Living History -

And the neat thing, these same streets, where we're doing this, where Cotton Mather, Increase Mather, the Winthrops, and eventually Benjamin Franklin, were actually organizing the population here, in the early 1700s, with newspapers, different types of literature. But also, different types of inventions, kind of spreading, and promoting different types of inventions and ideas, throughout the community here in Boston. To actually create a much more intellectual, more literate kind of population, a culture that would be capable of assimilating the kinds of ideas needed to have a nation-state.

And you had a situation in the 1700s, where the population was prepared, by people like Franklin, for the American Revolution. And you have a situation now, where LaRouche is, in a certain sense, doing the same exact thing, largely through our youth movement. Saying: We need to go into places like Boston, where there's an appetite here for ideas, and we're very easily able to engage people. People here want to know, and they want to discuss things like the brachistochrone and the relationship to economics.

But, we're engaging people, really fighting with them about LaRouche's epistemology, or the epistemology of the human mind. And, creating the conditions where we're going to recruit young people, and create the kind of movement where this American population can actually survive, can actually be morally fit, and intellectually fit, to demand the right kinds of ideas coming out of the government, coming from John Kerry, coming from the Democratic Party, whoever they may be. And also, of course, the same thing in places like Germany: Create a culture in different countries of the world that will not tolerate austerity, and fascism, and war. - Harvard Square Pedagogicals -

And then, just to conclude, last night, we had our first kind of "official" student class. We've been having these meeting every night. And there's people are coming at us from all different directions: Some people are hearing about us from their friends, some are hearing about us from their parents or running into here. Yadda, yadda, yah—it's a very open process. Well, last night, we had Bill Ferguson teach a pedagogical in the middle of Harvard Square, on Bernouilli and Leibniz's catenary, which is the hanging chain, and the shape that that takes. And we had about 30-40 people, total, participate for at least 15-20 minutes in the class. You had 17-year-old kids talking about "LaRouche's catenary," and you had a Baby Boomer couple standing there for 45 minutes trying to figure it out.

We had a woman come up to a sign that said, "If Americans understood Beethoven, would Bush be President?" And this one woman came up to this sign, and said, "Who's in charge of this sign!? You can't put a sign like this in the middle of the sidewalk and walk away!" So, one of our organizers went up and started telling her why Beethoven was essential for politics.... - Boston: A 'Youthful City' -

Boston is a very interesting town. I think there's an intellectual concentration here. It is a very stimulated place. There's a lot of colleges. It's a youthful city. But, you get this in other parts of the country, too.

Wherever there are human beings, what we really respond to, is ideas. And people don't really believe this, but, what really is powerful, and what really sinks in, and what people actually tend to recognize, is, unique ideas. You know, concepts which have the potential to change the world, or change the way that an individual thinks, or change a certain society, or certain organization of people. And that's what LaRouche is, notorious for his ideas. People know our movement, because of the uniqueness and the kind of potency, of LaRouche's concepts of economics, and physics, and history, and philosophy. And there is a huge, kind of—somewhat, I'd say, "subconscious" almost, support, and defense, of what we as a movement represent.

And, indeed, in places like Los Angeles, the population of Los Angeles is a better population because we're there. And if we were to all leave there, and to stop organizing there for a few months, that population would degenerate, because of us not being there. The intellectual quality of the culture there, and the abilities of the people there, to discuss ideas, and contemplate the universe, is much, much increased, because we are there, organizing them.

And the same thing is here. We're actually a kind of a geological, universal, cultural effect, on the way that Americans think. If we didn't exist, this country would be a very barbarian place, it would be very ugly, if LaRouche's ideas weren't being communicated so well by the youth movement. And this great relationship of LaRouche, his writings, his ideas, his speeches he's delivering, and the youth's ability to assimilate them and communicate them to the population, in exciting, different, creative ways.

And we, here in Boston, we've recruited two new members already. There are people that are just coming around, all the time, because they recognize: It's a crisis. Human beings are suffering. There's no answers being provided. And what's being given, more and more and more economic value, in people's minds, is not money, but truth, and ideas, and being right.

So, it's good. This is the kind of—this is the time when we become, this is the time we've been working for, is when being right is the most valuable thing to be able to have on your ticket.