This is something that came up more than once over the weekend, during my attempt at liveblogging a panel at the Manning Centre conference, but has cropped up before as a unintentional ambiguator: When listening to those of a conservative – or nonconservative, for that matter – persuasion speak, how does one discern whether they are referring to capital-C, card-carrying Conservatives or the Conservative Party, or plain old small-c conservatives, who may or may not be affiliated with the party itself?