Requisceat in pace, Joe Stack: your labors are ended
News, Political ·Friday February 19, 2010 @ 18:30 EST (link)
Rest in peace, Joseph Stack. Joe Stack, the man who, on February 18, flew a small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, was so frustrated with the government—our government—that he felt he had to kill himself. He left a six page note telling why he did what he did. He was not crazy, just angry and frustrated as so many of us are. The note tells of how the government so many times oppressed him, twice taking his life savings, jailing him for no crime, remorselessly destroying his life. To ensure people would read those six pages he gave his life. He should be honored. He is a patriotic American.
In a war, the file clerks and munitions factory workers are as valid a target as the front-line soldiers; and in Joe's war, the IRS agents and staff were part of the oppressive machinery of government. They voluntarily became part of a repressive, destructive mechanism to rob the people of this nation. So let me never hear them called "innocent"; they were not.
As someone posted to a conservative/libertarian mailing list at work, said: "I consider it a cautionary tale though. Suffered what he perceived as injustice at the hands of the IRS. … This guy had a lot to lose. When he snapped, he didn't tip over a dumpster in the street and light it on fire. When college commie kids riot, a Starbucks gets burned. Curfews imposed. When responsible adults riot (who tend to be Conservatives), it's something else entirely. If enough of them do it, it's a revolution or an insurrection, and new nations may be born. Whatever you call it, it's a lot closer to actual war, than tipping over cars and burning a dumpster in the street. Not impossible, and not something to be taken lightly. It's how the United States was created." (Emphasis mine.)
Chuck Baldwin wrote an article regretting this man's death. I regret it too; I consider it unspeakably tragic that a man felt he had to kill himself to escape the violent predations of his government. But if he did not die, would we be talking about him?
He gave his life so that we'd read the six pages he wrote; he sacrificed himself, in part, for some time in the media that we would become aware of not only his complaint, but the complaint of millions, a complaint familiar to lovers of liberty across this nation and others. Government takes and takes; government is an unstoppable force of causeless coercion and robbery. It is moral to resist violence with violence; it is self-defense, and this man felt it was time to join the fight with more than (what he considered) ineffectual voting. Did he perhaps bring to mind the words of the Declaration of Independence, "We mutually pledge to each other our lives…" when he died?
So take the time to read his six pages. It's the least you can do to make his sacrifice not in vain.
Books finished: Disabling America, I Am America (And So Can You!), Bitterly Divided.
