Lyndon LaRouche often remarked that the history of the human species is one of failed empires—Babylon, Persia, Athens, Rome, the Mongols, the Aztecs, Spain, and many, many more.  All traveled the path from ostentatious power and glory to collapse and obscurity, like the prophecy of Ozymandias.

For LaRouche, this observation was not simply an historical catalogue of the “rise and fall” of civilizations, nor a judgment on mankind’s fate.  He was not describing an inevitable wheel upon which future generations are doomed to turn.  Rather, LaRouche was passing judgment on what he called the “Oligarchical Principle,” and throughout his career, he demonstrated how societies that operate on the basis of an oligarchical culture, an oligarchical view of the human identity, are self-doomed to destruction.

A question arises—a very important question.  Is it possible to intervene at a moment of deep crisis—a period of moral degeneracy and economic collapse—to break this cycle, to rescue society from doom?  Or must we suffer the fate of other failed imperial systems of the past?  Look at Rome.  It could not be saved, and humanity suffered centuries of depopulation, illiteracy and oppression.  In the 14^th century, Dante Alighieri warned of the terminal illness affecting Italy, but he could not prevent the collapse, and it would take 150 years, during which almost half the population died, before a new civilization could be born in the Renaissance.

Today, as the Imperial Financial and Central Banking System—the system of usury, speculation, and theft—collapses around us, we too are facing such a civilizational crisis.  The only relevant question is which will come first—financial collapse and mass starvation or World War III?

Can we stop it?  Can we turn it around?  Or must we, like Rome or Florence, hope that some future generation, in a century or more, rescues humanity?

Rising Above Practical Politics

Currently, there is a debate in Republican and conservative circles about how to shape the “message” of the 2024 Presidential campaign.  Much of this chatter boils down to a falsely constructed contradiction:  “cultural issues” versus “economic issues.”  Should we confront the heinous moral crimes of the dictatorial elite, or should we focus on “bread and butter” economic issues that appeal to the electorate?  This is a very flawed debate, and neither side appears to have any awareness of the profound historical crisis we now face.

One recent contribution to this discussion appeared on April 27th, on the website of American Greatness, an “internet magazine.”  The post in question is titled “Conservatives Lost the Culture War and the Trump Agenda Is the Only Path Forward.”  It is written by Josiah Lippincott, a former Marine and current PhD candidate at Hillsdale College—Hillsdale being, ironically, the headquarters of anti-American British imperial economics, anti-human British liberal philosophy, and Nazi legal theory.

Lippincott comes down squarely on the side of “bread and butter” economic issues.  He begins by saying, “I hate to be the bearer of bad news but the culture war is over and conservatives lost.”  He then proceeds to delineate four key issues (bullet points) for the 2024 campaign.  He asserts that, “immigration, trade, war, and crime. . .  propelled Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016,” and that this must be the focus in 2024.  “These are the core issues for the center-Right coalition needed to win national elections.  No supposedly conservative politician with aspiration for higher office should ever make any public statement without hammering at least one of these points.”

In essence, Lippincott proposes to imitate the electoral practice of the Democratic Party and Republican Parties which, for decades, have utilized a political strategy of focusing on poll-driven “hot button” issues, because, supposedly, the electorate is too stupid to think beyond the oligarchy’s shaped agenda.  But far more important than his realpolitik is the fact that what Lippincott says about Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign is blatantly untrue.

Trump’s Mission

Travel back in time and recall the massive Trump rallies leading into the 2016 presidential election.  Recall that in city after city, rally after rally, the underlying theme of Trump’s message was that he would fight on behalf of the “forgotten men” and “forgotten women” of America.  He would stand up to defend the People against entrenched power.  That message and the way in which it resonated is why Trump shattered the Democratic Party “blue wall” in the Great Lakes region and why he swept Democratic Party strongholds in Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere.  A people whose lives, livelihoods, hopes, dreams, and families were being crushed rallied behind Trump.

One of the most curious things about Lippincott’s article is that, although he purports to be a Trump supporter, nowhere in his posting does he mention Agenda 47, the actual policy initiatives of Trump’s 2024 campaign.  I urge the reader:  go to Trump’s Campaign Website.  Look at what Trump has proposed:  a “Quantum Leap in the American Standard of Living,” “Protecting Medicare and Social Security, “Securing Free Speech,” “Saving American Education,” “Declaring War on the Drug Cartels,” “Ending Homelessness and Drug Addiction,” “American Energy Independence,” “Preventing World War III,” and many other postings.  LaRouche PAC has also created an Agenda 47 page in which we highlight and discuss these policies. Trump's Agenda 47 - LaRouchePAC

In reality, everything is cultural, and economics is merely a subsumed feature of culture.  What Trump did in 2016 and what he is proposing right now in Agenda 47, is to say to the American people:  “We can build a brighter future; we can make things better for everyone; we can restore the people’s faith.  Despite the catastrophic problems, we can make America, once again, a Beacon of Hope and a Temple of Liberty.”  In other words, Optimism.

You Can’t Dictate Culture

Lippincott proposes to “forget culture” for now.  Once the Republicans are in power they can roll back the degenerate counterculture through force.  He states:

“Political power doesn’t flow from scoring debate points in the ‘free marketplace of ideas.’  It comes from the willingness to impose one’s beliefs on others and possessing the resources to do so.  All morality requires enforcement.”

He states that if we are to change the culture, we “must be willing to use force. . .  In the end, this is what morality requires.  This is what morality is.”

Using force to impose morality is a rather bizarre Christian notion.  In reality, it resembles Thrasymachus’ proposal for arbitrary force put forward in Plato’s Republic.  It also echoes the legal rulings and world-view of the Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, as Lippincott states that all politics flow from the “friend-enemy” distinction, the central axiom in Schmitt’s view that human beings are beasts.  One might go even further and suggest that a modern example of the use of government power to enforce a change in culture was the methodology of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution.

Changing Mankind’s Fate

Can we save our ravaged culture and free ourselves from oligarchical rule?  My answer is to look to the history of the American Republic.  In 1775 the British Empire was spreading its tentacles worldwide.  Preeminent in the Atlantic slave trade and soon to create global narcotics trafficking, that Empire was also only decades away from the establishment of the worldwide Imperial Central Banking System.  Humanity, as a whole, was being swallowed up by a global oligarchical financial colossus.  This was a new Roman Empire.

But under the leadership of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and many others, we said, “No!”  We declared that, “We Are Not Animals or Slaves!”  We challenged the deepest cultural axioms of that Empire.  We stated that we take from our Creator, Inalienable Rights.  We rejected the oligarchical outlook that human beings are beasts, driven by greed, lust and rage—to be ruled by an oligarchy—and we created a new Republic.  We created a republican culture, wherein inalienable rights apply to everyone, and where human creativity, discovery, and initiative will be encouraged and rewarded.

Look also to Lincoln.  In 1860 his unofficial campaign slogan was “Free Speech!  Free Soil!  Free Men!”  Freedom.  Human dignity.  Economic development.  A moral purpose that defines the nation.  Between 1856 and 1860, when he was organizing first the Republican Party and then his Presidential campaign, Lincoln eschewed discussions of program.  He stated that “We will build our party on the Rock of the Declaration of Independence.”  He pointed over and over again to the Principles contained within the Declaration.  And he rescued the nation.

Today, unlike Lippincott, our intention is not to manipulate the electorate, to “push the right buttons.”  It is to awaken within millions of Americans a vision of the future—of what might be.  Look at today’s youth.  Get past the knee jerk media-induced responses.  What you find—sometimes palpable, but often hidden away in the private recesses of their minds—is a deep yearning for something better.  A better life.  A future that matters.  No matter how apolitical or demoralized—that yearning is there.  Our job is to provide hope, to demonstrate the pathway to that better future.

Satanic animalistic culture does not flow “from the bottom up.”  It does not “ooze from the masses.”  It flows from the top down.  It’s how the oligarchical elite understand their own motivations, and it is how they run the world.  Human beings are animals to be exploited, controlled, and culled.  And now, as a result of their own perversions, their system is crashing.

The only way to defeat this monstrosity is to ruthlessly break their power.  Dismantle their financial empire.  Bankrupt them all.  Abolish the Federal Reserve and reestablish Constitutional Hamiltonian National Banking.  Shatter the oligarchy’s control over the media, the universities, and the schools.  Reestablish Free Speech.

Using sovereign credit, launch an economic renaissance in manufacturing, infrastructure, energy, water, science, and space exploration.  Demonstrate to the people that we are creating a better future.  That is American Economics.  That is also the basis for a Republican Culture and for trust between the people and the government.

Lincoln insisted that ours was government “of the People, by the People, for the People.”  If enough Americans come to believe that we can truly reestablish that Principle, then we might yet rescue our nation and its people.