Imagine a pretend political ideology called cleavism. Given its name you say it’s all about cleaving the good in society from the bad, whatever the hell that means. But there are so-called “cleavists” out there who insist cleavism is about joining the bad and the good together. What gives? Well, in practice cleavism has little to do with the two opposing definitions of “to cleave” (“to split” and “to join”). It’s really just named after some guy with the surname Cleaver or something.

Political ideologies aren’t medical diagnoses. You can’t derive their meaning like you can with atrial arrhythmic induced tachycardia cardiomyopathy. If you try this naive etymology out on anarchism then you’ll reduce that ideology to nothing more than a non-substantive, meaningless, circular definition. Conservatives conserve. Liberals liberate. Socialists socialize. See? Meaningless.

Unfortunately for the entire world, conservatism has never been about “protecting the good in society.” That’s just a vapid and empty wish for what you want conservatism to mean. You’d be hard pressed to find any reputable political science text that would trivialize one of the most dominate ideologies of the past two centuries like this. Let alone claim there is some inherent goodwill baked into the ideology.