SO, WHAT DOES "PERFECTIBILTY" MEAN?

(h/t John Holbo at Crooked Timber)

Mike Potemra, one of the Corner Clowns, first wrote this:

Its messages are unabashedly liberal ones of the early post-Cold War era – peace, tolerance, due process, progress (as opposed to skepticism about human perfectibility).

This is a common conservative misconception about liberalism so it really isn't news but Potemra's next post directly contradicts his defense of skepticism:

[Picard] had, as Paul Johnson said of De Gaulle, the historian’s capacity for seeing events sub specie aeternitatis, from the standpoint of eternity, which is perhaps the very most conservative way to view the great stage upon which we are all merely players.”

Let's be honest: No human can really grasp matters from the viewpoint of eternity and if that isn't one notion of human perfectibility, then nothing is.