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It does seem under this definition like the parties aren't really as conservative/progressive aligned as the messaging would have you think. Under "don't do anything new", California is arguably a conservative state when it clamps down on building housing, sets strong environmental laws discouraging industry, and blocking data center construction. Alternatively, Texas's libertine rules encouraging solar build out, natural gas, and encouraging industry are progressive. Don't tell Gavin and Greg.
But that seems part of both party's ongoing civil wars: blue team seems to have inherited a lot of conservative (lacking a better term) seniors for whom that means "hands off my Medicare" and a general preference for maintaining late 20th century neoliberalism, which clashes with the DSA types wanting radical changes. Red team has a similar clash between traditionally-labelled conservatives and "you can just build things", although I'm not sure if that fight is still ongoing these days.
The confusing thing about America's constant change and upheaval is that, although dispositional/Burkean/"small-c" conservatism still makes some sense here, and it's still true that traditions which have stood the test of time are less risky than new ideas that haven't, "for many lifetimes this fact of constantly changing traditions has been a longstanding tradition". California didn't get to be California by clamping down that hard on housing and industry; that's a new idea that makes Burkean conservatives shriek, even if the alternative of endless new construction is also worrying. Riding the tiger of modernity is scary, but we're already on it, and jumping right off is scarier.
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Yes, I agree that these labels are confusing and outmoded. A long time ago, I pointed out that white nationalists who want to transform the US into a white ethnostate are habitually characterised as "conservative". But to conserve things means to keep things the way they are. The US isn't a white ethnostate, so by definition anyone who wants to turn it into one can't be a conservative. Rather, white nationalists are reactionaries.
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