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Yes, indeed, Schliemann was one who digged in dirt, but I rather tried to do a metaphor on "searching for facts", rather than archeology.
Well, perhaps my statement is biased here, because I have to conclude from my circle of friends (here in europe, those are either conservatives or leftists (Liberals is still in the hands of free-market advocates!)) that leftists have travelled the countries they talk about (India, South-America and so forth). They actually spent time in the poor quarters, while my conservative friends based their rhetoric on general hypothesis, backed by statistics (mostly without reference).
In Europe, the left is more inclined to give references to their statements, rather than just recount some statistic that might or might not be right.
Perhaps, this is a unique problem of the European Right (and Center)?
Seems to me that liberals are just as much "in their safe homes" and "in the ivory tower" as conservatives and libertarians -- in the latter case far more so.
(As to Germans being afraid to dig in the dirt, remember that the father of archeology, the ur-dirt-digger, Heinrich Schliemann, was a German!)
He is wrong on empiricism, but he has touched another topic close to it: reality check, by real life observation.
This is something I tend to miss from conservatives and libertarians alike. To preach from the high of your ivory tower, here in the US, is very easy. While many liberal friends of mine are travelling the world to actually observe the facts in the respective countries, I also observe that the conservatives preach from their safe homes. Perhaps the individual accounts and impressions they get during their visits, may be misleading, because they are not empiric, but rather singular.
They are nonetheless an important facet to observe and counter-check the "facts" you got from different sources.
I'm not saying that this invalidates the observation libertarians or conservatives do by checking the facts, but it seems that they are rather reluctant to observe the situation by themselves.
I might be from a different planet, but this kind of arrogance is common to German Historians, who really don't want to go and dig in the dirt (as one could say ;) ).