If I was taking Speech Com again, and I had to give my introductory speech, it might go a little like this:

"Good morning.

My name is Matt Valkovic and I'm from Murrysville, Pa., a suburb about a half hour east of the great city of Pittsburgh, which, I should point out, is home to four Super Bowl championships - unlike our friends in the City of Brotherly Love who still haven't won the big game. Someday, guys. Someday.

Sorry. I had to get that in.

Anyway. I want to talk today about one of my greatest loves in life: politics. I can't get enough of it and I don't get tired of it. My friends like to refer to me as 'Grandpa,' because, I guess people my age aren't supposed know that William Safire's column appears in the New York Times every Monday and Wednesday. Or that Charles Krauthammer graces the Washington Post on Friday, and that National Review's first issue came out on November 19, 1955, with William F. Buckley Jr., James Burnham and the rest of the crew, 'standing athwart history, yelling stop!'

If you're familiar with any of the political personalities mentioned above, you'd be correct in describing me as a right-winger, a conservative, a supply-sider and a hawk. Although depending on your own political perceptions, you might otherwise see me as a warmonger, a greedy capitalist, a mind-numbed 'ditto head,' or even, to some folks, a Nazi.

Hey, well whatever floats your boat.

But seriously, no matter how you wish to identify me politically, I'm always open for a good conversation.

So why do I find myself on the right side of the aisle?

Aside from believing the usual litany of conservative principles of smaller government, lower taxes, a robust and ready military, a foreign policy with backbone, free commerce among nations and strict constructionists on the bench, I've come to recognize that conservatism is a bit more than one's opinion on the role of government in society or how the Constitution should be interpreted.

I think conservatism, as British political philospher Roger Scruton noted, is more of a 'temperament.'

And what is at the heart of a conservative's temperament, in my book, is optimism. This optimism isn't some cheery-eyed fantasy where everything is just aw-chucks-swell, but rather the recognition that our lives, while imperfect in so many ways, aren't all that bad and we implicitly know that they can get better.

This optimism is also rooted in the conservative's trust in traditions and institutions that are passed down from generation to generation and remain the standard-bearer for America's existence and her future.

Again, as a conservative, I recognize that for the last two centuries, the American experience has not always lived up to her underlying values by, among other sins, enslaving blacks and disenfranchising women.

But this is no excuse for me, as Scruton says, to not 'look for the good in the institutions, customs, and habits that [I] have inherited.'

So today, why should I dwell on scars from the past that I, personally, had no responsibility for and that have been, for the most part, reconciled, when the alternative is to hope for of a more promising tomorrow?

It might seem difficult right now to be optimistic about tomorrow with terrorists slaughtering children in Russia and with our honorable men and women in uniform selflessly serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

But I have faith - and I hope you do, too - that all the pain we feel now will be worth it when our grandkids can look back at this point in history and be proud we 'bucked-up' and fought the good fight."