Joe Stack's Act of Desperation

Now that the man is dead by his own hand, and a bystander also, the MSM, blogs and pundits are by-and-large spinning the desperate actions of a desperate man in order to further their particular agendas. According to some, he was a delusional tea-partier, and according to others, a dangerous maniac. I don't believe he was either.

When I heard Glenn Beck using quotes from Stack's suicide note, inferring that all political ideas are either right or left, I though about another desperate act back in 1938, when Herschel Grynszpan assassinated the National Socialist official, Ernst von Rath. Grynszpan's act of desperation was precipitated by the deportation of his parents, Polish-Jewish nationals, by the National Socialist government. There are many differences between the two incidents, but the sense of desperation that emanated from each man's story was the same. Both had seen their lives made into a living hell by the actions of tyrannical bureaucrats.

The IRS operates as a kind of revenue Gestapo, using police powers they technically do not have to raid homes and businesses, seize property, and destroy lives of citizens, who are assumed to be guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent. Instead of trial by jury with an impartial judge, citizens are held accountable to a tax-code that even government experts admit is incomprehensible and contradictory. They must answer to the IRS in office procedures called audits, and are judged by their accusers--agents and accountants--working for the IRS. (My former mother-in-law once told me that "there is nothing quite like an audit to make you hate your government").
The IRS creates impossible situations for ordinary citizens every day of the year and at the same time ignores the tax evasion of Executive Department "czars" and Congress-critters. We find ourselves once again, just as in the National Socialist regime, with a government of men and not law. The injustice of it should be enough to make the blood of every American citizen boil.

Like hundreds of thousands of Americans, Joe Stack was caught in the impossible catch-22 that is the United States Tax Code. Like millions of us, he recognized the injustice of it. And tragically, horribly, he thought there was no way out but to end his life and destroy the life of a bystander.
Although I do not condone such violence, I can imagine the sense of desparation that created these circumstances for this ordinary citizen. His suicide manifesto is not the writing of an insane person. Rather it tells the story of careless, faceless bureaucrats who stole the livelihoods of skilled technical contractors via the stroke of a legislative pen.

And that should be sobering to all of us, who are also bystanders--no more innocent than anyone who works for the IRS--to the pain of our fellow citizens who have been robbed of work, home and family by a rogue government agency operating outside the framework of the United States Constitution. The founding generation understood that taxation without representation--taxation to pay for the wars and frivoloties of a privileged class--was theft. In the Declaration of Independence the listing of the Crimes of the King includes their experience of the domestic terror visited upon them when they refused to cooperate in the theft of their livelihoods.

Many of the bloggers and pundits of the MSM will undoubted spin for us the tale of Joe Stack, the anti-government, homegrown terrorist. But the IRS that is committing acts of terror against American citizens every day of the year. It is no accident that the letters I.R.S. are the most feared three letters in the Amercian vocabulary.

As bystanders, we are not and cannot be innocent. Rather, we must acknowlege the terror perpetrated against us by our own government. And we must choose how we will respond. If we do not choose, we bear the responsibility of knowing that evil was being perpetrated against our countrymen and we did nothing to stop it.

What must we do? We have no right to initiate force against anyone. But we do have the the right to respond to force initiated against our persons and our property by disciplined and peaceful means. It is our responsibility to loudly and consistently withdraw our sanction from a government that violates our rights on a daily basis. There are many ways to begin to do so. One is by reading the Articles of Freedom and signing the pledge to stand with a goodly number of Americans in support of our natural right to life, liberty and property.
On April 15, Tea Parties around the country will be sponsoring rallies outside local IRS offices. We need to be there to let our government and its odious agencies know that we recognize their illegal acts against us and our fellow citizens. Also on April 15, many of us will participate in a National Strike during which we: Don't Buy. Don't Comply. Ask why.

We must not let our liberty be taken from us while we stand idly by and watch our neighbors bleed.