[nathan_long]

"Conservative" generally means "skeptical of change". So it depends on how you look at it. I'd call myself conservative, and I want to conserve my 4th Amendment rights as I move from carrying papers to carrying digital data.

So you can say "the world has changed and now we have to protect cell phones" to say it's a progressive position, or "people still carry information and the government still can't search it without a warrant" to say it's a conservative one.

[_bfhp]

"Conservative" refers to the vague party/ideology that more smoothly (than "liberalism", that is) allows for-profit coroprations to co-opt the government to achieve the regulatory situation for maximal wealth accumulation. It refers to nothing else. To pretend otherwise is to further facilitate the maximal wealth accumulation.

[nl]

Not only is that unhelpful, it's also untrue. It doesn't capture the goals of the tea party movement for example.

It's true the outcomes of conservative ideology are often what you say, but that doesn't make it a goal anymore than the fact that there are welfare cheats makes cheating on welfare a goal of progressive politics.

[_bfhp]

"It doesn't capture the goals of the tea party movement for example." It doesn't have to, it just has to "capture" the reason that the movement gained popularity over any other movement. Theories explain why phenomena occur, it doesn't matter if the people who are part of the phenomena disagree.

[nathan_long]

Is there an adjective you use as (obviously incomplete) shorthand for your political viewpoints? Because I'm sure it could be similarly redefined using only its negative outcomes.

[_bfhp]

No, there isn't.