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The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Lew Rockwell.com
Tuesday, Sept 3, 2008
This talk was delivered at the Rally for the Republic in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on September 2, 2008.
(Article continues below)
Sometimes people say that Americans are cynical about politics. Looking at the way the Bush administration has used and abused its power for the last eight years, is it really surprising?
You would have to be sedated not to be cynical.
It should be clear why the Ron Paul movement took the country by storm. It represents something different, something hopeful. Some commentators talk about how the Paulians have a dark view of American society. Actually, the opposite is true. That people worked so hard to save this country from the regular politicians speaks very highly of their outlook.
On the other hand, it is true that Paulians don’t have a high regard for existing political structures.
Consider Bush. He has not only broken election promises and trampled on American liberties, he hasn’t done a single decent thing for this country. And what he has done contradicts all of the values he said he would uphold both times he tricked people into voting for him.
I wish I could report that this wasn’t his intention. And yet even from his first day in office, he spoke to aides about his priority of going to war on Iraq – a country hardly mentioned during his first presidential campaign.
Here’s another example.
Just after Bush took office, David Frum, then a White House speechwriter, was part of a policy meeting with the new president. They were discussing the energy policy of the new administration. Recall that in those days, gasoline cost less than a dollar a gallon. Frum had the idea that it would be a political victory to drive down the price. He suggested the Bush use the phrase “cheap energy” to describe his goal.
Frum writes in his memoirs about what happened next. Bush “gave me a sharp, squinting look, as if he were trying to decide whether I was the very stupidest person he had heard from all day.” He might have added that profits in the oil business – which is the business that this government cares most about – were growing thinner.
Cheap energy, he answered, was how we got into this mess.
What mess? Bush explained to Frum that regular Americans were buying too many SUVs and using too much gasoline and not paying enough for it. His answer was not to make energy cheaper, but to make it more expensive.
Congratulations, Mr. President. Your wars, your regulations, your disruption of the international economy, and your failure to open up the industry to anyone other than your friends has resulted in quadrupling the price of gasoline!
Of course, Bush’s success comes at our expense. All of his successes have come at our expense. In fact, that last sentence might as well be the theme of his entire presidency.
Of course, he didn’t campaign on the promise of making our lives more miserable. Let’s take a look back and see what his slogans were.
Do you remember the phrase “compassionate conservatism”?
He said in an early speech that the phrase came from his insight that broken lives can only be rebuilt by another caring, concerned human being. From this he developed what he called a “bold new approach.” He would use government to care for us and to love us and to fix our broken lives. He alone would do this as head of state.
Few knew at the time that this simple phrase “compassionate conservatism” masked a dangerous, Messianic ambition. Some wires had gotten crossed in his brain. He began to see himself as God’s instrument on earth.
Here is another phrase from early in his presidency. Bush was going to create “an ownership society.” Some commentators were stupid enough to believe that this meant that he would privatize things and give back control to the people.
To those who bought this line, I have only this to say: You Got Owned.
Remember the phrase, “humble foreign policy”? Coming from Bush, that sounds about as ridiculous as the phrase “peaceful war,” except that he seems to believe in that too.
His delirium is like an infection. It spreads. After all, Bush supporters are the people who continue, even to this day, to talk about their amazing tactical successes in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, in his new book, calls Iraq a “swift and humane success.”
If such claims do not qualify as Orwellian, I don’t know what the word means.
Many people say that the Bush administration has departed from conservative principles. There was a time when I might have said that too, if by conservatism we mean the constitutionalism of Robert Taft and Ron Paul.
But consider that Ron is the only Republican in the whole Congress or anywhere inside the Beltway to stand up to Bush’s attempt to create a totalitarian state. Only he has consistently opposed Bush’s wars, regulations, spying, and shredding of the Constitution. He alone warned against Bush’s monetary policies, his trade policies, his diplomatic misadventures, and his crazed, megalomaniacal arrogance.
You might say that many have opposed this administration privately. You might say the same thing about the Stalin, Hitler, and Mao administrations. Those who could speak out against the wickedness, and did not do so, are morally culpable.
What does this tell us? It tells us that conservatism as we once knew it is hopelessly corrupted. You can detect it at cocktail parties, where self-identified conservatives sneer at the very idea of liberty.
Clearly, in the age of Bush, conservatism now constitutes as great or even greater threat to American liberty than the left and left-liberalism. It is long past time for every right-thinking American to reject the term conservative as a self-description.
I for one no longer believe that Bush has betrayed conservatives. In fact, he has fulfilled conservatism, by completing the redefinition of the term that began many decades ago with Bill Buckley and National Review. Think of it realistically. What does conservatism today stand for? It stands for war. It stands for power. It stands for spying, jailing without trial, torture, counterfeiting without limit, and lying from morning to night.
There comes a time in the life of every believer in freedom when he must declare, without any hesitation, to have no attachment to the idea of conservatism.
After immigrating to the U.S., Ludwig von Mises was aghast to find himself described as a conservative. He denounced that term in 1956. F.A. Hayek in 1960 announced very clearly that he was not a conservative. Murray Rothbard wrote thousands of words of protest against the term. Frank Chodorov went further. He said that anyone who called him a conservative would get a punch in the nose.
Now, the leaders of the Republican party are telling us that the only real alternative to the socialism of the Democrats is the fascism of the Republicans. They don’t call it that, of course, but that’s the traditional name for the combination of nationalism, militarism, and right-wing collectivism. They have a heritage, and it dates from the interwar period when certain European politicians took power amidst economic crisis. Having their confreres in power in our time represents the gravest danger facing our country.
Yet Ron Paul has been campaigning for liberty and against this danger since he first read Hayek and Mises in medical school, since he first encountered an immoral war’s severed limbs and crippled souls as a flight surgeon in the Air Force, since he first decided, on August 15, 1971, to dedicate his life as a public intellectual and a public official to free markets and sound money, against Nixonian economic controls and the unlimited money creation that has brought us even more booms and busts, and led us to the current crisis.
Indeed, since Ron Paul says he was born a libertarian, we can say he has been fighting for freedom his entire life.
To do all this, Ron Paul had to buck Republican conservatism. Look at the peerless, shining example he has set. And look what he has done, look at this historic event, and dream of what he will do in the future.
To those who have lingering attachments to conservatism, I will close with the words that Murray Rothbard had for the Young Americans for Freedom, spoken in 1960.
“Why don’t you get out… breathe the clean air of freedom, and then take your stand, proudly and squarely, not with the despotism of the power elite and the government of the United States, but with the rising movement in opposition to that government? Then you will be libertarians indeed, in act as well as in theory. What hangover, what remnant of devotion to the monster State, is holding you back? Come join us, come realize that to break once and for all with statism is to break once and for all with the [Buckleyite] right-wing. We stand ready to welcome you.”
Today, Ron Paul stands ready to welcome you. Like the many thousands at this historic event, we say to all who yearn to breathe free: Join us! Join Ron Paul!
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8 Responses to “The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism”
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September 3rd, 2008 at 9:32 am
The month of October will be a wild ride, economics, Iran and other horrible things are possible. Keep your eye on the door my friends, they will be knocking soon.
September 3rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
Buck Fush
September 3rd, 2008 at 1:20 pm
“Some commentators were stupid enough to believe that this meant that he would privatize things and give back control to the people.”
Yep, you have to be pretty stupid if you think privatization is the same thing as giving control to the people.
So called “real conservatives” like this need to pull their heads out of their jingo arses. It is idiotic to portray Bush-style politics as somehow running contrary to pure Capitalism when in reality they epitomize it.
Also, what dose it even mean to say you are a “constitutionalist” and at the same time a defender of liberty. The Constitution condoned and protected slavery for Christ’s sake! That’s the reality. Absorb it and deal with it already.
Stop looking to the past for solutions that obviously cannot be found there. It’s time to start building our future.
Heed the past or be doomed to repeat it.
September 3rd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Gus you don’t make any sense at all. That is BS Bush has privatized things when he has done the exact opposite (i.e. National Forest Arkansas oil reserves, keeping Amtrak in business when it is a tax payer bleeder, etc I could go on and on.) Public ownership, if you didn’t notice in the former Soviet Union gave them jack shit. This dictator Bush has done no privatizing at all, but has stuck the government’s tyrannical nose in every business he could find. Not denying corporate cronyism which is fascism, but that is a result of big government and corporations favour big government and public ownership they control in directly. I have my constitution here and I don’t see where it condones slavery, read the thing three times over. Replace the constitution with what? Is safe guards against tyranny “old fashioned”? Then I am old fashioned. Replace it with what? If your a anarchist, I am with you, but if your some type of communist or variant of a fascist then your my enemy. I’d prefer anarchy but I’d also prefer a constitutional republic over what we got right now any day.
September 3rd, 2008 at 9:15 pm
WarriorLiberty,
From the Constitution:
“No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.”
What did you think the Civil War was about?
I think we need a new constitution (or some serious amendments to the present one) that unequivocally defends the Bill of Rights with some very serious penalties for any violations.
No fucking way am I a commie. If all that is required to be cosidered an anarchist is a desire to see all government abolished then you can label me an anarchist. I think I prefer “libertarian socialist” though.
I believe in the socialization of the means of production, which is different from “nationalization” because it means putting control into the hands of the people and not some state. I believe peoples’ “personal property” should be left alone, and I also do not support a perfect leveling of wealth if it will require a state to enforce it.
So, considering these things, do you think maybe you and I could fight alongside each other, or do you still think maybe I am the enemy?
September 4th, 2008 at 6:30 am
Bush is trying to build an “Empire”. We all know how that goes in the long run. It is crumbling in on itself.
September 4th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Gus -
Granted, the Constitution isn’t perfect but it’s the best document that I’ve seen yet that can keep a government from assuming complete control over everyone’s lives. And keep in mind, it can be amended. Mankind is evolving and the Constitution provides a process in which we can modify it to reflect the changing views of the people in this country. The key is individual rights and personal freedom. I believe that this was the driving force behind the creation of the Constitution and we must do whatever it takes to keep moving in that direction.
Learning is a change in behavior based on experience. Therefore we must look both behind and ahead in order to advance in a positive way.
September 4th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Mark A.,
I’m pretty much in agreement with you.
I should probably clarify that I wasn’t suggesting that the past holds no valuable lessons for the present or that knowledge of it isn’t useful as we make our way into the future. What I was trying to emphasize was that people are often too slow to criticize their country because of blind patriotism or misdirected religiosity. If we ever want this country to actually become what we pretend it has always been we have to be honest with ourselves and cop to our shortcomings.
I think one good place to start would be to stop placing the ambitious group of elitists known as The Founders on a level with Jesus Christ and to stop treating our constitution as if it were sacred scripture. It’s a pretty decent document (after much amendment) but it could still use a lot of work. As you pointed out, one of the good things about the Constitution is that it can be amended. I’ll give you that, but don’t you think the process of amending the Constitution is a bit cumbersome? Maybe the Constitution should be revised in a way that makes it easier to adapt to changing situations.
The one area of the Constitution that I think should be most resistant to revision is the Bill of Rights. It’s ironic, but those ten amendments were not even desired by the Founders. Their incorporation was considered a compromise.
One more thing I want to mention is the Founders hostile attitude to real democracy. They preferred a republican form of government because they held that the “common rabble” were too stupid to be trusted to run their own affairs. Now if that’s not an elitist position (they were elitist to their core), I don’t know what is. As a libertarian, I don’t see how we are ever going to significantly reduce government if we don’t start managing, on our own, those affairs we have so far entrusted to politicians. Greater democracy is a perfect solution to this problem (that is, once we inject honesty and objectivity back into our media).