That’s because “conservative” isn’t an ideology, and it never has been. Conservativism has two core beliefs: “conservatives” refers to a specific group of people defined by common traits, and those are the good people. Each tranche of conservatives defines their own identity, and then they define whatever they want as “conservative values.”

This German guy on the train probably is very conservative. He is not more progressive than an American conservative. He has simply defined his group of conservatives to include the people who benefit from universal healthcare. He sees the value to his own group, and so he supports it.

I really don’t think this is an accurate description of what an average aging conservative German is.

Conservative means what it means - people who want to conserve rather than change, and are comfortable with how things are and, in their opinion, have always been. It’s a naïve world view based on a lacking understanding of how society changes. The people who hold it tend to be of privileged groups who can afford to be blind to injustice. That doesn’t mean they are fans of it - their privilege has just left them with a blind spot, and when injustice is pointed out to them they tend to blame those showing it to them for creating it in the first place. Again, they are not brilliant people, but they’re generally not evil, just a bit dumb.

When American self-proclaimed conservatives storm the Capitol building and make an active effort to fuck up their country as much as humanly possible they are not conservative in the same way some Günther riding the Deutsche Bahn considers himself conservative. Similarly, I’m a socialist in the same way Pol Pot was a socialist.

American fascists have intentionally stripped the word “conservative” of meaning, and if we accept their narrative we allow them to make us dumber.

I’m not saying CDU and CSU are brilliant parties, but the fundamental idea of German conservitivism is not the idea of “conservatives” as a select group of people for which society should work. If anything this is a description of populism.

Conservative means what it means - people who want to conserve rather than change, and are comfortable with how things are and, in their opinion, have always been.

One might argue it is about maintaining constants through change.

Most ideological conservatives that I know are well aware change is inevitable (and probably the most constant thing out there). What separates and divides them are what constants they seek to maintain, and some systems are categorically more damnable than others.

What happens when conservatives lose this constant, or are threatened to lose it, is when they become reactionaries or fascists respectively.

I understand this argument from an American point of view - if I were conservative I certainly wouldn’t brand myself as such if I were American.

I have two counterarguments. First, this is a form of surrender, where we accept that the word has lost its meaning and we no longer have the vocabulary to talk about conservativism in its original sense. Language is essential for thinking, and by destroying the language and the words we use to understand concepts the ruling classes can keep us from understanding them at all. Everything becomes meaningless. Fascists, conservatives, nazis, libertarians, libarals, centrists all become the same as concepts are blurred and lose their meaning to the point where we cannot think of anything any more. This type of rhetorical class warfare is common in the US - there has been active efforts to destroy any word associated with socialism for a hundred years now. I think we should insist on the meaning of words and their distinctions because we should insist on thinking. The two are, fundamentally, the same thing.

My second counterargument is that this guy on the train was German. Europe is not America, we don’t want to import your stupid politics. We are better off on our own.