April 30—“These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
These famous words by Thomas Paine, published on December 23, 1776, came as George Washington’s Revolutionary army faced possible collapse while camped out in the deep of winter on the western shore of the Delaware River opposite Trenton, New Jersey. Having been driven out of New York City by British forces in August, several thousand of Washington’s volunteers had given up and gone home, while the rest, who had signed up to serve until December 31, were liable to leave when that day arrived. A call was necessary to inspire the troops, and the citizenry, to a higher purpose.
Indeed, Thomas Paine’s words served that noble purpose, as the men read the leaflet to themselves and to each other as they prepared to cross the Delaware on Christmas Eve, and turn the course of the war towards victory and freedom.
We are today in even greater need for such an inspiration, as the nation, and the entire world, face destruction at the hands of the same British Imperial enemy confronted by Washington and Paine in 1776. Helga Zepp-LaRouche today called on America to return to the principles of that American Revolution, to defeat the British Empire and the geopolitical ideology of Empire once and for all.
The world is minutes away from a thermonuclear holocaust which could bring about the extinction of civilization. Madmen and madwomen in positions of power in the U.S. and the U.K., and their weakling satraps in the European governments, are openly waging economic warfare against Russia, while deploying billions of dollars in modern weaponry to their surrogate Ukrainian forces, spearheaded by the Nazi Azov Brigade. The leaders of that surrogate army had been placed in power by the Obama Administration in the Maidan “Color Revolution” of 2014, directed by Victoria Nuland and Joe Biden, who now hold the reins in the Washington administration, while enjoying full support from the opposition Republican Party for their genocidal, and suicidal, war policy. Just as the British financed and sponsored the rise to power of the Nazi forces in Germany, with the intention of using the Nazi war machine to destroy the Soviet Union, so today those same neo-Nazis are hailed as heroes by the Wall Street and City of London controlled media, by the corrupted British Parliament and U.S. Congress, and by the Boris Johnson and Joe Biden administrations who do the bidding of the bankrupt financial institutions.
As with Washington’s soldiers, the population in the United States is frightened. Not a single soul can now ignore the reality of nuclear war being discussed on every front, and of the hyperinflationary collapse of the Western financial system which is eroding the value of their wages and savings, with no end in sight. In this realm of fear, there is no significant anti-war movement. In their fear, there is no adequate outcry against the illegal sanctions on Russia, which do minor damage to Russia, but are causing catastrophic damage on the rest of the world, including the threat of death by starvation of one-fifth of the human race. The senile Joe Biden deploys $47 billion to Nazi-led military surrogates in Ukraine, while stealing $9 billion from the starving people of Afghanistan. Is this not Satanic?
These are indeed the times that try men’s souls. The Schiller Institute has a leaflet in circulation already, in the form of the petition: Convoke an International Conference To Establish a New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations, which must be signed and circulated by every citizen of every country who believes, with Friedrich Schiller, that we must all be both patriots of our nations and citizens of the world. Watch and circulate the Schiller Institute interview with Col. Richard Black (ret.), whose stark and passionate warning of the on-rushing nuclear war should provoke the spineless military and political leaders of the trans-Atlantic nations to fear God in their folly.
