We had friends over for one of many birthday celebrations for the lad, which will be occurring all this week, and could not watch the speech live. But we did get to settle down in bed and see a re-broadcast before going to sleep.

It was a really good speech. I noted a lot of nitpicking across the rightside of the blogosphere and was expecting something really bad. Like usual the nits were not worth the picking. It is interesting how people, seeing things through their personal prisms, think one thing in a speech is bad and or good, and then the next person will see something completely different.

The real test of a speech is whether it becomes a call to action and motivates people to do something. In that test I think Bush did really well. I was more willing to put aside (ignore, if you will) the partisan sniping from the left and redouble my efforts.

And I think this is an opportunity to drive the stake through all those liberal policies which have failed the poor and this country for coming on 50 years now. The ‘new’ New Orleans can be a shining example of how conservative policies, while not perfect (what policies are?), will show better results than we have seen from the tired concepts from the left. And the poor of New Orleans have been spread to the winds across this country to start anew in neigborhoods and towns that will give them a chance to break free from the poverty chains liberal policies have shackled them with.

A phoenix can rise from this disaster, and Bush reminded us of that last night. I end this post with some great observations by Ed Morrissey:

Bush delivered another brilliant and overdue message in asking for everyone in this nation to contribute and sacrifice for this effort. Everyone, he reminded us, can play a part in the resurrection of the Katrina area; all we need to do is ask, and our talents will find a way to apply. He called all of us to enlist in “this great national enterprise,” a call that didn’t clearly ring out from 9/11. Then, the Bush administration wanted to help us return to a sense of normalcy, an understandable but shortsighted impulse. Now he asks us to share a sense of mission, an impulse that resonates with Americans and our history, both good and bad, over the two centuries of our existence.

We have been called to our neighbor’s aid. The liberals can show how not to respond by doing the snooty ‘it’s not good enough’ immitation of a eurolib. Conservatives will revise the great American can-do, glad-to-help-you attitude that made this country what it is. And that will tell the tale of where this country goes from here.