Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) reflected on his governing philosophy, recall election and childhood, to standing applause, while addressing a young crowd of students and supporters at the Young America’s Foundation National Conference in Washington on Friday.

He assured them that freedom is the highest ideal and that it should be courageously sought by every American.

“Most voters are conservative; they just don’t know it,” Walker said, reflecting on his gubernatorial campaign. “We took conservative principles and put them into bite-size ideas that the people could relate to, explained it in ways that relate to people’s lives.”

Walker’s “brown-bag common sense” platform, as he called it, stressed that increasing government dependence actually shows government's increasing failure.

His predecessor measured success by the number of unemployment applications and the number of people dependent on the government, but Walker contrasted his views, saying that success means doing the opposite.

That “something better” is realizing that the decision between raising taxes or cutting core services is “a false choice,” Walker said.

“It isn’t a matter of more money, it is a matter of spending what you have more wisely,” Walker said. “My opponents make a false assertion that I hate government. Just because we want limited government doesn’t mean we hate government.

“We want to limit it, and what we have should work.”

Making people less dependent on government assistance makes them more independent, according to Walker.

“The best thing we can do for the people of this country, middle class or otherwise is give people their freedom,” Walker said.

Late in his talk, Walker reminisced about a trip he took to Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pa., noting that the Founding Fathers were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

“Those visits remind me that what has made America great, what has made us exceptional, what has made us arguably the greatest country in the world is that there have been men and women of courage who have thought more about their children and their grandchildren than their political futures,” Walker said.  “We are at one of those critical moments in our nation’s history.

“This is a moment to tell posterity, ‘We were there, we were there, we were there when we said we can no longer defer to the generations of the future. We can stand up [and have the courage to solve our nation’s problems].’”