PTOTalryn #fundie #wingnut reddit.com

Dear Dr. Peterson,

I'm writing to you not because I know exactly what you should do, but because I have studied the works of Lyndon LaRouche for over a decade, informally, and judge that he is a twentieth century thinker you ought to contend with. I am not ideologically possessed by this man and am not a member of his organization. Nevertheless, if economics is one thing you wish to learn more about, in a heavy intellectual and historical context, then allow me to lay out the case for LaRouche.

The platform for everything LaRouche says is the nature of man as literally being made imago viva Dei, or in the cognitive image of God. He has even said that the human mind is the only important thing in the universe. This quality of man's mind, namely the ability to compose creative hypotheses, test them, and if successful thereby discover (or rediscover) universal principles of morality and physics, is what divides man as by an abyss from all other known life forms. Indeed, if we discovered any life form with this ability other than man, we would be morally obligated to refer to them as “men” as well.

By this yardstick, LaRouche measures whether or not any given thinker contributes to this mission, the mission to liberate and advance man's cognitive capacities, or retards it. This includes specific societies and cultures, whether they represent the development of man (as the best tradition of the United States, including its initial, existential opposition to British imperialist “free trade” indicates) or whether it retards man (as imperialism, including Bolshevik imperialism, does generally).

LaRouche originated as a Quaker, fought in the Second World War, and later become a Marxist, eventually arriving at Hamiltonian economics. He has formerly called himself a Marxist, but just as he transcended Freud in his essay “Beyond Psychoanalysis” he also transcends Marxism. He eschews identity politics, execrates postmodernism, and is interested in government control of capital only in the sense used by John F. Kennedy's science-driver missions and infrastructure. His goal is not equality of outcome, but an increase in human power to exist in the universe, which naturally spills over into an increased consumption of resources by labor, including consumption of luxury goods. He wants every person to have the opportunity to develop their powers of intellect.

Because he opposes the British empire's continued influence on world politics, including the geopolitics of control regarding Asia (whether Russia, China, India, or the Near East), and he opposes the reckless "casino capitalism" of London and Wall Street (sitting on top of the $700 trillion derivatives bubble), and he has made some odd comments on a variety of groups and subjects (whether the Beatles having no (classical) musical talent or the rural Chinese being (culturally) bestialized, etc.), which raises the hackles of the formerly-mainstream media, he has suffered an almost total media blackout accompanied by a wall of slander, punched increasingly through by the Internet.

His economics, then, are Hamiltonian, the idea of sovereign government credit being used to finance infrastructure projects (such as the Chinese New Silk Road initiative which his wife Helga Zepp-LaRouche has boosted for decades), in order to increase man's survival power and enrich the economy. No railroads, no modern America after all.
His morality revolves around the ability of classical art, such as Prometheus Bound and Macbeth, to improve the loving self-consciousness of the audiences, rather than drive animalistic ruts of mere sense-pleasure through the byways of the mind.

He was asked once “Are you ever wrong?” and he replied (paraphrasing), “No. I make errors, but on the core of what I'm talking about I'm not wrong.” When asked “What should I do?” he has said, “I'm not going to tell you what to do, that's up to you.” And, on the subject of the present cultural and economic crisis, he has said, “Fight for truth” which is his ultimate good, as it relates to defending the human mind.

In short, this man gave me the ability to think in terms of principles, rather than floundering in a sea of facts. I realize you are the top of your game and I am a relatively ignorant fan of yours, and I am not a master of economics able to fill LaRouche's shoes (not just yet, anyway), nevertheless if you ever wonder from your 100-foot wave, “Where can I go from here?” Lyndon LaRouche is a way to up your game, and stay usefully controversial. He is the Mission to Mars, he is the World Land Bridge, he is Fusion Energy . . . he is the Jor-El of our planet. Do we repeat the same mistake as Krypton?

That's my recommendation for you to learn economics. Dig past the landfill worth of slander, around the land-mine of "used to be a Marxist" and get at the stratum of futuristic classical humanism underneath.

Thanks for your time. With all respect, P.T. O'Talryn.

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Confused?

So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!

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