You have hit on a little known problem: what does “conservative” mean? Even when limited to the US context, there are many versions. From this magazine’s intro:
Painting with a broad brush, there are fiscal conservatives, social conservatives, and limited government, constitutional conservatives. These categories do not have to overlap and even limited government and constitutional are really two tight categories. Media, however, uses the term with a heavy implication of social issues, even though fiscal and limited government conservatives exist. (In very general terms, they are the Libertarians.) Overlay these subsets with the foreign policy spectrum of isolationist to interventionist and the label that is supposed to define something, hardly defines anything.
For the record, I’m primarily the Constitutional variety, relying on the federalist structure the Constitution provides for power, fiscal, and social issues. In more practical terms, I’d like to see the federal government less consequential to our daily lives and our localism be about more than food.
