As for the ukraine war example, yeah that one kinda breaks the mold. My best understanding of it is because the conservative position is to seek national strength, rather than the less concrete strength of unity. Sometimes that means war (e.g. iraq and afghanistan, nominally to prevent future terrorist attacks) and sometimes that means not-war as in the case where the benefit of keeping ukraine free, to the US, is unclear.

It sounds like our disagreement is more around "where do we draw the line" of "what is the status quo." 50 years of being the law seems like the status quo to me. For most people that are alive, that's the way it's always been (for anyone born later than 1955, that was the law when you were facing the decision of abortion).

There are thousands of years of history, so if the line of status quo isn't drawn at "how are things today" then we have to pick some arbitrary point and draw it there, and IMHO that makes the distinction between the two largely meaningless as there will always be an argument for why the line is in the wrong spot on any given issue, and moving the line on that issue flips the sides of which person is conservative and which is progressive.

But largely, it sounds like we are agreement. If the labels are more about "impulse" rather than position, then I agree.

Unfortunately for us a ton of lawmakers and at least 3 of the members of the supreme court were born before 1955. Which is the problem.