He said he went to UCLA (so I knew he was from the states or at least accustomed to the culture/lingo), he also used the word 'Conservatives' as a label for a group of people which given normal conversational English here in the states means he is referring to people who adopt a certain political position.
For the record, conservative is actually a pretty poor adjective for the US political movement that bears the name. While some old fuddy-duddy white dudes may hanker for the days of old and wish we could go back - most people my age are 'conservatives' because we are against the growth of government and its encroachment into our affairs. We dont want to conserve anything, we want to change it and make it better.
I think political labelling, especially in the US, is fundamentally broken. "Conservatism" isn't really about not changing things, while "Liberalism" in the US sense has only a little in common with its historical meaning (sometimes called "classical liberalism").
Meanwhile, "progressives" have somehow managed to capture a label which is pretty much an unalloyed good, even though many folks would think that the kind of "progress" which "progressives" want is not progress in the right direction.
It ought to be possible to reframe the debate, but unfortunately that would require people to fully and honestly comprehend the differences between various political ideologies, and very few people seem interested in understanding what their political opponents actually believe.
Ah, that's enlightening. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps due to the cultural gap, I've always had the impression that conservatives (the political movement) in the US were actually conservative.
For the record, conservative is actually a pretty poor adjective for the US political movement that bears the name. While some old fuddy-duddy white dudes may hanker for the days of old and wish we could go back - most people my age are 'conservatives' because we are against the growth of government and its encroachment into our affairs. We dont want to conserve anything, we want to change it and make it better.