A political tradition which argues its view of human rights as properties to be understood only in the continuum of a particular history, as having no meaning in vacuo, has many advantages not to be found in what Professor Oakeshott has rightly labeled “the teleocratic regime.”  A societas seems to me preferable to a universitas–at least for free men.  The only freedom which can last is a freedom embodied somewhere, rooted in a history, located in space, sanctioned by a genealogy, and blessed by a religious establishment.  The only equality which abstract rights, insisted upon outside the context of politics, are likely to provide is the equality of universal slavery. ~M.E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason