Power & Market

Lew Rockwell’s “The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism” Speech at Rally for the Republic

In 2008, the Republican party conspired to deny Ron Paul a floor speech and to generally ignore him at the GOP convention in Minneapolis. The GOP, after all, had bent over fought against Paul every step of the way so it could nominate uber-establishment Republican John McCain instead. As a result, Paul’s supporters organized the “Rally for the Republic” and anti-convention down the street from the establishment convention. The rally sold more than 10,000 tickets and was broadcast on C-Span. 

The event featured many speakers, but among the best was Lew Rockwell who delivered a speech titled ”The Calamity of Bush’s Conservatism.” In it, Rockwell described the countless assaults on American freedoms pushed by the Bush administration and its supporters over eight years. 

This is an important message to remember since today many people—many younger people especially—many be unaware of just how instrumental the Bush Republicans were and are in creating and sustaining the modern security state we now live under. Bush Republicans created much of the police-state apparatus that is now used against Americans in the name of “controlling disease” or fighting “hate” or “fighting terrorists.” The rapid decline of privacy in the financial sector is largely a Bush project as are the TSA, the NSA, and “Homeland Security.” 

It’s important to remember that the weapons Joe Biden uses today against millions of Americans were essentially handed to Biden by George W. Bush. 

We have recently uploaded Lew’s talk to our Youtube channel. It’s an important piece of revisionist history:

Remote video URL
image/svg+xml
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
What is the Mises Institute?

The Mises Institute is a non-profit organization that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of economics, individual freedom, honest history, and international peace, in the tradition of Ludwig von Mises and Murray N. Rothbard. 

Non-political, non-partisan, and non-PC, we advocate a radical shift in the intellectual climate, away from statism and toward a private property order. We believe that our foundational ideas are of permanent value, and oppose all efforts at compromise, sellout, and amalgamation of these ideas with fashionable political, cultural, and social doctrines inimical to their spirit.

Become a Member
Mises Institute