From: 15942@brahms.udel.edu (Stephen Barr)
Subject: Re: Can Economic Policy be Based on Christian Principles?: part 6
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Thu, 28 Jan 1993 17:37:21 GMT

     Dear John Covici, 
                     I take it you are a LaRouchite.
Let me tell you a personal anecdote. When I was in
college as a physics major at Columbia University
(1970-74) one of my fellow physics majors was a 
fellow named Meltzer. We were sort of friendly, often
ate lunch together. He was at that time a member of
"the National Caucus of Labor Committees" which was
LaRouche's outfit. David Meltzer called himself a
Trotskyite. I remember him telling me how his group
had broken up some meeting of some other sect of
Communists and beaten up some of them. 
     David was a devout Communist. He spent one lunch
explaining to me the varieties of Communist and how
Trotskyites fit in. He was very Clear that the National
Caucus of Labor Committees was a Marxist group.
     Even then, however, there was a loony quality to
some of LaRouche's ideas. David was very big on the
idea that the Rockefellers and the CIA ran the world.
David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan Bank and the 
Trilateral Commission were also big bugbears.
     One day, standing outside of Ferris Booth Hall
David told me that in "five years" the National Caucus
of Labor Committees would "have taken over the world". 
He wanted to bet me. I smiled and said "David, you
already say that Rockefeller and the CIA run the world,
what is to stop you from claiming that you guys run the world
in five years and trying to collect?" He said "Oh, no!
it will be obvious even to you that we run the world."
     Well needless to say, I won the bet. But by that time
we had graduated, and I never saw David again. I once got
a Christmas card from him saying he was no longer a
member, and admitting that LaRouche had gone off the deep
end.
     LaRouche is a strange chamelian. In one incarnation
he is an out and out Trotskyite. Later he seems to be
identified with the right. Now it appears he quotes Leo XIII.
But through all his evolutions one thing has remained constant:
a characteristic loony penchant for conspiracy theory. 
The flavor of the stuff you post is *identical* to the kind
of stuff my friend David gave me to read years ago and that
he spouted. There is the pretension to have delved deeper
into the hidden workings of all sorts of institutions and found
the secret links and power relationships. There is a delight
in being somehow an amalgam of right and left: they were
themselves (back then) avowed Marxists who did God's work
by beating up Communists; they are against nuclear power
--- oops they are *for* nuclear power--- like many conservatives,
why? because the environmental movement is a bourgeous plot
to lower the living standards of the working class. ie.
they are for a "right-wing" policy for "left-wing" reasons.
They find the left-wing government of Mexico in bed with
Wall Street. etc etc. The flavor is unmistakable.
     Please, John, you are an intelligent fellow. Don't
get sucked into the idiosyncratic cult of these people.
I do not regard them as dangerous to the world. They are
harmless. They have great visions of weilding great influence,
but they don't. My concern is that like my friend David, you
will waste your fine mind and emotional energies that
could have been spent on something worthwhile, like upholding
our faith. What you do is your own business. But how Catholic
can any organization be that once was regarded by its own  
members as Trotskyite?
                        With concern, Steve Barr.
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