Talk:political conservative

Meaning

To the person who changed this entry: I suspect that you're trying to make the point that the term "conservative" has been widely applied to positions that aren't conservative in the strict sense. This is true, and this is reflected in the entry for conservative.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the definition I gave here is completely accurate, either. I believe there are people who classify themselves as "politically conservative" and adhere to the values given, but it doesn't take much digging to find it used to mean (US) right wing or (US) Republican. Sort of like hacker, really. -dmh 03:34, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Correct. The present definition isn't remotely accurate.

Moreover, I'm sure OP was well-meaning but this is just SOP and we should simply do a better job with the definitions at conservative, not try to move the footballs and goalposts around in the hope people get bored before they see how absymal our current political treatment is. — LlywelynII 10:44, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, I have to agree, both that the definition is poor and that it seems SOP. (I mean, US political conservatives were the ones who supported interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan! The 'definition' is just a snapshot of policy positions [some] political conservatives may have held at one time, but it's like defining "politically conservative" as "supportive of [insert particular politician here]"; a definition that actually captured the underlying meaning rather than a snapshot of the trappings would be...SOP.) RFD? - -sche (discuss) 14:54, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

RFD discussion: May–June 2022

The following information has failed Wiktionary's deletion process (permalink).

It should not be re-entered without careful consideration.

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political conservative

See talk, where it was pointed out already in 2005, and again today, that the definition is wrong and the term is SOP. (I made a longer argument there.) - -sche (discuss) 17:31, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 19:56, 21 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete: it's literally just an alternate form of "conservative". — This unsigned comment was added by 110.150.20.32 (talk) at 01:10, 22 May 2022 (UTC).

Is it? One can be a fiscal conservative, yet favour a major change to the political status quo, such as replacing a presidential autocracy by a parliamentary democracy.  --Lambiam 06:48, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

Which highlights a problem with defining fiscal conservative as "[...] wants to decrease government size", if one could want to add a parliament(!), and many do expand military or police size and funding...
A problem with political conservative, I think, is that any definition of a snapshot of positions some held at some time exists alongside the other possible definitions, e.g. there may well be cases where "(US) political conservative" means "opposed to foreign intervention" as our entry says, but there are also cases where it denotes the people who supported US invasions of Iraq, Granada, etc. A definition which captures the meaning and not just a snapshot of trappings is . . . "one whose political activities or aims are [those of a] conservative". And the things that get described as "political[ly] conservative" are also described as "conservative", so that's probably where to discuss any differences between conservatives who actually oppose changes to traditions vs conservatives who want or make even radical changes to society (these are usually promoting some alleged tradition, even if it did not exist). (For example, someone pointed out on a talk page that I can't offhand locate that Nazis made many radical changes to society and yet are conservative and right-wing...) - -sche (discuss) 21:33, 22 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree that the definitions are subpar, and getting them up to good lexicographic standards is nontrivial. The issue we need to decide is whether political conservative simply means “conservative with respect to political issues”, or has an idiomatic meaning. My contribution was meant purely to contest the statement that ‘it's literally just an alternate form of "conservative"’, which, IMO being untrue, is not an acceptable rationale for deletion.  --Lambiam 06:55, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete: It’s the sum of its parts. Lereman (talk) 20:42, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete as SoP. — Sgconlaw (talk) 18:01, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Delete. The definition is US-centric (and inaccurate anyway), but the primary reason is that "political conservative" doesn't carry any special lexical significance, as it's the default association with the term "conservative". The existence of terms such as fiscal conservative have no bearing on this, either. Theknightwho (talk) 19:55, 27 May 2022 (UTC)

• RFD-deleted. ·~ dictátor·mundꟾ 20:05, 19 June 2022 (UTC)