After reading some post recently it has come to my attention that a number of the posters on these boards are supporters of the 9/11 conspiracy theory. This kind of perplexed me as I though that most Austrians were more supporters of the inept/inefficient view of government as opposed to the omniscient/malevolent view. While I agree that the government has used events in the past to raise support for its wars (i.e. USS Maine, Gulf of Tonkin) I do not believe that these things were premeditated but merely coincidence. In my mind the terrorist had the motive and the ability to carry out these attacks, and the only difference between these hijackings and ones in the past was the intended outcome. I also do not believe that the government is capable of orchestrating a cover up like this based just on the embarrassments this administration has faced in trying to spy on American citizens and being exposed by whistle blowers. While I dislike the government as much as the next guy, I am inclined to resort to Occam's Razor. I am eager to hear your take on the issue.
Len Budney:I can't speak authoritatively, but libertarians who frequent LRC pretty much all cite blowback first, and incompetence second. A majority seem to accept the "official" version, with a spoonful of salt; a minority on LRC seem to be truthers.
Paul Craig Roberts is one example I've run across of someone who's pretty well know who says that there is something very fishy with the government story. Although I'm not sure whether you could label him a libertarian, he seems to support a number of the principles held by the Austrian school. Do you know what Hoppe has said about this? Being a disciple of Rothbard, I'm wondering if he has ventured into the realm of conspiracies.
Len Budney: If you pinned me down, I'd say that describes me: I accept the official version, with much salt, and believe that blowback motivated the hijackers, and incompetence prevented any effective response before or after the fact.
You might want to check your blood pressure
Following the news last week, I had to wonder about the timing of the Spitzer scandal with his decision to investigate Silverstein and the Carlyle Group...
Do you know what Hoppe has said about this? Being a disciple of Rothbard, I'm wondering if he has ventured into the realm of conspiracies.
I'm afraid not. We need more Hoppe on LRC.
Indeed! I'm using WAY too much salt.
Ya never know. Since all politicians are criminals, it's always surprising when one of them is exposed. They usually cover each-others' butts.
--Len.
If this was all part of a grand conspiracy to invade Iraq the government could have made the terrorists Iraqis, but they did not. This alone should throw your fairy tale out the door.
"The plans differ; the planners are all alike"
-Bastiat
This was not an inside job. Their is no way a new administration could pull htis off without having anybody leak any information at all. It was a consequence of U.S imperialism in the Middle East, but it was not directly planned by the government. I dont have anything against conspiracy theorys, but this is a little too absurd for me.
...And nobody has ever taught you how to live out on the street, But now you're gonna have to get used to it...
Their is no way a new administration could pull htis off without having anybody leak any information at all.
Important point. At least half of government employees are Democrats, for starters. It's also worth bearing in mind that very little of this administrations shenanigans have actually stayed secret. The no-bid contracts with Haliburton, torture at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, attempts to distort a routine naval encounter into a terrorist attack by Iranian speedboats--none of it stayed secret.
The kicker is that those tactics work so well even though anyone with half a brain knows the reality of it.
I don't think the government did it; the conspiracists give too many conflicting "proofs".
Don't allow leftists to play games with definitions! Some of the libertarian-leaning leftists at this forum will try to redefine "left-wing" back to its original defition (Third Estate, limited government, free-markets, laissez-faire reforms, etc.). Fine! We non-leftists can't stop them from using their own personal definitions; they can use whatever labels they want to describe any concept they want.However, they have the audacity to then use their personal definition of "left-wing" (remember, the original definition, which is no longer valid) to prove that modern leftists are more libertarian than modern rightists! They will say that libertarianism is "inherently leftist" (again, using the original, no longer valid definition), and use that to insist that we should prefer and side with modern leftists over modern rightists.
Question their motives.
Ego: Why does it matter?
Why does it matter?
Because it distracts good libertarians from doing something useful, and contributes to the marginalization of us all.
Len Budney: Ego: Why does it matter? Because it distracts good libertarians from doing something useful, and contributes to the marginalization of us all. --Len.
What I don't get it is how conspiracists believed that the USA staged such an attack, and yet was unable to persuade most of the world to help them out in their crusade to Iraq. They could have just planted WMD in Iraq or something to get the support of the UN. Their deck of evidences was very superficial, it was even mocked on TV here. In fact, why would they go to all the trouble of creating a simulated attack, when it would be much easier to make people angry about Iraq -- especially when you consider that Saddam was a killer and badly regarded. They could just have exploded a chemical bomb in some village there; people would have supported a humanitarian war.
Equality before the law and material equality are not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time. -- F. A. Hayek in The Constitution of Liberty
The conspiracists, the serious ones at least, do not give "proofs". They question the official account.
These two articles should give everyone pause.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/opinion/02kean.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/08/04/national/w124141D43.DTL&type=printable
There are a lot of silly accusations out there. The 911 experts seem to put forward the best presentation for a new independent investigation into the numerous loose ends and inconsistencies.
I would make a great bureaucrat. Wanna see? Click here. It's fun.
pazlenchantinrocks:I am one of "those" guys. That is I think that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition. I base much of my thoughts on the matter on the work of Dr. Steven E. Jones. I find that he makes a very strong case for explosives being planted in WTC 1, 2, and 7. I would most certainly be open to reading more attempted refutations of his work. I would change my postition on the matter if such a refutation successfully refuted his thesis and presented a plausable explanation as to why the towers fell without explosives.
I am no expert, nor have I even done anyresearch on the use of explosive on WTC 1,2 etc. But I will tell you this. I slept in on the morning of September 11, 2001, and was going to skip my classes when I walked into my living room and my roomate told me that on the news they were talking about someone just haveing flown a plane into one of the WTC Towers. So we sat there for the rest of the day, unmoving and watched every second as the entire event unfolded. The point of my story is this, we hapened to have TiVo which was fairly new at the time. And as soon as the first tower colapsed we watched exactly what happened over, and over in Slo-Mo and we did the same when the second tower fell. And I can tell you for a fact that the buildings did NOT come down like most buildings that are imloded and fall in on themselves. In both buildings the sections above the area where the planes hit looked like they came down onto the floor below them, which fell down to the next floor, etc. until the buidings had entirely colapsed. So unless the explosives had been placed just below the area where each plane was supposed to impact, and somehow managed to not be detonated by the impact or the extreme heat of the burning jet fuel, and the pilots were able to pinpoint their impacts with perfect precision then I would say that any explosive theory is just "kooky" conspiracy. My guess is that the thousands gallons of jet fuel burned long enough to weaken the few sections of the building that were remaining after the jets impacted the building, and that when the floors finally colapsed the weight and momentum from them falling caused a chain reaction that each floor was too weak to withstand as they came down on each other and there must have been an additive effect as the weight of each floor added to the stack as they came down. Anyway, usually I wouldn't even post on something like this because I think it could make the entire network look bad just to be discussion conspiracy theories.