Comment by watwut
1 hour ago
That is not what conservativism as political ideology is. Like common, not clearly that and we have multiple years where this was made super clear by conservatives themselves.
Conservativism has nothing to do with "conservatorship". They are not trying to conserve, they are trying to force radical change - sometimes to imaginary past and sometimes toward something completely new. And then violently keep it there regardless of needs of other people.
It’s one of those cases where the label has stayed the same, but the thing it commonly describes has changed so much that the word just has multiple completely different meanings.
There’s the “let’s create National Parks to conserve our natural treasures!” conservatism and there’s the “let’s sell our National Parks to the highest bidder so they can drill for oil!” conservatism. It can mean fiscal responsibility and small government, or it can mean crypto scams and surveillance state.
This happens a lot when describing political positions.
This is like how Americans of the "conservative" bent use "liberal" as a perjorative, despite holding to liberal (or, occasionally, neoliberal) economic theory. I don't get America at all.
No. That is reactionary. Conservatism means "government should govern as little as possible to guarantee freedoms, and no less. it should not provide services for a fee (aka tax)."
It never meant that. Conservativism does not care about freedoms, expect for cherry picked few freedoms for selected few. It also does not care about small government, it cares about government small in some areas and huge in others.
Conservative voters do not care about freedom, conservative politicians do not care about freedom and and considerable amounts of them are actively opposed to it.
Conservativism is consistently very authoritarian. It is about hierarchies, not freedom.
You definition sounds more like anarchism or some kind of ultra-libertarian end goal.