In preparing for my recent Point of Inquiry podcast with Rick Perlstein, I knew my guest would debunk right wing historical narratives of the sort that we've recently heard so much of, and do so with gusto. I screen guests at least that well. But I didn't know he was going to offer a thesis so in line with the one that I've been pushing myself lately--that when it comes to history, liberals are wedded to an Enlightenment tradition that creates its own biases and myopias. Here's Perlstein:
Liberalism is rooted in this notion of the Enlightenment, the idea that we can use our reason, and we can use empiricism, and we can sort out facts, and using something like the scientific method—although history is not like nuclear physics—to arrive at consensus views of the truth that have a much more solid standing, epistemologically, than what the right wing view ...
