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The Principle of Human Power is the Principle of the General Welfare

The American Civil War was a war in defense of power.

Abraham Lincoln had a problem: In the defending the nation in the Civil War, was he to wage his fight for the abolition of slavery? Fighting against slavery had huge popular support in the North and was definitely a noble moral cause. Or was was he to defend the nation as a nation, defending the the Union? History records that he chose to defend the Union. He knew that by defending the nation he was fighting for a higher-order principle, the principle of universal freedom. The civil war wasn't about slavery primarily, it was about empire, the master of slavery, taking back its colonies. Lincoln evidently knew that by fighting for the principle of the Union, the Principle of the General Welfare, he was fighting for the nation's freedom from empire. He seems to have known that by fighting at this level he a chance to amass the power to win this fight, and that by winning it the end of slavery would happen in the course of it. And he also seems to have known that if he placed the fight on a lesser platform he would loose the Union and slavery would never end as a consequence. Thus he placed the fight on the highest principle, the principle of freedom.

In contrast with Abraham Lincoln, Europe lost the same type of war when it gave up its freedom and united to become slaves to empire.

LaRouche's symbol for the EU

What makes a powerful leader.

Let's look at the field in terms of the principle that Lincoln had stood for. One of the names that match is criterion is China's Mao Zedong.

Mao Zedong joined the revolutionaries, a long uphill battle for the liberation of China began. Mao Zedong became one of five Commissioners of the Communist Party of China, and from there he organized the famous Autumn Harvest Uprising, which failed, but he regrouped the scattered forces, and together with other revolutionary factions he organized a military force: The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army of China; the Red Army. By 1930 more than ten regions where under the control of the Communist Party of China. Of course this worried the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek. It fought back. It waged five campaigns of besiegment against these areas, fighting with a million soldiers against the twenty-times smaller Red Army. Still it lost four of the campaigns. 
"In time the encirclement succeeded," Steve continued. "Under increasing pressures from the campaigns and imperial political pressure, Mao was removed from his positions in the Communist Party. Still, the encirclement continued. In 1934 the Chiang Kai-shek government was in nominal control of China and had all the communist areas surrounded. It wowed to eradicate the communists once and for all. That's when for Mao the 'Long March, of retreat began, from the southeast to the northwest, an almost 10,000 kilometer journey that lasted an entire year. At the end, Mao emerged as the top Communist leader. When the second Sino-Japanese War erupted in 1937, Mao stayed in the background and consolidated his power and his forces, leaving the Kuomintang forces to do the fighting, with Chiang Kai-shek now being supported by the USA. America had an interest in supporting the Chinese government during the war as the fighting would keep the Japanese occupied with China all through World War II. At the end of World War II, the U.S. continued its support of Chiang Kai-shek, which also became an open fight against the Communist Red Army and Mao Zedong. The American objective was to contain world communism and to defeat it. From this background the Chinese Civil War for control of China erupted. The war lasted till 1949. The Kuomintang forces suffered massive losses. In Decemper Mao's Red Army laid siege to the last Kuomintang-controlled city on mainland China. The war formally ended when the stooge of the Western's empire, Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan. The People's Republic of China was actually established a few months earlier, on October 1st, 1949. The struggle was over.

An immense struggle that had spanned thirty-eight years had come to fruition. The fight to control China had been won at an enormous cost in human lives, both from the fighting and from the political infighting, especially when Mao's Great Leap Forward was launched that began the massive economic reform of China. But Mao was a blind man in terms of economics. He didn't have a clue what an economy is, not unlike most leaders in the West today. Mao was an idiot in that respect, doing everything wrong. His collective farm system was a disaster. Then the next catastrophe was started, the Cultural Revolution that became a revolution in insanity. Mao was gripped with fear that he might be losing his place on the political stage. His answer was the Cultural Revolution that turned the entire country upside down in an orgy of sheer madness that began in 1966. Certain liberal elements of society were labeled 'class enemies' that threatened the socialist framework of the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as the communist system was then called. Countless millions were prosecuted in this modern version of the Spanish Inquisition.

So why would one count Mau as a powerful leader? Does he qualify because he faced down the most powerful adversary on the planet and won? No, he doesn't qualify in this count. He qualifies for another reason. For a hundred years prior to the Chinese Civil War in which Mao had defeated the forces of empire, the population in China had been so deeply impoverished and ravished by abuses that its population had not increase, but had remained stagnant by the strangulation of absolute poverty. In those twenty-seven years of the Mao era, in spite of all the mistakes and horrors of that era, the population in China grew by a whopping 300 million people, from 400 million to 700 million. It nearly doubled. This is the face of the achievements that were wrought. The figures indicate that after a century of looting an oppression, China had been able to breathe again and live again. Here we find the proof of the pudding. The strength of civilization is reflected in the increase of its potential population density. Right or wrong, Mao proved a point that the West has yet to learn, that on the side of the principle of freedom innovation and prosperity happen. China had developed the power to not only stand tall, but to develop the means to vastly expand the means for its existence. Under Mao's leadership, such as it was, the creative and productive power of society became increased. He empowered a nation. This made Mao a powerful leader.

Few American Presidents can be called powerful leaders on this count. George Washington was one, Abraham Lincoln another, Franklin Delanor Roosevelt a third, and Fitzgerald Kennedy, a fourth. The field is thin. When poverty strangles a people into a stagnant existence  or population collapse, which is almost always imposed, the creative and productive power of society remains limited by these factors, but when cultural conditions improve, more and more people can suddenly be supported, and this with a richer style of existence. 

The measure of a richer style of existence means that the population numbers are not the only measure of power. Franklin Delanor Roosevelt, for example inspired a nation to build for itself the most productive economy ever created on face of the planet, which enabled the nation to support almost the entire world in its fight against Hitler's fascist empire. President Kennedy too, was a powerful leader by this standard, in that he roused the nation  to enable itself to stand on the moon, and provided the political platform to do so. The power that came out of this for the benefit of mankind remains, yet to be fully realized, as this story has just begun unfold.

The world has too few powerful leaders who understood the principle of civilization. None came out of the camp of empire. Without principle empire is self-defeating - an engine for poverty (except for the rich), that is a weight under which nations collapse. Unable to change this, the masters of empire cry for depopulation. Half of England's population, and two thirds of mankind, is said to be 'excessive.' Empire does not create wealth for society to build a richer and more powerful civilization. It steals, kills, and instigates war. There is no power in any of that. Hitler had amassed the capacity to kill and overcome all resistance that stood against him, but as a leader he was a little man, a fool who destroyed much of Europe. Nothing was accomplished by him.

America's Lyndon LaRouche might yet join the ranks the ranks of the powerful leaders of the world, and to some degree already has. His personal intervention through the Rhodes conference, in the form of providing leadership to the leadership of China, Russia, and India, to join hands for their common economic development on a platform akin to a credit society principle, versus a monetarist system started a renaissance type reorientation throughout Asia with a sudden massive commitment to nuclear power development, railway development, infrastructure development, that would have seemed miraculous the year before, which also protected the U.S. dollar that the masters of empire had been hoping to wreck. LaRouche stands on the global scene today where Lincoln had stood in his time on the American scene, with the principle of universal freedom and universal sovereignty in his pocket to save the nations from the chains of empire, and he on the move on many fronts, especially on the political, social, scientific, and economics fronts inside the USA. If he succeeds in saving the USA remains yet to be seen. Lincoln had close calls in his days, being nearly defeated several times. But in the end, his stand for principle succeeded and the Union was saved. No one can determine in retrospect how powerful this accomplishment really was, or how dark the world would be today if he had lost.

Principle is the power of civilization also in a more direct manner

Mankind emerged for the last Ice Age an estimated 10 million strong. When the climate became conducive to agriculture, the principle of agriculture was applied that revolutionized human living. When other principles were discovered, such as irrigation, agriculture became immensely more powerful. Later, with the discovery of other principles, such as coal power, steam power, oil power, electric power, nuclear power, the power of agriculture increased to the point that the world population grew from 10 million to 6,700 million, with the power in individual living at a state that would have been impossible to even imagine before. Every discovered universal principle has given mankind greater freedom and power in living. 

(C) copyright Corel Corp.

While it is lamentable that some principles have given mankind also the power to blow up the world in the space of a coffee break, it also needs to be acknowledged that some higher-order power of sanity has prevented the cataclysm, and has now turned the tied against the masters of empire who stood behind the development of the atomic bomb.

The principles of humanity, honesty, truthfulness, generosity, cooperation, development, freedom, sublimity, are on the march to the forefront to become the new power in the world that promises a new age without empire. The defeat of empire at its 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, was like had been the opening fanfare for this dawning new age of real power.

Also, as we look to the Universe with open eyes, we come to realize that it presents us with a vast seal of principles not yet discovered, which promise us powers we cannot yet even imagine, though we had a faint foretaste by testing this frontier.

See associated study: The NASA Nation