Describe what conservativism or what being a conservative means to you.

OK, I'll bite. Keep in mind I am not from the USA, so what qualifies as "conservative" in my country is likely considered less so there. This is an adapted version of what I wrote when I was in a similar forum at reddit

I'm a conservative nationalist populist, with somewhat more emphasis on the latter. I am also - get this - a libertarian authoritarian. Confused? I'll explain.

I believe strongly in live and let live. You do whatever floats your boat, as long as it doesnt harm other people or unduly interfere with their enjoyment of life. Want to smoke dope, wear a furry suit 24/7, identify as polyamorous genderqueer otherkin? Wear a Confederate flag shirt? All at once? Knock yourself out, you do you, and I'm completely OK with that.

But as soon as you start interfering with other people, be it their freedom of speech, their lifestyle choices, or their autonomy, we, as in the state can and should come down on your ass in the most punitive, draconian way possible, your rights be damned. Just like any good authoritarian leader would. If you cannot respect the rights of others then why should you expect yours to be respected?

You respect and abide by the laws of society and its citizens, and contribute as and where you can, then you deserve the same rights as anyone else.

The specific issues that I would probably lean more "conservative" on;

1. Law and order - I agree that there is far too much focus on punishment - on both sides of the debate. Sentencing needs to be about risk management, not punishment. That needs to be the primary driver. If risk can be alleviated by rehabilitation, well and good, and in many cases that can be done. But there is a minority of offenders who can never safely be released back into society, and need to be permanently isolated. I am in favour of rehabilitation if it is going to successfully remove that risk - with the emphasis being on the word successfully, because too often offenders are released upon the public when clearly whatever rehab has been undertaken has not worked. This applies especially for child molester paedophiles, the "treatment programmes" for paedophilia are pretty much snake oil, much like all the "reparative therapy" out there for gay people, and for not totally dissimilar biological reasons. I am extremely sceptical of the long term outcomes of all these "treatment programmes"
2. Strong borders - for a whole host of cultural and environmental reasons, I believe immigration into all developed countries needs to be closely controlled and regulated. I dont object to manageable levels of immigration, but we should be selecting in favour of immigrants from cultures that are not heavily misogynistic, homophobic, or with extremely high levels of corruption, and that ideally share some cultural and linguistic background. Of course an individual may be leaving a country with an unfavourable culture because they are not compatible with it, in which case they are more likely to be compatible with ours, e.g. an atheist wanting to get out of Saudi Arabia. Which neatly segues to..
3. Islam - especially as a gay man, I feel it needs to be acknowledged that Islam is problematic, and more so than any other major religion (barring Scientology which is even worse but thankfully much smaller). It has a few attributes which make it so, one being the lack of separation of church and state, another being the way it treats it's apostates (i.e ex-Muslims and those in sects that deviate from mainstream Islam). Of course not every Muslim is problematic, a good many arent (especially in the USA where many have come from more educated backgrounds to start with than those in Europe etc), and we need to separate the faith overall from its individual adherents.
4. Free speech is necessary for a free society, including that which we despise. The test for me with this is those fucking Holocaust denier cunts who I loathe with a passion, but I do not want to see them prevented from spewing their shit as much as it rarks me up, because if they are stopped, who's next? Still hate those cunts though.
5. Israel - I am an unabashed Zionist, and I make no apologies for that. Of course Israel is far from perfect, but it has the best human rights for LGBT people in the region by far (not that that is a particularly high bar) and manages to be a passably functional democracy in a region where those are few and far between while being in a state of siege and constant low level warfare with most of its neighbours. Of course its flawed! But those that criticise Israel while ignoring the far worse human rights violations of every other country in the region need to pull their heads out of the arses to be blunt.
6. Welfare - I support a welfare state, but I do think that the one we have now performs poorly in that it does not adequately help those that really need it most and is far too easily abused. A large part of the problem is that the vast majority of benefits are paid out in cash to the accounts of beneficiaries, with no control on how it is used/ spent. While this is not a problem for many, perhaps most, a substantial proportion of beneficiaries spend the money on feeding their addictions - in other words, it makes all of us enablers. I have seen this first hand, with several different individuals. This is hugely counterproductive, as it feeds into increased costs in health and justice sectors, while completely failing to actually help those the welfare is given to. This needs to change (the details of which are for another post on its own!)

The foundation of my conservative values is my distrust of the government, either they are intentionally fucking people over or their programs accidentally do at a huge cost to tax payers. Government is incapable of making policy at a micro level that is tailored to an individual's needs.

Tipper Gore with her push censor music was the thing that changed me from apolitical to conservative.

Guy who calls himself conservative here.

If a progressive is someone who wants progress things, a conservative is one who says "Is that really how we want to progress?" . With a gas pedal, you need a brake pedal so to speak.

Not all progress is good progress. Look at communism, and what progress towards that goal lead to. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

A perfect example is guns. You look at the newspapers, and see all these masd shootings. Of course we should disarm the people. But you look at the stats and see just how rare mass shootings are, you look at what often happens to disarmed populations, and how disarment doesn't actually work, suddenly disarment looks like bad progress.

Not all progress is good, a lot is bad, even with good intentions.

Disclaimer, I'm far to the left personally. With that in mind:

One definition is that on the left, everyone should be able to be however they want to be, and you shouldn't infringe people's freedom by telling them they have to be this way or that way, if that's not in their nature. On the right, there's a right way to live and a wrong way to live, and it's okay if the people who are "in the right" and hold some natural authority as a result are telling the people who don't have their act together (financially, life-organization-wise, sexually, whatever) what's what.

I won't say one is right and another is wrong; they apply well or badly in different contexts. Academia tends to be left-wing. Militaries tend to be right-wing. It's generally good to be on the left if you're trying to understand the world and figure things out without a preconceived notion of what the right and wrong answers are. It's generally good to be on the right if you need action, strength of character, ability to defeat your enemies or defend yourself without getting extensively hung up in second-guessing.

This doesn't apply very well to the modern US political landscape, which is pretty far afield of the traditional definitions of left and right, but that's a separate topic.

Let the hate-responses commence 😃

Actual conservative here. To me it mostly means a defense of the essential culture and values of Christendom, AKA Western civilization.