Joseph Stack Wasn’t a “Tea Bagger”…

…He was an angry, sui­ci­dal maniac.  Noth­ing more.  And for the record, I do believe what he did an act of domes­tic terrorism.

The fringe left, demon­strated on sites like Daily Kos (read the arti­cle and com­ments!) and the Huff­in­g­ton Post, would have you believe that since Joseph Andrew Stack III — the soft­ware engi­neer from Austin, Texas, who flew his pri­vate plane into an IRS office build­ing yes­ter­day — ranted against the tax code and the gov­ern­ment, he was a “tea bag­ger”.  This is disin­gen­u­ous and libelous.  (Michelle Malkin also has a “nice” list of the “kind” words from our lefty friends.)

First, you must under­stand their ter­mi­nol­ogy.  “Tea Bag­ger” refers to one who espouses the “Tea Party Move­ment”, and is meant to be deroga­tory and con­de­scend­ing.  The term was ascribed to those by none other than David Shus­ter on MSNBC.  It also has a rather hideous sex­ual con­no­ta­tion, which I will not repeat here.  (Go here if you want to read about it.)

The pas­sage they want to point to is from Stack’s sui­cide note that he posted on his website:

Return to the early ‘80s, and here I was off to a ter­ri­fy­ing start as a ‘wet-behind-the-ears’ con­tract soft­ware engi­neer… and two years later, thanks to the fine back­room, mid­night effort by the sleazy exec­u­tives of Arthur Ander­sen (the very same folks who later brought us Enron and other such calami­ties) and an equally sleazy New York Sen­a­tor (Patrick Moyni­han), we saw the pas­sage of 1986 tax reform act with its sec­tion 1706.

Ear­lier in his let­ter, he admit­ted that he engaged in an exer­cise to prac­tice “what the big boys were doing”:  i.e., cheat­ing on their taxes.  He said in his note, “The intent of this exer­cise and our efforts was to bring about a much-needed re-evaluation of the laws that allow the mon­sters of orga­nized reli­gion to make such a mock­ery of peo­ple who earn an hon­est liv­ing”.  Appar­ently it didn’t work, because in a cou­ple of sen­tences down he says, “That lit­tle les­son in patri­o­tism cost me $40,000+, 10 years of my life, and set my retire­ment plans back to 0″.

Stack railed against pretty much every­one in his let­ter, against those he per­ceived were “cheat­ing” him.  The list includes, but not lim­ited to, the fed­eral gov­ern­ment, George W. Bush, the Catholic church, and even his wife.  Busi­ness after busi­ness he started, failed, and he kept mov­ing around the coun­try until he set­tled in Austin.

No, Joe Stack wasn’t a mem­ber of the Tea Party move­ment.  He was just an angry, lit­tle old man who failed at try­ing to cheat the sys­tem.  And in that real­iza­tion, he took a cow­ardly way out by try­ing to kill those who he per­ceived wronged him.  No one wronged Joe Stack but himself.

And for those on the Daily Kos and the Huff­in­g­ton Post, take a look in the mir­ror.  Some of the things Stack said in his let­ter are exactly what some of your mem­bers believe.  Be care­ful when you try to pigeon-hole some­one — it may come back to bite you.

(To read Joe Stack’s screed, go here.)

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