Peter J Boettke wrote:  
>    
> The sort of interpretation of the Road to Serfdom and of Hayek that has been offered is
extremely strange. The ridiculous claims that have been made about Hayek (from Reder's
claims to more recent claims about authoritarianism) seem to be tolerated by historians of
thought in a way that NO OTHER historical character in economics would be subjected to on
such "thin" grounds of evidence.  We have far more damaging evidence on Keynes, for
example, than we do of Hayek yet we do not resort to those sort of guilt by association
claims. Yet when defenders of Hayek perk up, they are often dismissed as ideological
crazies.
>  
> Perhaps the notion of the hermeneutics of suspicion should be turned back on all these
"readings".  But if we did that, what would happen to mutual understanding and "truth
tracking"?
>  
>     
  
  
Pete Boettke, as often happens, introduces something very useful to the   
discussion. The question of different sociology/rhetoric/cognitive   
styles of particular interpretative communities, and "anti-communities",   
is often treated as a matter of "who is right" or "I seek truth, they   
are ideologues". In fact, the issues are much more complex, going to in   
some cases different socialization processes, different intellectual   
projects, and different histories. Interesting questions, hardly ever   
addressed in historical reconstructions of issues like Keynes versus   
Hayek, planning versus markets, monetarism versus Keynesianism, would   
concern differences more complex than right versus wrong theories. "I   
believe X because it is true" is hardly explanatory of anything.  
  
E. Roy Weintraub