Longtime dkos blogger Tocquedeville was recently banned from the dKos site by none other than Markos himself. Tocque's offending blog included a line suggesting that it would be considered legitimate to pursue evidence that the Bush administration was somehow involved in the 911 event.
The implication of the ban is not that Tocque supported the theory that Bush was involved in 911, but that it is improper to investigate it at all. While Markos may ban conspiracy theorists as a means of reducing the bandwidth---these guys often require booklength posts to prove their points---it seems strange that the ban was the result of an opinion defining the inquiry itself as legit. But inquiries can return negative conclusions, and my reading of the offending post tacitly leaves open that possibility.
There are many so-called "third rails" in journalism, science, medicine and politics. All involved vested interests, and most are rarely pursued without risking one's credentials. In anthropology it was a given that populations visited the North American continent via the Bering Straits ice bridge around 12-13,000 years ago. Then evidence found in southern Chile suggested mankind had been in this hemisphere for a far longer period of time. Regardless, the researchers with the new theory were viciously attacked by the old guard...until the evidence for an older migration became overwhelming.
The same process happened with the scientist who first suggested that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacteria--helicobacter pylori. At stake: millions upon millions vested in ulcer research and pharmaceuticals. Only after the scientist infected--and cured--himself did the tide begin to turn in favor of his theory. Even so, the pushback against the h.pylori view lasted nearly ten years.
In politics, many things that were considered heresy in the 1960s are now considered, well, good history: JFK's considerable health problems, Stalin's knowledge of English, FDR's affairs, etc. As any child watching cable television knows, History--and particularly Political History--- is revisionist by nature.
Few would argue that information is bad, cheerfully accepting the "latest information" about the subject at hand. But many tend to forget that any new view is subject to attack by those who have a vested interest---and probably decades of dedication---in some earlier view.
It would seem at first glance that Tocque's banning was associated with the diarist's tacit legitimization of the theory that Bush was somehow aware of the attack prior to the event. But that is not what Tocque wrote. Instead, he argued for the investigation into what would effectively be the unanswered questions associated with the 911 event.
Assume for a moment that Tocque's argument involved something else--say, an endorsement of an investigation into Cheney's knowledge of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. And that it had been published two years ago. Would it rise to the level of Conspiracy Theory? Likely ("they knew!"). Would it have been banned, using today's criteria?
Maybe. And the reasons would have been the same: pursueing such a course of inquiry is improper.
But now we know that Cheney not only endorsed waterboarding, but wanted to use it on a P.O.W. to extract an admission of link between Al Quieda and Saddam.
Strong stuff. . .and impossible without those with courage to ask questions no one else will ask. Remarkably, Tocquedeville's banning wasn't because he asked the questions himself, but because he considered them worthy of consideration.
In science--and most everything else---nothing should be assumed until the final answer is in. At worst, Tocque asks us to consider 911 like would would any isolated event---without preconceptions, and worthy of inquiry. There are questions about that event that have been answered, and others that have not. Unfortunately, many of these unanswered questions are the result of no one having the courage to ask the right questions.
As Abraham Kaplan in his book The Conduct of Inquiry notes, "if we don't know something, we don't know it." Tocque suggests there should be no preconditions attached to the right to ask the question.