Ockham's Razor

"The explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory"

or, more simply:

"All things being equal, the simplest solution tends to be the right one"

September 11 conspiracy theorists, or quacks, as I like to call them, would have us believe that the United States government spent millions of dollars of taxpayer money to create a very elaborate day of terror, in order to justify the war on the Taliban and subsequent war with Iraq. The logistic immensity of a plot like this is hard to fathom. The number of people who would have been involved would have been huge. Yet not one has come forward and nothing has leaked out that proves this "theory".

For some reason, the quacks think that the intricate planning of a government gone horribly awry is a more viable explanation of the events of that day than one involving 19 hijackers simply boarding planes and flying them into buildings.

What's wrong with this picture? What has happened to us as a society that we are so horribly cynical about what our leaders are capable of? Are we that spoiled with riches that we can indulge ourselves with the belief that heads of free states are capable of atrocities like this? Come ON folks! We need to get a collective GRIP on ourselves here. We aren't college students sitting in a dorm room smoking pot, spouting the shit that comes from the delusions of grandeur filling our heads about how the prior generation is fucked, knows nothing, is ruining the world but we'll do so much better. We sit safely in our living rooms at night without a legitimate concern that our house will be blown up while we sleep. We go to the corner market to buy readily available food that will be thrown in the trash when we realize that we cooked too much. We can write blogs like this one without fear of recrimination or persecution. We have luxury and freedom in abundance and we take that for granted each and every day. And maybe that's our problem. What's the saying? Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach a man to fish and he'll eat for a lifetime? We've been handed the fish of liberty and don't respect it because we haven't worked for it. We didn't reel it in. So now, just because President Bush calls APEC, OPEC, confuses nucular and nuclear and has unpopular views on abortion and gay marriage, some feel justified in accusing him of being the worst terrorist alive. We should be ashamed.

The government didn't plan what happened 6 years ago today. Osama did. Ockham was right, it really is that simple. Everyone who believes otherwise needs The Beats!