I've used this old joke as the perfect mnemonic figure for the conservative approach: the guy who loses his car keys in the park. His buddy sees him looking for them under a streetlight. "You lost the keys over there in the dark park, why are you looking over here?" "The light's better."

The conservative simply turns off if it hears anything it knows or suspects would threaten its SAFETY if it accepted it. And this way of thinking is actually a way of being and is in fact genetic in orgin.