Words Poorly Used #47 — History

We don’t scramble facts on purpose, we just do.  Then we socialize the scramble and call it “history.”  The other day, I heard this interesting story from Stefan Molyneux on his Free Domain podcast — his first history professor in college interrupted his question in mid-sentence by throwing her eyeglasses at him, and he caught them.  Then she asked several class members what had just happened — no accounts were accurate and no two accounts matched.  “That’s history!” she exclaimed.  Terrific story.  Molyneux, however, took that moral to then support a grossly fantastic version of what might have happened recently in Ferguson, Missouri.  The upshot was that Molyneux seemed to be saying that because he could fashion a well-spoken (he is a wizard with words and persuasion) alternate scenario that we, the audience, should consider that as our version of history.  Is history just the most compelling fabrication of a seemingly consistent tale?

Kilgore