IV. The Secret of Strategy Is the Human Spirit WHY CHOOSE SLAVERY? Frederick Douglass and America as a Principle by Dennis Speed Feb. 19—Once again, as with the recent case of liar When the American people allow themselves to be “Little Dickie” Durbin’s “Trump said it, and I heard it!” “bamboozled” by British intelligence, or are merely Haiti whopper, Americans are being intentionally de- fully unaware victims, themselves, of some British-or- flected by their national Fake News media from over- chestrated foreign or domestic policy hustle perpetrated turning the coup against the Presidency of the United against them and their nation, there is often a fatal price States. As one saying has it, “whenever the media is that innocent people pay—whether that be in Iraq, Af- pushing a big story, find the story they are trying to dis- ghanistan, Libya, Pakistan, or Parkland High School, tract you from.” The Mueller “dev- Florida. Tens, perhaps hundreds astating indictment” of thirteen of thousands of Americans today Russians who will never stand are dying from self-inflicted inju- trial, itself based on a three-year- ries, whether through suicide, old story that has nothing to do death by opioids, or other means, with the Presidency, is distracting apart from shootings, including from the now increasingly abun- mass shootings. More American dant evidence that nearly everyone lives are needlessly squandered in in the Mueller investigative team is opioids-addiction-related deaths being revealed to be—where they each year—59,000 in 2016 are not shown to be directly guilty alone—than the United States of high crimes against the Consti- lost in the entirety of the Vietnam tution—at least criminally incom- War. petent. This is because the United This is evidenced by the FBI’s States, through the ongoing ille- nonfeasance with respect to Flori- gal insurrection against the Trump da’s Parkland High School mass Presidency, is being kept from shooting. Governor Scott of Flor- National Archives/George K. Warren giving its own citizens, in particu- Frederick Douglass, ca. 1879. ida, sensing the mood of white-hot lar its youth, a productive future rage building among the parents of by working together with the the victims and the state’s citizenry as a whole, cor- nation of China, and with Vladimir Putin’s Russia, in rectly called for the resignation of FBI Director Chris- what is called “the Belt and Road Initiative.” topher Wray, whose agency appears to be too busy pro- A remedy is urgently required; it is also available. tecting criminals in its midst, now shown to be working There must be a change in the American mind-set, a on behalf of British and “American Tory” interests return to the characteristic “anti-colonial” mind-set of against the President, to protect the American people revolutionary thinking that Benjamin Franklin, Alexan- through even the most rudimentary police work. der Hamilton, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Doug- 44 Join with LaRouche EIR February 23, 2018 lass, among others, represented. the mind of the thinker, but also in The true, abiding national pur- the non-cognitive domain of non- pose of the United States, to pro- human nature, both living and vide for the promotion of the nonliving. The American Consti- General Welfare so that, through tution, which Frederick Douglass the improvement in the capacity ruthlessly defended against all de- of the sovereign individual citizen tractors, whether Confederate or to participate in the advancement abolitionist, in its Preamble’s ref- of the nation’s physical and cog- erence to ourselves and our poster- nitive growth, his increasing free- ity, established the perfecting of dom of thought and action be- the future, “a more perfect union,” comes the indispensable natural as both the task and the birthright resource by means of which the of all, regardless of lineage or eth- “more perfect American union” is nicity. Oligarchy, whether repre- achieved—this purpose must be sented by a king, slave-master, again taught, that it again become banker, or anyone else, was de- New York Historical Society known. Frederick Douglass spised and rejected. To be an To do this requires a society American is to fight, continuously devoted to the never-ending in- and relentlessly, until all citizens crease of the capacity of the individual, not to merely of one’s nation know that they, also, must not only “have more,” but rather to know more and to do more, have the right, but also earn the responsibility, to be in order to be more. To that end, EIR presents here the productively creative. April 2001 article by Lyndon LaRouche, entitled “The America is not merely a place. It is not a “geo-stra- Tragedy of U.S. Education: Shrunken Heads in Amer- tegic territory.” America is the process of continuous, ica Today.” never-ending perfection of the knowledge of the “physical principle” of self-government, as embodied From the Mountaintop in Gouverneur Morris’ phrase “a more perfect union.” In the very beginning of his article, LaRouche dis- All people, and only people, that are dedicated to that tinguishes between seeing the world from “inside-out” principle, are Americans. That is how Abraham Lin- and “bottom-up,” rather than seeing the world from the coln, Frederick Douglass, Ulysses Grant, and associ- “top-down.” LaRouche insists that the individual can, ated defenders of the Constitution, invented the and must, locate the meaning of his or her individual modern United States through a second American life, and therefore the mind, from the standpoint of, not Revolution, employing the then just-created Republi- mere “in the flesh” present-tense self-interest, but as a can Party for that purpose. That is why Franklin great Classical writer or composer would, in one’s Delano Roosevelt in 1932 posthumously recruited “after the flesh” future self-interest. Abraham Lincoln to the Democratic Party, calling his This requires an “education of the emotions” to policy, not a “New Reconstruction,” but a “New qualify that individual to engage in the passionate dis- Deal.” covery and invention of new physical principles for To this end, the example of Frederick Douglass changing mankind’s self-government of the future. demonstrates that there is no human being that cannot There is no “present time” as is commonly thought, defy the most adversely compelling circumstances of which is why there are no “current events”; these are even a constrained, imprisoned existence, to success- mere shadows, distractions intended to frighten the en- fully shape the course of all world history, even perhaps slaved cave dwellers chained to their various electronic in his lifetime, both in ways he or she can and cannot devices. There is only future history, including our know. Slavery as a mental condition must needs yield to future view of the past. “freedom” as a mental condition—a transformation For the world-historical individual, such as an that Douglass discusses as having happened as soon as Albert Einstein, a Beethoven, or a Frederick Douglass, he had learned to read. the idea of the future is a physical existent, not only in Douglass’ role in speaking out for freedom for the February 23, 2018 EIR Join with LaRouche 45 Irish people in a trip he made to that nation in 1845, at ick Douglass is still thought of as an appendage to that the age of 27; his break with the anti-Constitution Second American Revolution, rather than a central, if Boston abolitionists, particularly William Lloyd Garri- still unacknowledged, leader of it. As a result, Doug- son, and later his break with John Brown on the eve of lass has suffered nearly the fate of Cassius Marcellus the Harpers Ferry raid; and his recruitment of over Clay, a far more important anti-slavery figure in Amer- 180,000 African-American men (and some women) to ican History than John Brown or William Lloyd Gar- fight for the Union, the Republic and the Constitution, rison, and who has been “disappeared from the books” were mere indicators of his greatness. He was the deci- because of his role in the emancipation of both Rus- sive factor, in personally demonstrating, by his very ex- sian serfs and American slaves, in a joint, international istence, not only the absurdity of the “congenital inferi- anti-British Empire project that American Ambassa- ority” of the African—a “sales pitch” that LaRouche dor Clay and Lincoln carried out with Russia’s Czar thoroughly documents was invented by the Venetian Alexander II. Both Douglass and Clay were excep- Empire. Douglass also demonstrated the perfectibility tional, successful American revolutionary fighters of the Constitution of the United States, in his relation- who acted on principle, named the right enemy, served ship with Abraham Lincoln. the American Presidency rather than smaller interests, Though they at times disagreed, their political inter- and won. section between the years 1856 and 1865—through the then-revolutionary project known as “the Republican ‘Agitate! Agitate! Agitate!’ Party,” and then the Lincoln Presidency, which became Douglass’ fiery, often dangerous, denunciations of the “Second American Revolution” in effect—was the slavery were polemical presentations to primarily embodiment of the “more perfect Union” of the Consti- “white” audiences that often, when most successful, tution’s Preamble, written by anti-slavery advocate emptied the room. The following account appeared in Gouverneur Morris of New York in 1789. the New York Sun’s edition of May 12, 1848: “Frederick Douglass said that after an anxious and Blacked-Out History careful investigation into causes of the continuance of It is unfortunate that the campaign to extirpate slavery in the land, he found that it was caused by too American history in general, including the extensive much religion.