Explanation: During the last years of the Roman Republic, many populare (reformist) politicians, like Julius Caesar, were accused by optimate (conservative) politicians of having designs of tyranny and monarchy on the Republic! Why else, after all, would they try to get the support of the POORS!?
… but many of those optimate politicians had, themselves, supported the brutal tyranny of the ultraconservative optimate dictator Sulla not long before, who started two civil wars (over a matter of a choice political assignment, no less) wherein he butchered his political rivals and seized their property while reforming the Roman Republic to defang the ancient (if limited) democratic institutions within it, giving as much power to the conservative oligarchic aristocracy as possible.
Almost as if the conservatives’ only real motivation was their own power and privileges.
Genuine question, has there ever been a conservative party that lasted more than a few generations without becoming corrupt and self-serving? It makes sense given conservativism is at its core a desire to preserve traditional power dynamics, but even ones in cultures with a heavy focus on honor and civic duty seem to fall into the same destructive spiral.
“Conservative” here could be argued to be a misnomer insofar as bothoptimates and populares, in the immensely conservative culture of Rome, argued to be the ones truly preserving Rome’s ‘traditions’.
But as the optimates sought to minimize changing the current structure (except when it benefitted them), while the populares emphasized that the structure had developed out-of-sync with the traditions of Roman governance, it’s easier - especially considering the optimates emphasis on recognizable ‘conservative’ matters like preserving the outsized power of the ultra-wealthy and suppressing democracy - to characterize the optimates as the ‘conservative’ faction as we would recognize it.
Kuchenstück vom Ranslite
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Explanation: During the last years of the Roman Republic, many populare (reformist) politicians, like Julius Caesar, were accused by optimate (conservative) politicians of having designs of tyranny and monarchy on the Republic! Why else, after all, would they try to get the support of the POORS!?
… but many of those optimate politicians had, themselves, supported the brutal tyranny of the ultraconservative optimate dictator Sulla not long before, who started two civil wars (over a matter of a choice political assignment, no less) wherein he butchered his political rivals and seized their property while reforming the Roman Republic to defang the ancient (if limited) democratic institutions within it, giving as much power to the conservative oligarchic aristocracy as possible.
Almost as if the conservatives’ only real motivation was their own power and privileges.
Genuine question, has there ever been a conservative party that lasted more than a few generations without becoming corrupt and self-serving? It makes sense given conservativism is at its core a desire to preserve traditional power dynamics, but even ones in cultures with a heavy focus on honor and civic duty seem to fall into the same destructive spiral.
“Conservative” here could be argued to be a misnomer insofar as both optimates and populares, in the immensely conservative culture of Rome, argued to be the ones truly preserving Rome’s ‘traditions’.
But as the optimates sought to minimize changing the current structure (except when it benefitted them), while the populares emphasized that the structure had developed out-of-sync with the traditions of Roman governance, it’s easier - especially considering the optimates emphasis on recognizable ‘conservative’ matters like preserving the outsized power of the ultra-wealthy and suppressing democracy - to characterize the optimates as the ‘conservative’ faction as we would recognize it.
Always has been.