EIR
MICHAEL BILLINGTON
Leibniz, LaRouche, and the
U.S. Link with China, Russia
EIR Asia specialist Michael Billington
gave this speech to the Schiller Institute
conference in San Francisco on June
29, 2013.1
As has been discussed here, the
Obama Administration and its British
controllers are driving the world very
rapidly toward war against Russia and
China, over Syria, which Russia will
not allow to be turned over to terrorist
mobs as was done in Libya; meanwhile
in Asia, Obama has adopted the Air-Sea
Battle doctrine for a war with China.2
My intention here is to show you
that the idea that Russia and China are
natural adversaries of the United States
is entirely a British concoction, despite
the fact that many dumbed-down
Americans have swallowed the British Kool-Aid. The
fact is that the natural connection between the United
States and Asia—both Russia and China—began long
before the founding of the United States as a nation-
state, and even before the “discovery” of America by
Christopher Columbus. America began, in fact, as a
1. Previous coverage of the conference, including keynotes by Lyndon
and Helga LaRouche can be found in EIR, July 12, and July 19, 2013.
2. See Michael Billington, “ ‘Air-Sea Battle’ Is a Plan for War on
China,” EIR, June 28, 2013.
Courtesy of Janus Kramer
thought-object in the mind of
some of the greatest minds of
Western civilization—in particular,
Nicholas of Cusa and Gottfried
Leibniz. It was as real then
as it is today, for the nation is not
just a physical location, or a government,
recognized only by our
senses, but it is a dynamic process,
an idea, the City on the Hill,
the New World.
Like Lyndon LaRouche today,
Cusa and Leibniz not only dreamed
about the future, they saw the
future—both the horror of a future
under imperial domination, and
the great potential of the New
World which they set about to
create a republic free of the oligar
chical control of European monarchs and global Empire.
As we will see, Gottfried Leibniz had already established
the natural alliance between the future United States and
both Russia and China, before the official founding of
our nation.
That natural alliance was restored under Franklin
Roosevelt, to defeat the British-created Nazi movement,
and is finally coming back into being today under
the inspiration of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, based
on the concept of a New Paradigm for the Survival of
Civilization. Great projects, such as the Eurasian Land-
July 26, 2013 EIR Conference Report 39
Bridge, and the tunnel under the Bering Strait, uniting
Russia, China, and the United States by rail, and bringing
them together into a common mission for the future,
can and must fulfill the creative discoveries of our forefathers,
and end the power of Empire once and for all.
Bridge, and the tunnel under the Bering Strait, uniting
Russia, China, and the United States by rail, and bringing
them together into a common mission for the future,
can and must fulfill the creative discoveries of our forefathers,
and end the power of Empire once and for all.
The discovery of America by Columbus, as is now
well known, can be attributed directly to Nicholas of
Cusa, and to his close friend and colleague Paolo Toscanelli,
who suggested to Columbus that the Far East
could be reached by sailing west, including the belief
that a New World lay in between Europe and Asia. Columbus
carried with him on his voyage a map provided
by Toscanelli.
As I reported last November in Frankfurt, at the first
of these New Paradigm conferences, Leibniz was not
only a follower of Cusa, and the seminal philosopher
and scientist of his age, but also one of the great statesmen
of history. He worked with Peter the Great in
Russia to establish the Russian Academy of Sciences in
1724, worked closely with the Jesuit missionaries who
had become the core of the scientific institutions in
China, and even arranged a treaty between Russia and
China over border issues and cooperation—the first
East-West treaty in history. He published a journal, Novissima
Sinica (News from China), in 1697, which analyzed
the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and the
greatest mind of the 12th-Century Song Dynasty Renaissance,
Zhu Xi, which had been translated by the
Jesuits, and made them known across Europe. A quote
from that journal will be relevant to my report on the
developments in the U.S.
I consider it a singular plan of the fates that
human cultivation and refinement should today
be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes
of our continent, in Europe and in China, which
adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite
edge of the Earth. Perhaps Supreme Providence
has ordained such an arrangement, so that, as the
most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out
their arms to each other, those in between may
gradually be brought to a better way of life.
In his analysis of the Confucian philosophic outlook,
Leibniz said: “It is pure Christianity, insofar as it
renews the natural law inscribed in our hearts.”
Remember this concept for later.
Gottfried Leibniz collaborated with Peter the Great in Russia,
to establish the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724. His
“Novissima Sinica” (1697) analyzed the writings of Confucius,
Mencius, and Zhu Xi, and made them known across Europe.
Leibniz in America
The American Founding Fathers were profoundly affected
by the works of Leibniz, and maintained contact
with the Leibniz circles in Russia, especially in the Russian
Academy of Sciences. During the American War of
Independence, British warships were seizing Russian
(and other) ships which were trading with the colonies,
until Benjamin Franklin and other members of his American
Philosophic Society made direct appeals to their associates
in the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg
and certain Russian diplomatic contacts, leading to the
creation of the League of Armed Neutrality. The League
of Armed Neutrality declared that Russia (and other officially
neutral nations) had the right to trade with the
colonies, and would consider any British attack on neutral
merchant vessels as an act of war.
After the war, American naval hero John Paul Jones
went to Russia, and helped build the Russian Navy, and,
of course, America’s greatest statesman John Quincy
Adams became the first Minister to Russia in 1809. Leading
Russian circles translated and published Alexander
Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” in 1807, telling the
40 Conference Report EIR July 26, 2013
Tsar that its principles were fully applicable for developing
Russia as a continental country. And the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers worked directly on Russia’s first railroad,
from St. Petersburg to Moscow, in the 1840s.
The British spent much of the 19th Century trying to
break up the United States and Russia (and China),
through warfare and economic sabotage. The Crimean
War against Russia in the 1850s was aimed at splitting up
Russia; it was soon followed by the British-instigated
Civil War in the United States, intended to split this nation,
and to maintain free trade in slaves, and in cheap cotton
from the slave plantations. To some extent, the Civil War
was also an extension of the two British Opium Wars
against China in the 1840s and 1850s—again, waging
war to defend the free trade in slaves, and also opium.
Again, the U.S. ties with Russia were crucial in the
victory over the British Confederacy. How many people
today know that the entire Russian fleet was deployed
into New York Harbor, and also, right here, near San
Francisco, in 1863, at the crucial point in the Civil War?
The Russians had informed the British and their French
allies that, were they to proceed with their plan to intervene
on behalf of the Confederacy (a peace mission,
you understand, a humanitarian intervention to protect
civilians, due to the Brits’ moral concern and the responsibility
to protect civilians in the Confederacy
from the marauding Northern armies), then the Russians
would intervene to defend the legitimate government
of the United States.
If this sounds familiar to what is going on in Syria
today, that is no coincidence.
Lincoln and Russia
President Abraham Lincoln
also understood, even as war
was breaking out, that the
United States was extremely
vulnerable, as long as the continent
remained divided. California
had become a state in 1850,
after the 1848 Gold Rush
brought tens of thousands of
Americans—and thousands of
Chinese—to California, but
transport to the West Coast took
several months, and was treacherous.
This was one reason that
part of the Russian fleet came to
San Francisco—to prevent any
British incursions in the unprotected
region on the Pacific.
So Lincoln and the Congress launched the Transcontinental
Railroad project in 1862, even as war was
raging, to connect the nation from east to west by rail.
The result, of course was the development of cities and
farms across the continent, and eventual statehood for
all the area in-between.
Another purpose was the outreach to Asia. The U.S.
had been largely excluded from Asia—in fact, our major
commerce in Asia before the Civil War had been carried
out by Boston merchants, outright British agents, who
were openly part of the British opium trade—including
the family of William Weld, the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney
who prosecuted LaRouche in the 1980s.
Efforts by courageous missionaries and others to
counter the British in China and Asia generally were
easily crushed by the overwhelming British power. But
the Transcontinental Railroad was an arrow through the
continent pointing directly at China; it opened up the
growing industrial might of the Union to trade and investment
in Asia (Figure 1). It is well known that 80%
of the workforce on the Railroad was Chinese, and that
the Chinese workers were greatly respected for the
quality of their work.
Less well known, is that Russian engineers were in
San Francisco at that time, and, as the telegraph wires
spanned the North American continent along with the
railroad, so also, Russia and the U.S. began building telegraph
wires up the northern coast of the Pacific, through
Russian America (now Alaska), with the intention of
crossing the Bering Strait and crossing Russia all the way
to St. Petersburg. The Bering Strait project was only de
42 Conference Report EIR July 26, 2013
serted in 1867, when the Trans-Atlantic cable was successfully
laid, but it had opened up the region, and contributed
to the U.S. purchase of Alaska from the Russians
at that time. And of course, the project is now being revived
by the LaRouche movement, and the Russians, in
the form of the rail connection over the Bering Strait,
connected to the NAWAPA project
and related great projects internationally—
the International
Land-Bridge.
Following the Civil War, Lincoln’s
economist Henry Carey
carried the American System and
the idea of transcontinental
nation building to Europe—to
Germany, where Bismarck created
the German nation based on
American System principles;
and to Russia, where Count
Witte led the effort to create the
Trans-Siberian Railroad, once
again connecting the Atlantic to
the Pacific, this time across the
Eurasian continent (Figure 2).
The Oldest and Newest
‘Empires’
On the U.S.-China connection,
I want to talk about a single
individual whom you have almost certainly never
heard of. But that very fact speaks volumes about
what has happened to this nation. Rev. William
Speer was a dentist and a Presbyterian missionary
who went to Canton (Guangzhou) in 1846 to open
the first Presbyterian mission there. He became
fluent in Cantonese, but was forced to leave for
health reasons after five years. He then spent most
of the rest of his life working with Chinese immigrants
in San Francisco, opening the first Asian
Christian Church in the U.S. (now called the Presbyterian
Church in Chinatown), as well as a
school and a dispensary (now called the Chinese
Hospital). He spoke widely, published many
pamphlets in both English and Chinese, and authored
a book in 1870 titled: The Oldest and the
Newest Empires, China and the United States.
(Don’t be distracted by the term “empire”—he
used the term benignly to mean a nation with a
universal mission.)
I want to read to you several passages from his book,
which you will immediately recognize as coming from
the Leibnizian tradition. On Speer’s view of China in
America:
“It is hard to account for the common estimate of
China and its people in Great Britain and America other-
Central Pacific
Union Pacific
Completed later
FIGURE 1
The Trans-Continental Railroad
FIGURE 5
U.S. Passport Service
wise than by attributing it to the influence
of the bad East India Company
and the diabolical opium trade.”
wise than by attributing it to the influence
of the bad East India Company
and the diabolical opium trade.”
Reflecting his debt to Leibniz
and Leibniz’s global vision, consider
these passages. On the nature of the
Chinese people:
“Both Confucius and Mencius
saw with bitterness the utter inefficiency
of truth which looks no
higher than earth to reform society
or to stay the power of human passions.”
Speer believed that there
were “few nations of the world
among whom the freedom of
the people is more large, more
squarely founded upon their
intelligence, or more carefully
guarded against despotism,
than in China.” He notes that in
the Middle Ages, China was
the greatest and most civilized
kingdom on Earth, but China
had remained stationary while
the West moved forward with
the coming of the Renaissance.
In a quotation from Leibniz
in all but name—and recall the
quote I read from Leibniz at
the beginning—Speer wrote:
“For centuries past the most
philosophic minds have predicted
the vast consequences
which should ensue when the
two opposite currents of
empire—one eastward, one
westward, since the beginning
of time—should at last meet
and flow together. Upon our
Pacific Coast, this consummat-
Sun Yat-sen was trained by American missionaries
who were steeped in the tradition of Alexander
Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Sun went on to build
a republic in China based on those American System
principles. This statue, modelled on the one in the
Lincoln Memorial, is located in the Sun Yat-sen
Memorial in Taipei, Taiwan.
Rev. William Speer (shown here with his
wife), a Presbyterian missionary, went to
Canton (Guangzhou) in 1846 to open the
first Presbyterian mission there. He later
worked with Chinese immigrants in San
Francisco, opening the first Asian
Christian Church in the U.S.
ing event of the history of the world
has now commenced.”
And on the nature of the human
being, he again reflects Leibniz’s insistence
that the truth is written in
our hearts, referring to “the eternal
principles of right which the Governor
of the world has written in the
chambers of the human heart and
made deeper and more authoritative
than any statutes of human appointment.”
Alexander Hamilton, he
writes, “presents their nature with
the clearness of the light of the Sun”:
“The Deity has constituted an
eternal and immutable law, which is
obligatory upon all mankind, prior
to any human institution whatever.
He endowed man with rational facilities
by the help of which to discern
and pursue such things as were
consistent with his duty and inter
est, and invested him with the
inviolable right to personal liberty
and personal safety. The
sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among
old parchments or musty records.
They are written as with
sunbeams, in the whole volume
of human nature, by the hand
of Divinity itself, and can never
be erased or obscured by
mortal power.”
Elsewhere, he quotes, essentially,
again without naming
him, from Abraham Lincoln’s
Second Inaugural Address. Remember
this is published in
1870 (just five years after the
end of the Civil War): “The
Ruler [referring here to God],
in due time, asserts and displays
divine justice and power
by the terrible punishment of
oppressors and wrong-doers,
and compensation of those
who have suffered. The history
of African slavery and the
July 26, 2013 EIR Conference Report 43
judgments it brought upon us is surely the lesson which
this nation should never forget.”
judgments it brought upon us is surely the lesson which
this nation should never forget.”
Conclusion
This vision was snuffed out, as the British, as they
have done repeatedly in our nation’s history, succeeded
in using ignorance and corruption to unleash in the
United States an era of racist exclusion laws and similar
policies to undermine the assimilation of the Chinese
into the U.S. melting pot. Reverend Speer fought this
insanity, and also spent some time in Hawaii, where
later, the great Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen was
trained by American missionaries steeped in the tradition
of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, and
went on to build a Republic in China based on those
American System principles.
The mission today is the same, but the consequences
of failure far greater. Transforming the U.S., and reestablishing
the historic alliances with Russia and China,
are necessary if civilization is to survive. LaRouche has
emphasized repeatedly that we must restore not only
the vision, but the way of thinking itself, of the great
minds who have shaped this nation, such as Cusa and
Leibniz, and LaRouche, who saw the future, acted to
destroy Empire, and created the City upon the Hill. It is
ours to lose, or to create anew.
and a new era for the Philippines started. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us new hope in im-
Butch Valdes: The Special plementing many of the things that he had done for
the United States. He paid particular attention to theRole of the Philippines Philippines, because we were, at that time, the only
colony that needed to be given independence by the
Butch Valdes, leader of the Philippine LaRouche So-U.S., through the promise that he had made to the rest
ciety, sent this greeting to the San Francisco Schiller of the world.
Institute conference. After granting us independence, the sorry thing
that had happened was, Roosevelt died. But not with-
We here in the Philippines take inspiration from the out starting certain infrastructural development pro-
words of Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, as he has on several grams, initiated by the very same people who may
occasions told us, via our radio program, that our have started the Tennessee Valley Authority, putting
country, the Philippines, has a very special role, in the Philippines on a foundation which would allow
trying to save civilization. Just as we have been, over us the opportunity to develop as well.
the past so many centuries, the gateway of Western The role of the United States, as a leader nation,
thought moving towards the Eastern part of the world, since 300 years ago, has not stopped. It has become
we, today, have that special role: to share with the rest even more significant and necessary at the present
of the world’s population from this part of the world, time. We call on the members of the international Lathe
ideas which are needed to be assimilated, the ideas Rouche movement; we call on the citizens of the
that are needed to be implemented, in order for us to United States of America; and we call on the leaders
save civilization from this present, ongoing collapse of of the United States of America, to do everything that
the financial system, and threatening a situation that it takes to implement, to reinstitute the Glass-Steawe
all are very scared of, that is, World War III. gall law, as a primary and necessary step towards
Our history with the United States goes back all saving not just America, not just the Philippines, but
the way to the 1900s, or even before—but specifi-the rest of the world.
cally the 1900s, when the U.S. had bought us from This has been your legacy since 1776, and this
Spain, after Spain colonized us for close to 400 years, should be your legacy from this time on.
MICHAEL BILLINGTON
Leibniz, LaRouche, and the
U.S. Link with China, Russia
EIR Asia specialist Michael Billington
gave this speech to the Schiller Institute
conference in San Francisco on June
29, 2013.1
As has been discussed here, the
Obama Administration and its British
controllers are driving the world very
rapidly toward war against Russia and
China, over Syria, which Russia will
not allow to be turned over to terrorist
mobs as was done in Libya; meanwhile
in Asia, Obama has adopted the Air-Sea
Battle doctrine for a war with China.2
My intention here is to show you
that the idea that Russia and China are
natural adversaries of the United States
is entirely a British concoction, despite
the fact that many dumbed-down
Americans have swallowed the British Kool-Aid. The
fact is that the natural connection between the United
States and Asia—both Russia and China—began long
before the founding of the United States as a nation-
state, and even before the “discovery” of America by
Christopher Columbus. America began, in fact, as a
1. Previous coverage of the conference, including keynotes by Lyndon
and Helga LaRouche can be found in EIR, July 12, and July 19, 2013.
2. See Michael Billington, “ ‘Air-Sea Battle’ Is a Plan for War on
China,” EIR, June 28, 2013.
Courtesy of Janus Kramer
thought-object in the mind of
some of the greatest minds of
Western civilization—in particular,
Nicholas of Cusa and Gottfried
Leibniz. It was as real then
as it is today, for the nation is not
just a physical location, or a government,
recognized only by our
senses, but it is a dynamic process,
an idea, the City on the Hill,
the New World.
Like Lyndon LaRouche today,
Cusa and Leibniz not only dreamed
about the future, they saw the
future—both the horror of a future
under imperial domination, and
the great potential of the New
World which they set about to
create a republic free of the oligar
chical control of European monarchs and global Empire.
As we will see, Gottfried Leibniz had already established
the natural alliance between the future United States and
both Russia and China, before the official founding of
our nation.
That natural alliance was restored under Franklin
Roosevelt, to defeat the British-created Nazi movement,
and is finally coming back into being today under
the inspiration of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, based
on the concept of a New Paradigm for the Survival of
Civilization. Great projects, such as the Eurasian Land-
July 26, 2013 EIR Conference Report 39
Bridge, and the tunnel under the Bering Strait, uniting
Russia, China, and the United States by rail, and bringing
them together into a common mission for the future,
can and must fulfill the creative discoveries of our forefathers,
and end the power of Empire once and for all.
Bridge, and the tunnel under the Bering Strait, uniting
Russia, China, and the United States by rail, and bringing
them together into a common mission for the future,
can and must fulfill the creative discoveries of our forefathers,
and end the power of Empire once and for all.
The discovery of America by Columbus, as is now
well known, can be attributed directly to Nicholas of
Cusa, and to his close friend and colleague Paolo Toscanelli,
who suggested to Columbus that the Far East
could be reached by sailing west, including the belief
that a New World lay in between Europe and Asia. Columbus
carried with him on his voyage a map provided
by Toscanelli.
As I reported last November in Frankfurt, at the first
of these New Paradigm conferences, Leibniz was not
only a follower of Cusa, and the seminal philosopher
and scientist of his age, but also one of the great statesmen
of history. He worked with Peter the Great in
Russia to establish the Russian Academy of Sciences in
1724, worked closely with the Jesuit missionaries who
had become the core of the scientific institutions in
China, and even arranged a treaty between Russia and
China over border issues and cooperation—the first
East-West treaty in history. He published a journal, Novissima
Sinica (News from China), in 1697, which analyzed
the writings of Confucius, Mencius, and the
greatest mind of the 12th-Century Song Dynasty Renaissance,
Zhu Xi, which had been translated by the
Jesuits, and made them known across Europe. A quote
from that journal will be relevant to my report on the
developments in the U.S.
I consider it a singular plan of the fates that
human cultivation and refinement should today
be concentrated, as it were, in the two extremes
of our continent, in Europe and in China, which
adorns the Orient as Europe does the opposite
edge of the Earth. Perhaps Supreme Providence
has ordained such an arrangement, so that, as the
most cultivated and distant peoples stretch out
their arms to each other, those in between may
gradually be brought to a better way of life.
In his analysis of the Confucian philosophic outlook,
Leibniz said: “It is pure Christianity, insofar as it
renews the natural law inscribed in our hearts.”
Remember this concept for later.
Gottfried Leibniz collaborated with Peter the Great in Russia,
to establish the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1724. His
“Novissima Sinica” (1697) analyzed the writings of Confucius,
Mencius, and Zhu Xi, and made them known across Europe.
Leibniz in America
The American Founding Fathers were profoundly affected
by the works of Leibniz, and maintained contact
with the Leibniz circles in Russia, especially in the Russian
Academy of Sciences. During the American War of
Independence, British warships were seizing Russian
(and other) ships which were trading with the colonies,
until Benjamin Franklin and other members of his American
Philosophic Society made direct appeals to their associates
in the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg
and certain Russian diplomatic contacts, leading to the
creation of the League of Armed Neutrality. The League
of Armed Neutrality declared that Russia (and other officially
neutral nations) had the right to trade with the
colonies, and would consider any British attack on neutral
merchant vessels as an act of war.
After the war, American naval hero John Paul Jones
went to Russia, and helped build the Russian Navy, and,
of course, America’s greatest statesman John Quincy
Adams became the first Minister to Russia in 1809. Leading
Russian circles translated and published Alexander
Hamilton’s “Report on Manufactures” in 1807, telling the
40 Conference Report EIR July 26, 2013
Tsar that its principles were fully applicable for developing
Russia as a continental country. And the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers worked directly on Russia’s first railroad,
from St. Petersburg to Moscow, in the 1840s.
The British spent much of the 19th Century trying to
break up the United States and Russia (and China),
through warfare and economic sabotage. The Crimean
War against Russia in the 1850s was aimed at splitting up
Russia; it was soon followed by the British-instigated
Civil War in the United States, intended to split this nation,
and to maintain free trade in slaves, and in cheap cotton
from the slave plantations. To some extent, the Civil War
was also an extension of the two British Opium Wars
against China in the 1840s and 1850s—again, waging
war to defend the free trade in slaves, and also opium.
Again, the U.S. ties with Russia were crucial in the
victory over the British Confederacy. How many people
today know that the entire Russian fleet was deployed
into New York Harbor, and also, right here, near San
Francisco, in 1863, at the crucial point in the Civil War?
The Russians had informed the British and their French
allies that, were they to proceed with their plan to intervene
on behalf of the Confederacy (a peace mission,
you understand, a humanitarian intervention to protect
civilians, due to the Brits’ moral concern and the responsibility
to protect civilians in the Confederacy
from the marauding Northern armies), then the Russians
would intervene to defend the legitimate government
of the United States.
If this sounds familiar to what is going on in Syria
today, that is no coincidence.
Lincoln and Russia
President Abraham Lincoln
also understood, even as war
was breaking out, that the
United States was extremely
vulnerable, as long as the continent
remained divided. California
had become a state in 1850,
after the 1848 Gold Rush
brought tens of thousands of
Americans—and thousands of
Chinese—to California, but
transport to the West Coast took
several months, and was treacherous.
This was one reason that
part of the Russian fleet came to
San Francisco—to prevent any
British incursions in the unprotected
region on the Pacific.
So Lincoln and the Congress launched the Transcontinental
Railroad project in 1862, even as war was
raging, to connect the nation from east to west by rail.
The result, of course was the development of cities and
farms across the continent, and eventual statehood for
all the area in-between.
Another purpose was the outreach to Asia. The U.S.
had been largely excluded from Asia—in fact, our major
commerce in Asia before the Civil War had been carried
out by Boston merchants, outright British agents, who
were openly part of the British opium trade—including
the family of William Weld, the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney
who prosecuted LaRouche in the 1980s.
Efforts by courageous missionaries and others to
counter the British in China and Asia generally were
easily crushed by the overwhelming British power. But
the Transcontinental Railroad was an arrow through the
continent pointing directly at China; it opened up the
growing industrial might of the Union to trade and investment
in Asia (Figure 1). It is well known that 80%
of the workforce on the Railroad was Chinese, and that
the Chinese workers were greatly respected for the
quality of their work.
Less well known, is that Russian engineers were in
San Francisco at that time, and, as the telegraph wires
spanned the North American continent along with the
railroad, so also, Russia and the U.S. began building telegraph
wires up the northern coast of the Pacific, through
Russian America (now Alaska), with the intention of
crossing the Bering Strait and crossing Russia all the way
to St. Petersburg. The Bering Strait project was only de
42 Conference Report EIR July 26, 2013
serted in 1867, when the Trans-Atlantic cable was successfully
laid, but it had opened up the region, and contributed
to the U.S. purchase of Alaska from the Russians
at that time. And of course, the project is now being revived
by the LaRouche movement, and the Russians, in
the form of the rail connection over the Bering Strait,
connected to the NAWAPA project
and related great projects internationally—
the International
Land-Bridge.
Following the Civil War, Lincoln’s
economist Henry Carey
carried the American System and
the idea of transcontinental
nation building to Europe—to
Germany, where Bismarck created
the German nation based on
American System principles;
and to Russia, where Count
Witte led the effort to create the
Trans-Siberian Railroad, once
again connecting the Atlantic to
the Pacific, this time across the
Eurasian continent (Figure 2).
The Oldest and Newest
‘Empires’
On the U.S.-China connection,
I want to talk about a single
individual whom you have almost certainly never
heard of. But that very fact speaks volumes about
what has happened to this nation. Rev. William
Speer was a dentist and a Presbyterian missionary
who went to Canton (Guangzhou) in 1846 to open
the first Presbyterian mission there. He became
fluent in Cantonese, but was forced to leave for
health reasons after five years. He then spent most
of the rest of his life working with Chinese immigrants
in San Francisco, opening the first Asian
Christian Church in the U.S. (now called the Presbyterian
Church in Chinatown), as well as a
school and a dispensary (now called the Chinese
Hospital). He spoke widely, published many
pamphlets in both English and Chinese, and authored
a book in 1870 titled: The Oldest and the
Newest Empires, China and the United States.
(Don’t be distracted by the term “empire”—he
used the term benignly to mean a nation with a
universal mission.)
I want to read to you several passages from his book,
which you will immediately recognize as coming from
the Leibnizian tradition. On Speer’s view of China in
America:
“It is hard to account for the common estimate of
China and its people in Great Britain and America other-
Central Pacific
Union Pacific
Completed later
FIGURE 1
The Trans-Continental Railroad
FIGURE 5
U.S. Passport Service
wise than by attributing it to the influence
of the bad East India Company
and the diabolical opium trade.”
wise than by attributing it to the influence
of the bad East India Company
and the diabolical opium trade.”
Reflecting his debt to Leibniz
and Leibniz’s global vision, consider
these passages. On the nature of the
Chinese people:
“Both Confucius and Mencius
saw with bitterness the utter inefficiency
of truth which looks no
higher than earth to reform society
or to stay the power of human passions.”
Speer believed that there
were “few nations of the world
among whom the freedom of
the people is more large, more
squarely founded upon their
intelligence, or more carefully
guarded against despotism,
than in China.” He notes that in
the Middle Ages, China was
the greatest and most civilized
kingdom on Earth, but China
had remained stationary while
the West moved forward with
the coming of the Renaissance.
In a quotation from Leibniz
in all but name—and recall the
quote I read from Leibniz at
the beginning—Speer wrote:
“For centuries past the most
philosophic minds have predicted
the vast consequences
which should ensue when the
two opposite currents of
empire—one eastward, one
westward, since the beginning
of time—should at last meet
and flow together. Upon our
Pacific Coast, this consummat-
Sun Yat-sen was trained by American missionaries
who were steeped in the tradition of Alexander
Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Sun went on to build
a republic in China based on those American System
principles. This statue, modelled on the one in the
Lincoln Memorial, is located in the Sun Yat-sen
Memorial in Taipei, Taiwan.
Rev. William Speer (shown here with his
wife), a Presbyterian missionary, went to
Canton (Guangzhou) in 1846 to open the
first Presbyterian mission there. He later
worked with Chinese immigrants in San
Francisco, opening the first Asian
Christian Church in the U.S.
ing event of the history of the world
has now commenced.”
And on the nature of the human
being, he again reflects Leibniz’s insistence
that the truth is written in
our hearts, referring to “the eternal
principles of right which the Governor
of the world has written in the
chambers of the human heart and
made deeper and more authoritative
than any statutes of human appointment.”
Alexander Hamilton, he
writes, “presents their nature with
the clearness of the light of the Sun”:
“The Deity has constituted an
eternal and immutable law, which is
obligatory upon all mankind, prior
to any human institution whatever.
He endowed man with rational facilities
by the help of which to discern
and pursue such things as were
consistent with his duty and inter
est, and invested him with the
inviolable right to personal liberty
and personal safety. The
sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among
old parchments or musty records.
They are written as with
sunbeams, in the whole volume
of human nature, by the hand
of Divinity itself, and can never
be erased or obscured by
mortal power.”
Elsewhere, he quotes, essentially,
again without naming
him, from Abraham Lincoln’s
Second Inaugural Address. Remember
this is published in
1870 (just five years after the
end of the Civil War): “The
Ruler [referring here to God],
in due time, asserts and displays
divine justice and power
by the terrible punishment of
oppressors and wrong-doers,
and compensation of those
who have suffered. The history
of African slavery and the
July 26, 2013 EIR Conference Report 43
judgments it brought upon us is surely the lesson which
this nation should never forget.”
judgments it brought upon us is surely the lesson which
this nation should never forget.”
Conclusion
This vision was snuffed out, as the British, as they
have done repeatedly in our nation’s history, succeeded
in using ignorance and corruption to unleash in the
United States an era of racist exclusion laws and similar
policies to undermine the assimilation of the Chinese
into the U.S. melting pot. Reverend Speer fought this
insanity, and also spent some time in Hawaii, where
later, the great Chinese revolutionary Sun Yat-sen was
trained by American missionaries steeped in the tradition
of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln, and
went on to build a Republic in China based on those
American System principles.
The mission today is the same, but the consequences
of failure far greater. Transforming the U.S., and reestablishing
the historic alliances with Russia and China,
are necessary if civilization is to survive. LaRouche has
emphasized repeatedly that we must restore not only
the vision, but the way of thinking itself, of the great
minds who have shaped this nation, such as Cusa and
Leibniz, and LaRouche, who saw the future, acted to
destroy Empire, and created the City upon the Hill. It is
ours to lose, or to create anew.
and a new era for the Philippines started. President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave us new hope in im-
Butch Valdes: The Special plementing many of the things that he had done for
the United States. He paid particular attention to theRole of the Philippines Philippines, because we were, at that time, the only
colony that needed to be given independence by the
Butch Valdes, leader of the Philippine LaRouche So-U.S., through the promise that he had made to the rest
ciety, sent this greeting to the San Francisco Schiller of the world.
Institute conference. After granting us independence, the sorry thing
that had happened was, Roosevelt died. But not with-
We here in the Philippines take inspiration from the out starting certain infrastructural development pro-
words of Mr. Lyndon LaRouche, as he has on several grams, initiated by the very same people who may
occasions told us, via our radio program, that our have started the Tennessee Valley Authority, putting
country, the Philippines, has a very special role, in the Philippines on a foundation which would allow
trying to save civilization. Just as we have been, over us the opportunity to develop as well.
the past so many centuries, the gateway of Western The role of the United States, as a leader nation,
thought moving towards the Eastern part of the world, since 300 years ago, has not stopped. It has become
we, today, have that special role: to share with the rest even more significant and necessary at the present
of the world’s population from this part of the world, time. We call on the members of the international Lathe
ideas which are needed to be assimilated, the ideas Rouche movement; we call on the citizens of the
that are needed to be implemented, in order for us to United States of America; and we call on the leaders
save civilization from this present, ongoing collapse of of the United States of America, to do everything that
the financial system, and threatening a situation that it takes to implement, to reinstitute the Glass-Steawe
all are very scared of, that is, World War III. gall law, as a primary and necessary step towards
Our history with the United States goes back all saving not just America, not just the Philippines, but
the way to the 1900s, or even before—but specifi-the rest of the world.
cally the 1900s, when the U.S. had bought us from This has been your legacy since 1776, and this
Spain, after Spain colonized us for close to 400 years, should be your legacy from this time on.
No comments:
Post a Comment