According to Jonathan Cheng and Alex Frangos, writing in the Wall Street Journal, Palin

. . . described her political philosophy as a "common-sense conservatism," and said the free-market policies of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher should be guides for how to get out of the current economic situation. "Liberalism holds that there is no human problem that government can't fix if only the right people are put in charge," she said.

This is well and good, no doubt. And yet friends of freedom must ask: If the Cheng and Frangos description of the speech is fair, is Sarah Palin meeting the challenge of tyranny at the crucial point when she describes her political philosophy as "common-sense conservatism"?

Please correct me if I am wrong, but is not the American Founding rather uncommon sense? That is to say, does not that Founding take on rather specific and uncommon content in the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights?

Thinking of this primarily in the political realm, how can America be refounded, reliberated, and rehumanized without an advance clearly rooted and clearly articulated in terms of the Founders' amazing emancipatory vision, with specific content regarding unalienable rights endowed by our Creator, and so on?

A "common-sense conservatism" consistent with the views of a Reagan clearly is an important step in the right direction. It is a move forward toward the philosophical universe inhabited by the Founders but despised by the likes of Obama, the modern Democratic Party, and elements within the GOP. 

And yet one senses that America must purposefully move much closer to her electrifying philosophical home, as it were, if we the people are to throw off the shackles of the Washington establishment and recover that unique balance of governmental form and individual freedom so strategically and revolutionarily advanced by the Founding generation. 

We await a transcript of Palin's remarks. Meanwhile, here's one cheer for her willingness to take the heat in attempting to advance the cause of freedom, and another cheer for moving toward the philosophic center of the American experiment. A third cheer awaits a clear, consistent, and practiced emphasis on the Founders' vision and the worldview upon which they and human liberty stand.

* Here are excerpts from her speech in Hong Kong.