Andrew Sullivan, a senior editor of the New Republic, delivered the third of the Institute's 2002-2003 Bradley Lectures on November 4. Edited excerpts follow.

The conservatism of English philosopher Michael Oakeshott (1901-1990) was fundamentally about the skeptical temperament. Oakeshott's conservatism, his defense of liberal civil society and liberal constitutionalism, was based not on the notion that there are some rights of man that we can know for sure. It was not based upon the notion that a free society generates more wealth or power. It was simply based upon the notion of the limits of human understanding.

This radical defense of liberalism on the ground of skepticism stems from the reality that human beings do not know the consequence of their actions. They cannot see the future. Their information and data, based on what has happened in the past, is extremely limited.

Oakeshott's defense of small government is based upon the idea that we should do all that we can to prevent anyone claiming certainty from running our lives because no one has the right to that certainty. Keep the government small so it can do as little damage as possible. Alongside this he advocated a form of government, statesmanship, and politicking that deeply understands the limits of available knowledge and that moves forward with a sense of judgment, not certainty; by prudence, not conviction.

"The conjunction of dreaming and ruling generates tyranny," Oakeshott once remarked. Perhaps it is understandable that this tyranny has not taken root in America, a place where dreams are constantly remade. But of course, Oakeshott's point was precisely that the restlessness, vibrancy, enthusiasms, and zeal of Americans above all require the temper and restraint of cool prudence and limited government.

Societies require balance. There is in Oakeshott a deep Aristotelian sense of the balance of societies, which is why he was not an absolutist attacker of the welfare state. He was not an absolutist attacker of what we now call "one nation" conservatism or of "national greatness" conservatism. He just wanted to raise the possibility of skepticism to cast doubt upon them.

A society can be full of dreams, but its government should not be. It is the government's avoidance of dreams that allows its citizens to dream in their own lives and their own ways even more ambitiously. To live without certainty, to live with an eternal contradiction, is a rather terrifying prospect. Yet the only sensibility that could allow one to govern politics, and indeed to live life, is one that lets go of control over the future.

Conservatism in this interpretation does not seek to suppress change or to dictate the course of a story. It recognizes the mixture of tradition and possibility in events to conserve identity more fully in the face of it. Facing practical life with this attitude steadies the self.

Real Diversity

Oakeshott saw the point of liberal democracy as giving individuals the ability to become themselves, to ripen and mature in all their idiosyncrasy and difference. If you live in a theocratic state where only some thoughts are allowed and many thoughts are forbidden, the possibility for human beings to develop diversity of character and idiosyncratic forms of living is much lower than in a free society. Similarly, if government becomes so powerful in its attempt to look after its citizens, then the individual ability of human beings to be themselves, however ornery, difficult, and cranky that might be, is inhibited.

Liberal society allows, encourages, nourishes, and nurtures the ability of us all to live our own lives, to take responsibility for them, to take joy in them, to embrace the adventure of them, and to cherish the freedom that makes them possible. Those who renounce the possibility of living one's own life, becoming oneself, making one's own choices, and creating one's own adventure in life cannot be a part of the conversation of mankind. That conversation is premised upon freedom that the West gives us, the freedom that limited government gives us, and the freedom that separation of church and state gives us.

In their legitimate calls for morality, modern conservatives sometimes miss the joy of character, personality, and the things that make us love another person. This is the real conservative definition of diversity. It is not enough to argue against the numbing and awful groupthink of using the word "diversity" to mean people of a certain race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. One must point out the real diversity, which is the joyous variety of humankind, the beautiful difference that exists in our culture, and the ability to cherish difference without being panicked by the possibility of inequality.

We must look at our society not in terms of abstraction, not in terms of slogans of freedom, liberty, or equality, but in terms of the mix of people it produces, the people who are constantly reinventing it.