[W]hat makes a conservative disposition in politics intelligible is nothing to do with a natural law or a providential order, nothing to do with morals or religion; it is the observation of our current manner of living combined with the belief (which from our point of view need be regarded as no more than an hypothesis) that governing is a specific and limited activity, namely the provision and custody of general rules of conduct, which are understood, not as plans for imposing substantive activities, but as instruments enabling people to pursue the activities of their own choice with the minimum frustration, and therefore something which it is appropriate to be conservative about.
(Michael Oakeshott, "On Being Conservative," in Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays, new and expanded ed. [Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1991], 407-37, at 423-4 [essay first published in 1962])
Note from KBJ: Oakeshott is right: There is no necessary connection between (1) being conservative (either generally or in politics specifically) and (2) being religious. David Hume and Antony Flew, for example, were both conservatives and atheists. So am I.
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 