If I have it right, she feels a great deal of frustration and betrayal. But apparently not enough to give up hope that her idea is the best course to achieve progress for society.

How do you come to that conclusion? The field of politics has to find answers for many different question: e.g. fiscal conservatism vs. more debt-based spending, gay-marriage vs. no gay-marriage. Why do you consider it insane to agree with one party on one topic and with another party on another topic? Requiring full commitment to one true party line seems to be the insane position to me.

My comment addressed gingerrr's assertion that "being worried about societal change" is the defining point of conservatism. I provided a counterexample; of course adherents of any ideology would be concerned about changes that indicate increasing currency of a competing ideology.

> what makes an outlook conservative is the one-dimensional (and frequently reactionary) analysis that things must go back to how they were, or as closely as possible

I'm wary of any attempt to sum up an ideology in a one-liner, since they tend to be lossy and dismissive. Your definition lines up more neatly with anarcho-primitivism than conservatism (at least modern American conservatism, with which I'm most familiar).

In general people live their lives based on what they are convinced is ethically right, they aren't brainless automatons following a simple algorithm of "old good, new bad" or "new good, old bad"

This is an interesting take on conservatism. I suppose it must be a fairly common take among people who consider themselves progressive, and helps makes sense of some things I've observed recently.

I consider myself generally conservative but would sum up my outlook more along the lines of "change isn't necessarily/automatically good" than "the past was right". Chesterton's Fence etc.

> If you're worried about society changing, there is no definition of the word "progressive" you fulfill unless it's your tax bracket.

If you saw the "progressive" movement take a turn toward something you consider immoral, like say, eugenics, would you consider yourself non-progressive for opposing it?

Or does "progressive" include some kind of moral judgement, which leads to a "no true Scotsman" situation, where "only social changes which I personally consider morally good can be considered progressive, anything else is conservative or regressive"?

I think that's why you and the person you replied to are disagreeing. You're using "conservative" as the definition of the word itself, i.e. inclined against changing the status quo for better or worse, while the person you replied to is using "conservative" to refer to the meaning that the word has taken on with regard to American politics.

To your example about them therefore not being "progressive", I think they are saying, "I wish society would not change in that direction, I wish it to change in this direction instead." Which would be progressive.

Let's say that some country didn't have the Sharia in their tradition, and that a new social movement proposed to adopt it. By your definition, those opposing that proposed change should be defined "conservatives", even if, for example, they were opposing it to conserve women's rights in the country.

> Because the definition of the word conservatism is "commitment to traditional values and ideas with opposition to change".

The word conservatism is a descendant from the latin root conservare which means to preserve. What should be preserved is not necessarily defined. And preserving the functioning of a society or the value of truth[1] is something everybody interested in a modern and essentially free livestyle should be interested in. Conservatism as a word does not imply opposition to every kind of change, but that is often claimed, as my the previous poster did. Although for some self-proclaimed conservatives, that is certainly true.

A progressive movement that is in favor of race-based, age-based, sex-based or ideology-based hiring instead of merit-based hiring is repeating some of the errors of early communist countries. And they too will learn, like so many generations before, that it is far simpler to destroy a society than to create a better one.

On the other hand to preserve the western achievements, the western societies have to change, e.g. because of the climate or because of growing dangers from the outside. And they have to change because younger generations want to change some things. That is nothing new. New, is only the magnitude of the loudness of the wish for change.

[1]: And the importance of truth and honesty is under attack from the political left as much as from the political right.

So it was conservative to worry about the rise of Trump and the Alt Right?

It's conservative to wish Roe had remained on the books?

> Words have meaning, even in the mouths of sophists.

Indeed.