Governing

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"The authority of these laws derives from the recognition of the procedure in which they are made or announced, and their content (their 'justice') reflects the character of the culture from which they spring. They are designed to express, in a simplified manner, those items of a cultural relationship which, if not generally and consistently observed, threaten its dissolution. Governing is having the care and custody of this rule-ordered manner of association, and the engagement of politics is considering these terms of civil order in respect of their adequacy to perform their function in the circumstances of ever more extensive and complicated human discoveries and adventures." -- Michael Oakeshott, The Vocabulary of a Modern European State, p. 296

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