The difference between leftists and conservatives is this.
Leftists look at the world as it is and see injustices everywhere and want to blow up the status quo and replace it with the same tried, repackaged, feel-good ideas that have failed whenever they have been tried in the past.
Conservatives look at the world as it is and try to make the best of it using hard learned lessons from the past of what works and what doesn’t.
That difference is captured brilliantly and poetically in the poem by Kipling - “The Gods of the Copybook Headings”. It should be the anthem of conservatism.
https://www.poetry.com/poem/33442/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings
Re socialism: You can vote your way into it but you’ll have to shoot your way out of it. Always holds true...SSZ
Leftists see people are malleable -- that they can change human nature in a way that makes their dream societies work. That's why the implementation of their ideology necessarily requires indoctrination/authoritarianism. They intend to change the way people think, and they do that by pushing their ideas and suppressing all others. The people who won't change are imprisoned or simply eliminated, or they simply hide in one form or another.
That concept is present in the socialist/communist concept of the "New Man". "We're going to make people better!".
Conservatives see people for who and what they are, accept that there is both evil and good, and deal with those accordingly. We value individual choice and freedom, and believe that left to their own devices, most people can achieve happiness on their own. We value the market because we don't try to fit square pegs into the round holes of our ideology.
We don't need to force any particular ideology on anyone because the natural state of man is freedom.