I guess you have to pick your poison.
Personally I can’t think of a single traditional value worth preserving and I’ve got nothing worth conserving - given the pollution of the right that modern day corruption has completed, I’ll stick to the lesser, at least until I can’t dodge advertising anymore.
Yes, you’re right about the English definition - talking politics is difficult in a global forum because of these strange idiosyncrasies.
I do try to use the language flatly, avoiding emotive words where possible. It’s interesting you say that “woke” has positive connotations, as I think the Republican🇺🇲 and Conservative🇬🇧 crowds have been using that word as something approaching a slur!
When I say “conservatism” I am strictly referring to the definition in the dictionary or the wiki. I feel like the UK Tory party is definitely following a more anarcho-capitalist expression of the ideology, but their trans exclusionary rhetoric does have the air of “traditional” CoE values around it. In the states, the creeping in of a Christian flavoured version of Sharia law is an interesting development under a lib president, as I would consider this an expression of conservatism.
Personally, I think the connotations that the term conservatism has earned over the last hundred years are well earned, especially as the core values of conservatism seem to be somewhat nebulous. Ultimately we can only judge by the totally flawed implementation of the system that we have - just as we have judged Communism to be a totally unworkable and flawed system by studying the facist regimes of Russia and China as examples - despite the similarities between communism and what the USSR/CCP were/are being almost nil; though this is probably what you were driving at with your closing statement! 😅