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