We probably need a better word for it. Hence why I said "reactive."
I'd say we're getting into Luddite territory these days.
Truth be told, a lot of political terms have lost their meanings. "Conservative" isn't truly a term for someone who is opposed to change of any sort, let alone somebody who wants to turn the clock back to an earlier era. (
That would be a reactionary, and such people are actually quite rare nowadays, outside the internet.) . A true conservative merely argues that things should not be changed if it is not absolutely necessary to do so, or that change should come as gradually as possible. Many conservatives in the past have been willing to accept economic reform (and, to a lesser extent, social reform) as long as the cultural norms of civilization itself were left untouched.
"Conservative" and "liberal" have come to mean very different things than when the terms were more or less established in the French revolution;
les conservateurs were those opposed to the social ideals of the revolution and wanted to "conserve" the monarchy — and, incidentally, sat on the right wing of the French parliamentary chamber — while
les libéraux were those intent on "liberating" the people from monarchic rule. In the past few decades, conservatives have been more about binding personal liberties ("conserving" the social order) while disestablishing the state ("liberating" people — in theory, anyway — from rulership), while the liberal side of the equation seems to maintain its intent to open up social freedoms while maintaining (or even increasing) the role of the state. This is the problem with defining a multi-dimensional question on a simple left/right axis. Political theorist David Nolan (creator of the Nolan chart, which corrects for the inconsistencies of the left/right axis) has suggested that "populist" be substituted for what most Americans refer to as liberal - fitting, since American liberalism is usually thought to have split into its "classical" and "modern" wings in the 1890s, when the Democratic party (cautiously) co-opted the People's (or "Populist") party in order to blunt the accusation from socialists and others that they were no different from the Republican party.
"Classical liberalism" (note the quotation marks) interestingly, is a political philosophy in which the freedom of the individual person is prized over all other ideals — however, the freedom of any individual stops at the point where it begins to infringe upon the freedom of other individuals ("liberal" still has this sense in mainland Europe; in North America "libertarian" is closer, though not quite synonymous). How this intersects with the modern Anglosphere's liberal paradigm, which favors increasing safety regulations (up to and including seat-belt laws), is an interesting question.
It gets even more complicated, because "conservatism" also is often used in philosophy as a description of behavior based on some non-negotiable principles or values and thus it is more a opposition of "opportunism" or "pragmatism". The values may be of any kind, so it is completely possible to be a "conservative liberal" (this is the description actually used by at least several European libertarian parties) if one considers liberty to be a non-negotiable value. In this vein, a conservative liberal will vote in favor of any solution that maintains liberty at the cost of safety, while conservative securitarian may be eager to forfeit freedom to increase security. The name "conservative" comes from the fact that such people did not wanted to change their values but rather tried to find new applications for them.
Long story short, people rarely even know what they're fighting for anymore.