“Factual truth is the bedrock of a free politics. Difference of interpretation and opinion is its process. That the factual sometimes fades into the interpretative does not mitigate against the requirement that an interpretative scheme or doctrine cannot substitute for politics. That the interpretative sometimes seems to the convinced to be the factual does not mitigate against the requirement that for people to meet and interact in a free public, they must share a sense of a factual world. That fact and interpretation get mixed up is very much a part of the messiness of politics, a messiness that is confronted in concrete interactive situations.”

Jeffrey Goldfarb, 2006. The Politics of Small Things: The Power of the Powerless in Dark Times, University of Chicago Press.