Fyodor has room enough to fully quote Mr. Oakeshott.

Here is the Michael Oakeshott quote Joe Sobran mentions in my previous post. It is taken from another Sobran column.

In an oft-quoted passage in “On Being Conservative,” Oakeshott describes the attitude he regards as opposite to conservatism: “To some people, ‘government’ appears as a vast reservoir of power which inspires them to dream of what use might be made of it. They have favorite projects, of various dimensions, which they sincerely believe are for the benefit of mankind, and to capture this source of power, if necessary to increase it, and to use it for imposing their favorite projects upon their fellows is what they understand as the adventure of governing men. They are, thus, disposed to recognize government as an instrument of passion: the art of politics is to inflame and direct desire.”

By contrast, “the man of [conservative] disposition understands it to be the business of a government not to inflame passion and give it new objects to feed upon, but to inject into the activities of already too passionate men an ingredient of moderation, to restrain, to deflate, to pacify, and to reconcile; not to stoke the fires of desire, but to damp them down. And all this, not because passion is vice and moderation virtue, but because moderation is indispensable if passionate men are to escape being locked in an encounter of mutual frustration.”

Oakeshott sees government as performing the role of referee or umpire, a role that is corrupted or destroyed when rulers impose their own purposes on the ruled: “An ‘umpire’ who at the same time is one of the players is no umpire; ‘rules’ about which we are not disposed to be conservative are not rules but incitements of disorder; the conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny.” Ruling, he insists, is “a specific and limited activity”; but because modern politics has been infected by “rationalism” the state itself has become a source and cause of disorder.

And here is a bit more Oakeshott (seen through the Sobran lens) we should use regularly:

Elsewhere Oakeshott distinguishes between two types of government, which he calls “nomocracy” and “teleocracy” (terms F.A. Hayek also adopts). Nomocracy is simply government according to fixed laws, the government having no ultimate purpose of its own; it respects, and doesn’t compete with, the purposes of its subjects. Teleocracy, on the other hand, is government for some ultimate purpose, to which laws are merely instrumental and may be changed arbitrarily to suit that purpose: a “war” on hunger or poverty, or even war itself. Teleocracy is potentially totalitarian (a term Oakeshott avoids, but it is apt), because it subordinates all the resources of a society to its “favorite projects.”

He makes a similar distinction between “enterprise association” and “civil association.” The former is cooperation for specific goals, like those of a church or a business; the latter is more general — agreement on laws or rules of conduct. Rival corporations observing the same rules may have clashing goals while being civilly related to each other. Government is properly concerned with maintaining the rules of civil association, within which people pursue their own private ends.

A stickler for accuracy, Oakeshott insists that laws are “observed,” not “obeyed.” This is what distinguishes laws from commands. A sound law is impersonal; only corrupt laws express personal desire, forcing some men to submit to the will of others. We all understand this when it comes to, say, the rules of sports; a rule designed to ensure a certain outcome (the victory of a particular team, for example) would be a bad rule. But bad laws have become routine in politics. Lobbyists are disreputable because they seek the passage of such laws, yet the principle of favoritism in legislation is generally accepted.