The essence of conservatism is a rather strong desire to stick with what’s worked in the past - what has been learned through millenia of schools of hard knocks - experience. what we call “traditions”.
The enlightened conservative also understand that things can be improved, thus he’s open to new ideas. But he does so skeptically. Before adopting those “new-fangled” ideas, he wants them thoroughly analyzed and tested on a limited scale (even isolated) to see how they work in real life. The genius of the founders is that they understood this well, and it’s why they created multiple states as opposed to one monolithic country. They saw them as “laboratory in governance” where each state could try what they thought were “improvements” and they all could learn from those “tests” and decide accordingly.
This contrasts with radicalists who are convinced they have the perfect (untested) system and can’t wait to blow up the status quo.
By the way, there’s a great poem by Kipling that I consider the “anthem of conservatism”. Truly brilliant.
It’s “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”.
See what you think.
https://www.poetry.com/poem/33442/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings