If you can't say something nice about a Cambridge don...

I don't have much nice to say about Michael Oakeshott, but here's one: he gets Hobbes:

Man, as Hobbes sees him, is not engaged in an undignified scramble for suburban pleasures; there is the greatness of great passion in his constitution.

More importantly, he gets the ways in which Hobbes is liberal:

It is Reason, not Authority, that is destructive of individuality... Hobbes is not an absolutist precisely because he is an authoritarian. His skepticism about the power of reasoning...together with the rest of his individualism, separate him from the rationalist dictators of his or any age.

Still, this falls something short of intellectual redemption.

Unlike John and Ross, I am not surprised that Andrew Sullivan has an extreme take on secularism, because the man did his thesis on Oakeshott who rejected not just religious ideas in politics but all ideas in politics. To quote from "On Being Conservative":

. . . to state my view briefly before elaborating it, what 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.

The phrase Oakeshott uses to describe liberal democracy is "a living method of social integration"--a pretty weasely way to get out of talking about ideas if you ask me. I'm sure Sullivan would equally reject deeply help, non-justifiable, non-religious beliefs as illegitimate.