There’s no need to idealize the people we admire. Jefferson was a slave-owner, but I still place great value on his life and ideas. It’s not an apology for the slave-holding at all – it’s just that I’m not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater and I’m also not going to pretend the slave-holding didn’t happen. Mises said that fascism would have an eternal place in history for saving European civilization. It is what it is – he made a mistake, but people don’t just throw him out for it. He was focused on the threat of Communism and was therefore a little too casual about the threat of fascism. And Keynes has his eugenics. History is nasty sometimes, but it is what it is. And it’s also important to note – despite Mises’s dumb statements initially, he clearly wasn’t a fascist himself. Keynes, in the same way, wasn’t on some fascist mission of racial purity. He just got interested in a very despicable movement that seemed (at the time) to have good motives. It’s not admirable, but what am I supposed to do? Throw out all the Jefferson, Mises, and Keynes? That isn’t an option for me.

I would never do libertarians the disservice of pretending that Greenspan is of their ranks. There doesn’t seem to be any point to making that case.