Very nicely put

The term 'conservative' is much abused today, frequently claimed by public figures who are anything but. There are many who could benefit from reading this essay and using it to see if they really are what they think they are:

To “conserve,” however, is a fairly simple thing. While “liberals” and “progressives” keep changing what lovely things they see in the future, “conserving” means knowing what’s important and trying to save it. The opposite of “conservative,” in fact, has never been “liberal”; it has always been ideology. Ideology, as my friend the great historian Forrest McDonald says, is “dogmatic, scientific, secular millenialism.” It’s been around the western political world since the French Revolution. Ideology is older than that, of course, it is “we shall be as gods.” Conserving, its exact opposite, is understanding the order of creation, and trying as hard as we can to stay somewhere in its near vicinity...

Place. Limits. Liberty. Do these words have real meaning? I have often asked my ideological friends, “Is there a place you love? What would you do to defend it?” Or, “Is there a limit to what you would ask government to do? Name it, or at least give an approximation.” “Is there a better definition for liberty than the one in Micah 4:4?” But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and none shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it. This is, by the way, the definition of liberty that was overwhelmingly the one used in the early years of our republic...

I like “conservative,” because I know what I want to conserve, and am unapologetic about what I want to exclude. It is not conservative to believe that “diversity” is itself a virtue. It is not conservative to believe that the “American way of life” can be exported, except by example. It is not conservative to think that “change” necessarily makes things better. It is not conservative to think that education, equality, democracy, or freedom cause progress. In fact, it is not conservative to believe in Progress.