Common Sense Conservatism

At the airport. Look, Madame even has a
present for Katie Couric in her left hand!

If you look closely, you can see that First Dude 45
has me on his shoulder! (H/T The Palination)

I've spent much of the past 36 hours safely secured under the seat in front of Madame on our flight to and from Hong Kong, and I'm a bit jet lagged from the flights. I bet you didn't know LOTUSes can get jet lag. The cabin pressure messes with my earphone jacks too, and I can't chew gum to help with the pressure. But, enough complaining from me.

It came as no surprise to me that Madame's speech was amazing! She didn't even need a teleprompter; she spoke from just notes!

The Wall Street Journal posted some excerpts from Madame's speech earlier today:

You can call me a common-sense conservative. My approach to the issues facing my country and the world, issues that we’ll discuss today, are rooted in this common-sense conservatism… Common sense conservatism deals with the reality of the world as it is. Complicated and beautiful, tragic and hopeful, we believe in the rights and the responsibilities and the inherent dignity of the individual.

We don’t believe that human nature is perfectible; we’re suspicious of government efforts to fix problems because often what it’s trying to fix is human nature, and that is impossible. It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean that we’re resigned to, well, any negative destiny. Not at all. I believe in striving for the ideal, but in realistic confines of human nature…

Conservatism? Common sense? Optimism? Government can't fix everything ? I think that someone is going to need to translate this for the Great Opologizer. These are all concepts he is not familiar with, and they are certainly not in his thesaurus.

Common sense, how fitting! In Thomas Paine's pamphlet, Common Sense, he said, "[g]overnment even in its best state is but a necessary evil". It sounds a lot like Madame's statement that we must be suspicious of government's abilities to fix problems due to human nature. Another great quote from Madame, which could easily have been from the Great Communicator, "[w]e’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom!"

Tonight, we posted excerpts of Madame's speech on Facebook. I urge you to check out that excerpt. I'm just a renegade laptop, so my analysis would not do Madame's words justice. Madame spoke about a myriad of different topics in her speech: budget deficits, the Federal Reserve, US-China relations, Afghanistan, health care, tax cuts, free trade vs. protectionism, foreign policy, the Cold War, defense spending, the role of government and the private sector in healing the economy, the Tea Party movement, and a whole slew of other topics.

So while the Great Opologizer spent Wednesday apologizing to the UN for America, Madame closed her Wednesday with these words, "[w]e’re Americans. We’re always hopeful. Thank you for letting me share some of that hope, and a view from Main Street with you. God Bless You."

That is the hope that I can believe in.