Michael Totten thinks Glenn Reynolds is off-base in complaining about the use of the word “conservative” to describe reactionary movements in countries like Russia and Iran. Michael writes:

“Conservative” is a disposition, not an ideology, and so its meaning is always relative to the local context. Conservatives defend the existing political order against change. That is their function.

That is true. However, the meaning of “liberal” is also relative to the local context, but American media don’t describe parties like Germany’s Free Democrats or the Netherlands’ VVD as “liberal,” even though they are (in the classical sense of the term); they’re called things like “economic conservatives” or “free-marketeers,” to translate the term into the American context. And this is appropriate; describing them as “liberal” would be misleading to an American audience.

And, however much the moralizing tone of the hardline elements of the Iranian regime remind us of the fascistic tendencies of the domestic reactionary right’s Two Pats (Buchanan and Robertson), describing this element as “conservative” is similarly misleading. There are plenty of adjectives that properly describe them: five, off the top of my head, are reactionary, theocratic, hard-line, illiberal, and authoritarian. And except possibly the fourth, none of them would mislead an American audience into thinking they share the beliefs of Americans who consider themselves to be conservative.