The Trouble With Conspiracy Theories

Philosophy teacher Edward Feser has addressed the subject of 9/11 conspiracy theorists before, and now he returns once again to the subject with an essay on the difficulty of massive government conspiracies. Of course the troofers will insist that only a handful of people would have to have been involved, and within minutes return to their narrative that the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, Silverstein Investments, SEC, NYPD, NY Times, Popular Mechanics magazine and others must be in on it.

People who think the U.S. government was complicit in 9/11 or in the JFK assassination sometimes complain that those who dismiss them as “conspiracy theorists” are guilty of inconsistency. For don’t the defenders of the “official story” behind 9/11 themselves believe in a conspiracy, namely one masterminded by Osama bin Laden? Don’t they acknowledge the existence of conspiracies like Watergate, as well as everyday garden variety criminal conspiracies?