The liberal-leaning historian died this week. He will be remembered for a series of books on U.S. political history. He did not admire Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Later, however, Diggins revised his views, wrote a book, and declared Reagan to have been a great “liberator” — one of our two or three finest presidents (along with Lincoln and FDR). He also contributed to the pages of National Review; specifically, he wrote for us on Harry Jaffa in 2001.

In The Rise and Fall of the American Left — a personal favorite of mine — he wrote:

Years ago I showed up at a conference of radical historians. “What are you doing here?” asked an eminent scholar, half in jest. “You are a troublemaker!” The nuns used to say the same thing. I do confess to the sin of poaching. For my position is to the right of the Left and to the left of the Right. Essentially a Niebuhrian position, it is critical of the anticapitalist Left for seeing in the abolition of property an end to oppression and the birth of freedom, and critical of the antigovernment Right for seeing in the elimination of political authority the end of tyranny and the restoration of liberty. If indeed les extemes se touchent, one might say with Byron that both Left and Right “mistook their prey.”

UPDATE: Here’s a WFB column on Diggins.