"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Is There a Distinct and Valid Libertarian Form of Historical Understanding?
"IT IS A COMMON belief that every historian, in trying to describe any episode from the human past, cannot help but color his narrative with the hues of his own political stances, his positions concerning political economy, his visions of a just society, his religious beliefs, and other such subjective tinctures. Those influences will inevitably enter into his interpretation of the “bare, objective facts” of history, and, as a result, the plain facts are merely the raw material from which the historian sculpts his own creation. A corollary proposition is that competent his- torians, however divergent their ideological commitments may be, and however widely they may differ in their ethical, psychological, philosophical, economic, religious, or political opinions, will concur broadly as to the composition of that raw material."
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