To all of who are gathered today, I'm going to say something, to begin with, which might surprise you. I am not among you physically, but I am much more with you, than if I were with you physically. Because we are engaged in the same fight. And the fight I am waging here, and that I cannot leave for a few hours, this fight is the same as yours. That is what brings us together.
So, being a candidate in the presidential election in France today, well, it is a paradox which is both exciting and at the same time calls forth in you something which is the most profound, the most human and sometimes the most difficult to express, and to convey to others.
Here, behind me, you have the theme of our campaign: "A world without the City or Wall Street, great infrastructure works for tomorrow". It is a theme of the future, that the future defines the present. And we are coming across in our campaign much that is in the history of our country and that defines the future.
We find the translation of the Bible into French by Lefèvre d'Etaples, who was very close to Nicolas of Cusa. We find the Judaism of Troyes, of Rachi of Troyes. We find the Islam that is coming to us today, and we find the humanism that runs through our entire history. Gerbert d'Aurillac, for example, the Pope who became Sylvester and went all the way to Spain, to find science in the Spain of Islam, and who was born in Cantal, where many mayors gave me their signature.
And we made a trip to the Familistère of Godin. Godin was a creator from the end of the 19th Century, who invented, among other things, a cast iron oven, which supplanted the cooking pot and completely changed the conception of nourishment. This was a great industrialist who created collective housing for all, equipped with the very latest achievements in terms of hygiene, a utopian, but he was not so utopian when he dealt with reality, he wanted to ensure that everyone would have an attractive job. We are coming across all this history, in this campaign.
But at the same time, we also find the present. Socialists who have betrayed socialism, Gaullists who have betrayed Gaullism, catholics who have betrayed Christianity, and human beings who have given up on what is human inside themselves. That at a time in our history when the international financial system is disintegrating, when we are headed for social destruction, and an austerity and rigor policy like that which Brüning in 1930-1932 and Laval in France when he was president of the Council in 1935, carried out.
At the same time, it's a policy which is not forward-looking, which does not see the future, which refuses to see it. The fall of the house of Europe.
Then we have the policy that is leading us to war, where we are headed inescapably, the war of all against all, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps further down the road, but inescapably so, because all the conditions for such a war have been created in a world controlled by the oligarchy - a world in contraction. The oligarchy is attempting to implement a policy which goes against the people, against the populations. That is what we are up against, at the same time as we rediscover what is best in our history, during this campaign.
So, in these circumstances, I am glad to be among you, in thought, and to address you, because we absolutely must build together. It cannot be done in a single country, it has to be all the countries of the world.
We must build this platform toward the future which is, for us, for all of us, what we need to bring future generations to an age which is better than ours. That was the dream of those two great German poets - who were also French, or had a French side to them -- Schiller and Heine. This is the dream of all those who have fought on the front-lines, just as we are fighting today.
This means moving toward what Roosevelt dreamed of, and attempted to achieve at the end of his life, and which Truman betrayed. It is the alliance for progress sought by Kennedy, who was assassinated for trying to build it. It is the "universal republic" that Victor Hugo spoke of. It is the fatherland that defines itself by what it contributes to the common good of all of humanity. This is a completely opposite orientation to the Europe of the euro, which is destroying itself right now and destroying whatever it could contribute, as a continent, to the rest of the world.
This means that we can only make our history meaningful, by achieving the common aims of humanity. Among them, we have the Eurasian Land-bridge which Helga Zepp-LaRouche first developed, which will have to become a worldwide Land-bridge. Those common aims of humanity, for each country that participates through national banks, must be oriented towards investment in the future, with a technological platform and a vision of the future shared by all.
The Arctic, the Antarctic, Africa - every region of the world should be opened up and led to take part in universal history, in the history of our future. That is not just an opinion, of course, it is much more, it is a necessity. This necessity is what we have to fight for, so that the world has a future, and so that we free ourselves from this straitjacket of war which is leading us to the threshold - and which will cross that threshold, if we don't act in time - of thermonuclear war. Because man will always use the weapons he has, if he fails to define a better world above and beyond. That was described by Hobbes himself when he spoke of the Leviathan.
Here again, that implies educating the creative capacities of all. It also implies having a conception of human labor, which is really human. Today, everyone is talking about work in France, but nobody knows what it is. They even say that prostitutes are "sex workers". We have lost the sense of work which is not something repetitive. It is not something, it's not an activity, or an occupation that you do, it's not earning a living to make money. Work, involves an effort for the future, it involves creating the bases for future generations to live better than we ourselves do.
Our great philosopher of the 20th century, Simone Weil, said it very clearly. She said that all work has to have a certain poetical part to it. It is this poetical part that defines human work, in contrast to an animal's work, which is the repetitive side. The poetical part allows us to imagine human beings for the future, who will be better than we are. The significance of a presidential campaign is to create the basis for such a future.
And then, of course, there are the daily aspects of the campaign, and on the daily side, you are submerged in the world of media, submerged in a universe where every single person does not necessarily have bad intentions, but where the overall climate is destructive in respect to this human capacity, this capacity of human work. A presidential campaign is a fight on a daily basis to revive this conception of human creation and human work.
In the campaign, what do we hear? "How much does it cost?", "How much does it cost?", "But how much does it cost?". Or on another subject: debt. "How will you pay the debt? The debt, the debt."
Austerity is called for on the right, and rigor on the left. We hear all these voices coming from a finite world, from a world which is doomed to self-destruction, if we don't save it.
What I have to fight in this campaign, is not so much other candidates. I have to fight what the other candidates are not fighting. That means that in this campaign, we have to try and change by all possible means the way of thinking of a country, of our country, by immersing it in the creative moments of its history, so that it sees what it can give, what it can offer to the future. Of course, France alone can do very little. She can only act as a catalyst or an instigator, drawing on her history, knowing that she was only great when she was universal.
Today, we have a problem before us, a French-German problem, to be solved. France and Germany can simply not be Merkozy. Merkozy: can you imagine something so ridiculous in the midst of a tragedy? Like in a Shakespeare drama.
Therefore, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and myself, in these circumstances, have to represent what France and Germany truly are. And I can think of an example: in respect to our extraterrestrial imperative, to the imperative to explore - man must become an explorer - in respect to that, I think to Krafft Ehricke, who was a friend of Helga Zepp-LaRouche. This German scientist thought, just like many others, that the Earth is the cradle of humanity, but man is not made to remain in his cradle.
Krafft Ehricke, who spoke of this extraterrestrial imperative, in my mind, joins Jean Robieux in France, who was the inventor, in France and in the world, of thermonuclear fusion by laser, by inertial confinement. This is the means of transportation of the future, at least toward Mars, which will allow us to get to Mars from the Moon in about one week.
This is what must be defined by a French-German alliance, moved by the sense of the future that we all need to have, those who are gathered in this room physically and those who are not, like myself. This is the sense we have to share. Communication of this is put across through a presence that cannot be touched, or seen, it is done through ideas.
De Gaulle used to say that France is a certain idea, Germany is a certain idea, and this association of ideas must be the basis for the common aims of humanity.
That is the proper sense of our combat. I think back, at this point in history, to what was said by someone who was more French, than if he had been born French. He was called Romain Gary, an author who, when thinking of his experience in the Free French, thinking of the resistance fighters, the partisan snipers and the French Forces of the Interior (FFI), thinking of those in the Normandy- Niemen squadron, he said, thinking about it profoundly: no one is dead, no one is dead any more.
I am of the Gagarin generation, I was 20 at the time, and I can tell you that over the course of this campaign, I have felt very profoundly what Romain Gary meant. If we sound the depths of ourselves, no one is dead, because all our friends of the past come forth to us.
At the same time, the condition for no one to be dead, is that we receive every person with a beautiful face, and this beautiful face is the face of the future. The face of the future is what must determine our fight.
But if we fail to fulfill our mission, this future may very well never exist. We have to make the commitment, from deep within ourselves, to be human beings, and not dinosaurs who are vulnerable to the destruction that a species brings upon itself, or to the extinction produced by outside events, and the inability to understand the universe. We must swear an oath to the future, with all our heart.
And I am sure there is no other choice, if we are to ensure a future for the human species.
This choice is one we have to make together. I am very much aware of that in my campaign, in France, in Europe, in the world, and I am committed to bringing this dimension into it.
I think of all those who, in the basement as it's called, in the new catacombs located in the belly of the beast, are thinking about, reflecting on, working towards a new Renaissance. Such a new Renaissance must be the goal of every campaign that we wage, armed with a pedagogy which, like every good pedagogy, provokes a shock within people, and serious thought and change.
At a time when everybody is talking about « change », « change », « change », true change involves realizing that we have to transform ourselves, to change our society, but in depth, on the basis of principles.
This is the sense of mission which brings us together today. But we must prove it by acting, by working, by doing something for the future. We have to prove our ability to be real French republicans, and Europeans, just as those people did who felt the fresh wind coming from the America of the founding fathers and who were inspired to leave in order to create something better on the other side of the Atlantic.
We have to think of all that, carry it inside ourselves, to give it to future generations. That is the challenge before us.
