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A common sense conservative is an advocate of conservative politics who adopts the rhetoric of "common sense
Common sense

For the pamphlet by Thomas Paine see Common Sense . For use with Wikipedia see WP:COMMON SENSE.Common sense , based on a strict interpretation of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding....
" to frame his or her arguments. The term is almost always used to apply to domestic and fiscal policy
Fiscal policy

In economics, fiscal policy is the use of government spending and revenue collection to influence the economy.Fiscal policy can be contrasted with the other main type of economic policy, monetary policy, which attempts to stabilize the economy by controlling interest rates and the supply of money....
. See the term neoconservative for a related movement that mostly focuses on foreign policy
Foreign policy

A state's foreign policy, also called the international relations policy, is a set of goals outlining how the country will interact with other countries economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the country will interact with non-state actors....
 initiatives.

"Common sense" conservatives can be either quite right wing, or more moderate. They are usually spawned in opposition to the policies of liberal
Liberalism

Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophy that considers individualism liberty and equality to be the most important political goals....
 politicians and parties.






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A common sense conservative is an advocate of conservative politics who adopts the rhetoric of "common sense
Common sense

For the pamphlet by Thomas Paine see Common Sense . For use with Wikipedia see WP:COMMON SENSE.Common sense , based on a strict interpretation of the term, consists of what people in common would agree on: that which they "sense" as their common natural understanding....
" to frame his or her arguments. The term is almost always used to apply to domestic and fiscal policy
Fiscal policy

In economics, fiscal policy is the use of government spending and revenue collection to influence the economy.Fiscal policy can be contrasted with the other main type of economic policy, monetary policy, which attempts to stabilize the economy by controlling interest rates and the supply of money....
. See the term neoconservative for a related movement that mostly focuses on foreign policy
Foreign policy

A state's foreign policy, also called the international relations policy, is a set of goals outlining how the country will interact with other countries economically, politically, socially and militarily, and to a lesser extent, how the country will interact with non-state actors....
 initiatives.

"Common sense" conservatives can be either quite right wing, or more moderate. They are usually spawned in opposition to the policies of liberal
Liberalism

Liberalism is a broad class of political philosophy that considers individualism liberty and equality to be the most important political goals....
 politicians and parties. Left-wing policy-makers, they argue, are mired in fantasy, striving for an unachievable utopia
Utopia

Utopia is a name for an ideal community or society, taken from the Utopia written in 1516 by Sir Thomas More describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean, possessing a seemingly perfect social system-politics-legal system....
n society. "Common sense" conservatives believe that rather than governing based on what "should work," politicians should govern based on established precedents and norms, or as they might say "what has worked." This, they say, is the "common sense" approach - as opposed to all that thinking.

At times this rhetoric falls to claims of access to absolute truth
Truth

semantic fields for the word truth extend from honesty, good faith, and sincerity in general, to agreement with fact or reality in particular....
 or what is "self-evident". Obviously, what is "obvious" to one person is not necessarily obvious to another, which is what makes this ideology so controversial.

"Common sense" conservative movements are mostly confined to the United States
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
, United Kingdom
United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom , the UK or Britain,is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe....
, Canada
Canada

Canada is a country occupying most of northern North America, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean....
, Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
, and Singapore
Singapore

Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country microstate located at the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula. It lies 137 kilometres north of the equator, south of the Malaysian state of Johor and north of Indonesia's Riau Islands....
, but have spread to Latin America
Latin America

Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages ? particularly Spanish language and Portuguese language, and variably French language ? are primarily spoken....
 and other regions with evangelical Christian
Evangelicalism

Evangelicalism is a Protestantism Christian movement which began in Great Britain in the 1730s.Most adherents consider its key characteristics to be: a belief in the need for personal conversion ; some expression of the gospel in effort; a high regard for Biblical authority; and an emphasis on the death and resurrection of Jesus....
 movements which emphasize moral rules, rigid conformity, financial success, and retributive justice
Retributive justice

Retributive justice is a theory of justice that considers that punishment, if Eye for an eye, is a morally acceptable response to crime, with an eye to the satisfaction and psychological benefits it can bestow to the aggrieved party, its intimates and society....
. In each country the political agenda is different, but it has economic themes in common:

  • tax cuts to promote economic growth
  • support for neoliberalism
    Neoliberalism

    Neoliberalism is a political philosophy, actually a continuance and redefinition of classical liberalism, influenced by the neoclassical economics....
    , monetarism
    Monetarism

    Monetarism is a school of economic thought concerning the determination of measures of national income and output and monetary economics. It focuses on the supply of money in an economy as the primary means by which the rate of inflation is determined....
    , capitalism
    Capitalism

    Capitalism is an economic system in which wealth, and the means of producing wealth, are private property and controlled rather than commonly, publicly, or state-owned and controlled....
     and free trade
    Free trade

    Free trade is a type of trade policy that allows traders to act and transact without coercive interference from government. Thus, the policy permits trading partners mutual gains from trade, with goods and services produced according to the law of comparative advantage....
  • privatization
    Privatization

    Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of business from the public sector to the private sector . In a broader sense, privatization refers to transfer of any government function to the private sector including governmental functions like revenue collection and law enforcement....
     of some infrastructure and government services on the belief (described by critics as a market theology) that the private sector is not only more efficient but more effective at providing such services
  • streamlining government and reducing regulation, usually in an effort to reduce barriers to business


Critics have accused "common sense" conservatives of deliberately stirring conflict among opposing groups to clear the way for their reforms, which they say are often simple reactionary
Reactionary

Reactionary refers to any movement or ideology that opposes change or progress in society, and which seeks a return to a previous state . The term originated in the French Revolution, to denote the Counter-revolutionary who wanted to restore the real or imagined conditions of the Monarchy Ancien R?gime....
 moves to eliminate prior regimes of regulation
Regulation

Regulation refers to "controlling human or societal behaviour by rules or restrictions." Regulation can take many forms: law restrictions promulgated by a government authority, self-regulation, social regulation , co-regulation and market regulation....
.

Often, these objectives and strategies cross national boundaries. Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Thatcher

Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher Order of the Garter, Order of Merit, Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, Fellow of the Royal Society was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party of the Conservative Party from 1975 to 1990....
 can be said to have brought the above trends into the mainstream, but the subsequent application of these beliefs by Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

Ronald Wilson Reagan was the List of Presidents of the United States President of the United States and the 33rd Governor of California . Born in Illinois, Reagan moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1930s, where he was an actor, president of the Screen Actors Guild , and a spokesman for General Electric ....
 in the U.S.
United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
 was much more ideologically rigid in character. A second generation of regional politicians such as Ontario Premier Mike Harris
Mike Harris

Michael Deane Harris was the twenty-second Premier of Ontario from June 26, 1995 to April 15, 2002. He is most noted for the "Common Sense Revolution", his government's program of deficit reduction in combination with lower taxes and significant cuts to some government programs....
, often using the slogan "Common Sense Revolution
Common Sense Revolution

The phrase Common Sense Revolution has been used as a political slogan to describe common sense conservative platforms in Australia and the U.S....
" (used in New Jersey
New Jersey

New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic States and Northeastern United States regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north by New York, on the east by the Hudson River and the Atlantic Ocean, on the southwest by Delaware, and on the west by Pennsylvania....
, Ontario
Ontario

Ontario is a Provinces and territories of Canada located in the Central Canada part of Canada, the largest by population and second largest, after Quebec, in total area....
 and Australia
Australia

Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the southern hemisphere comprising the Australia of the world's smallest continent, the major island of Tasmania, and numerous list of islands of Australia in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Oceans....
), continued the trend in the 1990s, though without most of the social conservatism.

External links



Toro, Felix R. "The Return of Common Sense",Llumina Press, march/2007, Website-