"

True. Both libertarians and conservatives in the modern Western world want low taxes, small government and individual freedom and responsibility. However, the difference is that libertarianism is a fixed ideology, while conservatism as an ideology varies between time periods and societies; for instance, nineteenth-century conservatism was about preserving monarchical and aristocratic rule and was totally different from modern conservatism. I think the quote I added to the first paragraph sums that up quite well: ""who are the 'conservatives' in today's Russia? Are they the unreconstructed Stalinists, or the reformers who have adopted the right-wing views of modern conservatives such as Margaret Thatcher? Basically, conservatism, when considered across the whole of history, is a term so vague as to be impossible to define - which makes this article inherently fairly impossible to write. Conservative movements need to be considered in the context of their country and their time period - whereas there is a fixed definition of ""socialist"" and of ""libertarian"", a fixed definition of ""conservative"" can't exist. One "