www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer144.html
I have lost my sense of humor to indulge those who reflexively deny the role of conspiracies in human affairs. In the months following 9/11 – and most strenuously in the days leading up to the fifth anniversary of this event – conventional thinking has dictated that commentaries on that atrocity carry the disclaimer “I am not suggesting a conspiracy.” It seems to be understood that entrance to the temples of respectable journalism, academic scholarship, or polite society would be denied anyone who transgressed this canon.
It is not that a speaker must refrain from expressing any particular conspiracy theory to explain troublesome occurrences: one must avoid the implication that any form of human behavior might be directed or influenced by conspiratorial forces. To even consider the possibility that a given event might have been produced by a conspiracy, is to run the risk of being labeled a “paranoid” or a “wacko.” As we have no desire to appear foolish in the eyes of others, we give in to such intimidation and preface
our opinions with the aforesaid mantra.
How easily most of us sell out our intellectual integrity, and at distress-sale prices. Even men and women with excellent minds who should know better have collapsed in the face of such a charge. Do we have such a fear of our own minds that we can no longer stand up to the epistemological inquiry that is at the base of our character and intelligence: how do we know what we know? Upon what basis do we form our opinions about the world: the consensus of our neighbors, or our independent judgments?
Any intellectually respectable opinion must be well-grounded in empirical fact and rational analysis. I have no use for those who spin conspiratorial theories out of little more than fantasy, wishful thinking, or the failure to distinguish a temporal relationship from a causal one. The assumption that because event “X” occurred, and was followed by event “Y,” a causal connection has been established, is among the shabbiest forms of reasoning. One might just as well argue for the proposition that wet sidewalks cause rain. In fact, I have no use for conspiracy theories at all, preferring – as my late friend, Chris Tame, so well stated it – to focus attention on the facts of conspiracies! As annoying as those are who offer lazy, simple-minded explanations for complex events, I am far more aggravated by those otherwise intelligent souls who help to man the barricades of ignorance against honest and empirically-based inquiries into topics they have been told are beyond rightful questioning...
... What forces were responsible for the crimes of 9/11? Admittedly, I do not know, nor am I prepared to transform my skepticisms into accusations. Perhaps it is the lawyer in me that has this strange attraction to evidence as the basis for my empirical judgments. In employing the “cui bono?” test as a point of departure, I find only two groups which, in Inspector Morse’s question, seem to have benefited from these attacks: (1) Al Qaeda, and (2) the United States government. Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden have become a major political force in the world, in large part due to the Bush administration’s violent reaction to 9/11. But the American government – with its expanded police and military powers, increased military spending and the creation of new weapons, and the popular acceptance of the idea that people can be held, indefinitely, without trial – has benefited from this event by greatly expanding its powers. 9/11 was the product of a conspiracy, the only question being: who were the conspirators?
... But there is another factor – what I call “existential courage” – that must remain at the forefront of our efforts to live as human beings, rather than as servo-mechanisms to the institutional order. What kind of people are we that we should lay our liberties, property, and lives – including the lives of our children – at the feet of rulers, to be disposed of in any manner that suits their momentary temperaments? What have we become that we regard any questioning of this arrangement as the products of “irresponsible” or “paranoid” minds? Why should free and energized minds be fearful of asking any questions, particularly those we have been told it is improper to ask?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5pXSWcULbI&eurl=
