From the Stanford Encyclopedia’s Page on Michael Oakeshott:

‘The fallacy of Rationalism, in other words, is that the knowledge it identifies as rational is itself the product of experience and judgment. It consists of rules, methods, or techniques abstracted from practice, tools that, far from being substitutes for experience and judgment, cannot be effectively used in the absence of experience and judgment.’

Many political ideologies, upon this view, which claim to be universal are not necessarily so. Individuals lacking experience, knowledge, and understanding must merely master the logical rules of a rather closed system of political ideology.  Applying these logical rules in meeting rooms, in the public square or university quadrangle, inspired by their universal claims to knowledge and truth, identifying so often who/what one is against in the process, usually confirms some kind of group membership.

One need not have actually ever taken a course in the sciences, nor carefully have examined historical events, nor actually worked in law nor government for long years to suddenly gain an associative importance and believe one has actionable knowledge of the Sciences, History and Truth (of course, individuals inspired by ideologies gain experience, knowledge and understanding through their lives, and may spend a lifetime within the ideology, or may outgrow, drift away, or become heretical regarding its claims).

Democratic institutions are rather fragile, alas, easily manipulable, and open to corruption and ‘tyranny of the majority’ scenarios in a Constitutional Republic such as ours.

‘The pedigree of every political ideology shows it to be the creature, not of premeditation in advance of political activity, but meditation upon a manner of politics. In short, politics comes first and a political ideology follows after;…’

Oakeshott, Michael.  Political Education. Bowes & Bowes, 1951. Print.