"Does Conservatism Have to Be Synonymous With Ignorance?"

It's a good, pithy question. And the answer I suspect is that, yes, there is degree of inevitability in the two being synonymous.

Conservatism takes the natural human desire to conserve certain things and turns it into an almost fetishistic position against change, against evolution in human relations and behaviours. One seeks, by default, to prevent evolution in culture, in ideas, in techniques (unless, of course, those changes happen to permit personal enrichment, at which point monetarist selfishness suddenly trumps any desire to conserve).

How can seeking to maintain something solely because 'that is how things have always been' possibly not lead into blind-alleys of ignorance? Trying to hold back the mutation of ideas and cultures is about as pointless and self-defeating as trying to prevent the mutation of genes. Just look at all the things that even European conservatives were opposing a few hundred years ago (opposition which is never apologised for nor mentioned today) to get a flavour of the sort of ignorant stagnation that unchallenged political conservatism leads to.