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 historians, 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. The view just described, that the historian’s proper task is to offer his unique explanation for the appearance of the (mostly) undisputed facts composing the skeleton of some episode from the past, implies that, unless all historians miraculously achieve a universal consensus on all non-historical subjects, there inevitably will exist significant disagreements in the depiction of historical passages, with the divergences typically taking place between distinctive “schools” of historical thought, such as “Marxist history,” “feminist history,” or “libertarian history.” As such, there always will be a multitude of questions that, notwithstanding their proper place in the historian’s purview, will elude