The radio was tuned to NPR, the subject was austerity, and the great observers of our political moment were speaking with their customary authority. The conversation wandered to and fro, and then I heard David Leonhardt, the Washington bureau chief of the New York Times, declare that when it came to cutbacks in federal spending, “history just argues incredibly strongly against it.”

I knew what Leonhardt meant: Austerity is a bad idea. And I agreed with him. Still, somehow his statement annoyed me. What grated, I soon realized, was his image of history “arguing” for or against something. There…