Conservatism means contradictory things to different people

Evidence

For example, some would say, “Conservatives are people who want everybody to obey the government.” But others would say, “Conservatives are people who want no government at all.” Are both kinds of people conservatives, or is neither, or only one? … That is just the first step into the quagmire. See the symposium in the September 1976 issue of Commentary, entitled ““What Is a Liberal—Who Is a Conservative?” It contains sixty-four essays on the matter by well-informed writers from many fields. Overall, they provide sixty-four different answers. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 625

Categorization

• CANDY: Sixty-four essays giving sixty-four different answers is a light, tweetable fact about how undefined the terms ‘conservative’ and ‘liberal’ are.
• XREF: Connects to the general thesis that political labels are contested categories, echoing the reader’s interest in how terms function.