I can’t follow how I am conflating them or how I am using them colloquially. I am not sure if conflating makes sense here.

I am not American. When I speak about conservative and liberal I am not speaking about political parties in America.

Using Wikipedia as a source in a paper is not a good idea. This is not a paper. (I have written an essay on Nozick’s libertarianism when I studied philosophy though; it’s been ages so can’t remember much, but I didn’t use wikipedia there :P)