Do Conservatives Know Much About Conservative History?

Writing in Politico on Sunday, historian Geoffrey Kabaservice argued that liberals, and particularly liberal historians, have done conservatism a profound disservice in recent decades. Under the headline “Liberals Don't Know Much About Conservative History,” Kabaservice lamented the “veritable tsunami of historical literature on conservatism” in the past 20 years, “virtually all” of which “have been written by liberals.” Kabaservice, author of the fine book Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party, believes that these works “reveal the pitfalls for liberals writing about a movement with which they have no personal experience. If you're a historian who has not a single conservative colleague—and perhaps not even one conservative friend—chances are you'll approach conservatism as anthropologists once approached tribes they considered remote, exotic, and quite possibly dangerous.”