What does 'conservative' mean? Heritage Foundation president on the right's shifting values

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, joins Yahoo News Reporter Tom LoBianco ahead of the conservative think tank's 50th anniversary. During the discussion, Roberts shares his views on why the term "conservatism" can hold different meanings and how it has evolved over time.

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TOM LOBIANCO: What does conservative mean?

KEVIN ROBERTS: Conservative means what it has always meant, which is conserving, preserving, sustaining the eternal principles that no man has power to change. And so for most conservatives, at least in the United States, the source of that understanding is from God. I would say those permanent things are imprinted on our souls.

Or if you're agnostic, atheist, it comes from nature. Why does the term vary so much? Because the conservatism of now is not the conservatism of when Reagan was in office.

TOM LOBIANCO: Sure. So why does it change?

KEVIN ROBERTS: Well, it changes in part because it's been successful in the American context in the last half-century. If I can have that kind of timeline, it has been applied in different times in places.

And so in America, when I was growing up in the '70s and '80s in the South, to be conservative was to protect religion, to be pro-life, to be pro-second Amendment, decidedly pro-America. But at the same time, to be conservative in New England was to maybe not agree with all of that and place a much greater emphasis on the free market.

And so what we have lived through in the last 10 or 15 years as we've had this very choppy, very divided country between left and right, is that different tribes of conservatives are vying for ascendance within the movement. And, obviously, Heritage plays, you know, if not the leading role in that, one of the leading roles in it.