I always knew that something like this would happen, sooner or later, justified by sentiments like this, which are not that different my own. Basically the guy drove his airplane into a tax office, causing his own death in a fireball, and much other damage besides.
This event may mean angst for libertarians like me. So, Mr Libertarian, Do you believe that such acts of violence are justified? Question mark, question mark. And we will prevaricate, like moderate Muslims being challenged to explain Muslim-inspired terrorism. I will, anyway, if asked. No, but. Or perhaps in some cases: yes, but. Personally, I don’t see how you can have tax gathering on the scale that prevails nowadays, and for purposes that prevail nowadays, without violent responses of this sort. Frivolous and somewhat incongruous thought, of the sort that pops into the head at such times: will gadgets like this hexakopter make such attacks easier?
I remember how President Clinton’s political fortunes took a turn for the better following that bomb attack by Timothy McVeigh. He went from looking like a probable one-termer to a two-termer, pretty much from that moment on, because it perfectly illustrated what loons his supporters thought his opponents were. Will something similar now happen for Obama? His supporters will surely have no problem explaining what they think about this, which is all part of the case against such attacks. How will the Tea Party movement be affected?
Further thought, the body count, including the man himself, seems to be low. Maybe, logically, that ought to make little difference, but low body counts are much sooner forgotten. Another thought: the pictures of this are dramatic. Not so soon fogotten, perhaps.
Obsessed as I now am with Climategate, I first learned about this drama here.
I personally think it’s only a matter of time before someone does something similar with an EU institution – whether it be a generally pissed off Brit, a truculent French farmer or some Greek geezer who’s lost his shirt it will happen.
This time the nutball was a major Bush hater. Hard to sell him as a Rush Limbaugh dittohead type.
Also there is the nearly simultaneous Amy Bishop case, a pure Obama worshipper who killed three out of pure academic frustration.
It comes down to what you judge to be an effective blow against the Machine.
I lean towards civil disobedience. Also, suicide precludes a life of subversion.
De-legitimation is how the State will be brought low.
The independent describes the guy as a software engineer. He is quite correct in pointing out that the US (and the UK) government has run a virtual vendetta against software engineers, actively encouraging foreign competitors to take their jobs.
Yes. And long overdue. I will drink a toast to his shade over dinner tonight.
Tom Paine, it is hard to explain moral judgement to a man so morally obtuse that he would toast a murderer rather than sympathise with his victims. Let me give you an illustration, though. If you approve of this man flying his plane into an office building, then set fire to your house with your wife and daughter inside. That’s what the man you celebrate did.
I suppose a conspiracy theorist would note how advantageous it is for a standing Govt. to justify attacks on certain sectors/groups if they are seen to fly a plane into a building.
I’m now waiting for the following headlines:
“Banker who respected law of contract flies plane into building”
“Global warming Denier flies plane into building – an unidentifiable witness says the pilot was flying a swastika out the window and had a beard just like that bin laden bloke.”
“Recent bout of planes flying into Buildings thought to be a conspiracy led by Isreili Mossad operatives (who are Jews), says impartial left wing commentator.”
I find it impossible to support someone attacking a building that contains some people who play an essentially insignificant role in supporting the system he despises, at the cost of a random collection of lives ended or harmed. If you think the system needs to be fought through violence (I don’t), then go find someone who is important in that system, and avoid people who have nothing to do with it.
I approve of a man flying his plane into a tax office. It would be nice if buildings housing them started to find it hard to attract private sector occupants for fear of ending up collateral damage. Anyone who works directly in the system that supports that theft will get no sympathy from me.
That more of the predators were not killed is my only regret. But it seems you are incapable of understanding that wanting to see people who steal from me come to harm is not the same as wishing to burn my own house down.
It’s an appalling thing and to add insults to injury it will almost certainly have the 535 morons falling over themselves to put restrictions on General Aviation.
So curse the bloody bastard to hell.
People doing humdrum jobs in the tax department are implicated in massive theft, and I do consider them morally contemptible for doing that particular job, which they choose to do voluntarily. Do I think they deserve to die for it. No.
(Of course, I have just given an exact instance of the “No, but…” that Brian describes).
I give my sympathy to this poor man who must have been driven near insane by state bureaucrats. I still wouldn’t advocate flying planes into tax offices, but I’m shocked to admit that such an act is something I can no longer condemn.
It’s no good throwing up your hands in horror at his actions if you seriously wish to roll back the nanny state and its increasingly fascistic operatives. If there was a democratic route to smaller government, lower tax, and personal freedom, then I would condemn the use of violence, but it is clear that viable alternatives to statism are decreasingly on offer anywhere in the West today.
Will the Tea parties make a breakthrough? Will UKIP or LPUK form a government any time soon? Doubtful.
Even in the rare cases when voting clearly indicates a desire to reduce the influence of Big Brother, such as the introduction of the EU treaty, we are told to vote again to come up with the correct answer (Ireland), or denied a vote if opinion polls suggest it might go the wrong way (UK).
Parliament cannot save us, it is now corrupt and powerless, and the media, with a few notable exceptions, is simply the propaganda arm of the state.
It’s approaching the time when libertarians and lovers of freedom will have to put up or shut up. If we haven’t got the courage to fight the growing oppression, then we deserve the servitude that awaits us all in the future.
which are not that different my own
Really? You’re that upset about the USA not having NHS-style healthcare?
People who would have had nothing to do with the revenue service etc could have been killed etc. As Dale said, this will achieve nothing apart from add further layers of lunacy to our airport security.
I would not be surprised if this is used by the Obamamaniacs to smear the Tea Party movement, BTW.
I have to admit that before reading the links provided by Brian my sentiments were similar to those expressed by Dale and Jonathan, but now, I am not so sure, especially after reading this (Link)and this(Link). I still cannot justify what he did, but, as Brain said, ‘but…’
I would not be surprised if this is used by the Obamamaniacs to smear the Tea Party movement, BTW.
It took about 12 minutes before the Daily KOS was accusing this person of being a Tea Bagger:
“Teabagger terrorist attack on IRS building.”
Ditto for Huffington Post.
Even if you are of the opinion that taxation is evil(for the record, I don’t – I merely think it’s frighteningly excessive), I think you sort of have to borrow from just war theory on this one. Don’t fight unless you’ve got a shot at winning, because if you don’t then you’re condemning people to death for no good reason. Doubly so in a case like this, where you’re doing your cause more harm than the cause you oppose.
Personally, that’s not my opinion in this case – my opinion is that he’s on the same moral plane as Mohammed Atta, but without the smarts. If we start encouraging the murder of people we disagree with, civil society will consume itself in an orgy of bloodshed. It’ll be the Thirty Years’ War, but with a dozen questions dividing us violently instead of one. The rule of law, an ordered society that protects people from the horrors of a state of nature, is more important to me than the correct resolution of just about any imaginable political question – just about the only one that could take precedence is mass murder. The IRS is a terrible institution that needs a serious working-over, but it needs pink slips, not a Cessna to the facade.
Clinton certainly used scare tactics about the militia movement to tar his critics, but he had the media on his side and there wasn’t, in those days, any alternative source of news. I doubt the tactic would work that well today.
As far as the ‘violence’ question goes, maybe we should ask back: “Do you believe that there are no circumstances when violence is justified against an oppressive government?” and let the other side hem and haw.
In this particular case, though, I have to regard Stack’s action as being too trivial to be a response to any circumstance that would justify violence. Not a revolutionary act, just a tantrum.
I don’t think this is over-difficult. True, I object to the State’s behaving in ways which tend to drive people to madness and evil. Sometimes that madness and evil will reflect upon the State and those nearest it, rather than striking purely at random. The former is better than the latter – in the same sense that it is better for rabies to strike a dog-fight arranger, than a random kid playing in the park.
Yet madness and evil remain as rabid as they always were. The worst sin in the entire political calendar is to forget this when the target is a hated or a ‘guilty’ one.
Do I understand how tax officials could drive a guy to murder? Sure. Murder is a crime I usually can understand, at that. But understanding real serious crimes generally makes me think worse of the criminals, not better. So here.
I feel about this pretty well the way I’d feel about a guy who was ruined in the recent bubble, and then crashed a plane into the bank he blamed for it.
The very worst elements in the State will be the gainers from this, and we will be the losers. But what even of that?
Hell, no! Self-defence or the defence of one’s neighbours have my good wishes and blessing. Stinking suicide bombers can take my curse and any harder objects I can throw at them, for they are in oversupply already – and they belong, at bottom, to the enemy.
In the Farmstead of the Followers of Deornoth recently, the employees of the council demonstrated against a proposed council tax freeze, as this would mean a pay freeze and redundancies. For some reason, no increase in taxation results in spending cuts.
It seems likely that this demonstration will result in the tax freeze being cancelled and tax rises directed solely at increasing the pay of council employees.
There is, of course, nothing resembling a democratic mandate for these further exactions, and even if there were, such a vote would be compromised because the beneficiaries would be allowed to vote in it. Since public-sector parasites form a plurality in these parts, there is only ever going to be one result.
I would like to know…at what point does violent resistance to this plunder become justified?
For some reason, the Death Star discussion from “Clerks” comes to mind.
(Random link)
http://www.whysanity.net/monos/clerks5.html
“So, Mr Libertarian, Do you believe that such acts of violence are justified?”
Brian I always enjoy your posts. You seem a well informed fellow. So, sorry, but this question is complete crap.
The TexTax Bomber left a screed behind clearly explaining what he was, and he was NOT a libertarian.
He was a self-indulgent, pig-headed, whining pitiful excuse for a man.
He screwed up businesses in a field in high demand. He was incompetent.
He didn’t file a tax return. Even a teenager knows you have to file. Self-generated problem.
This putz screwed up everything he touched and then blamed everyone and anyone but the real culprit – himself.
His screed blames the usual imaginary Lefty scapegoats, Bush and cronies, lying GM executives, the Catholic church, blah, blah, blah.
He removed himself from the gene pool. Good riddance. The tragedy is the innocent worker killed, destruction of a perfectly good aircraft, and messing up a building.
Oh, yes. He disturbed my coffee, that shit. I was about 200 yards away across Highway 183 when he hit.
Yes, he was a moonbat. But frankly I do not care if he crashed into the IRS office because he wanted to perverse the purity of his essential bodily fluids from space aliens. He smashed a tax office. Finally in his miserable life he did something praiseworthy.
CFM: Yes, but it was a tax office. The question will be asked, no matter what the actual guy’s actual opinions were.
Dace: So murder is praiseworthy now if the guy who gets killed does a job you dislike? I’m sure sports referees, advertisers, repossessors, porn stars, pop musicians, abortionists, and the clergy will all sleep soundly tonight.
It seems to me the state has initiated violence (or more accurately the threat of violence which seems to me to be pretty much the same thing) and the guy has acted in self-defence. OK, so it’s a bit disjointed – there isn’t a live encounter going on – but when it comes to an institution as large and omni-present as the state I think you are allowed to respond in any way you choose.
So, morally, I can’t find a problem.
Tactically, it’s a completely different issue. I can’t speak for Texas but in the UK I’d say DON’T. There just aren’t enough libertarians and the state will simply use it as an excuse to embark on yet more violence. And, anyway, if it’s a non-violent future we’re looking forward to perhaps we should bring it about non-violently. I look forward to the day when McDonald’s refuses to serve state employees.
When they stop you leaving. When they stop you talking about their plunder. When they have lost so much authority with your neighbours that they must use tyranny in order not to be pulled down, rather than your needing to use tyranny in order to pull them down and get away with it afterwards.
There is a great plenty of ways to fight vampires, and succumbing to lycanthropy is far from the best of them.
Now that’s what I call going out in style. But wasn’t the building supposed to collapse into it’s own footprint?
I don’t think his motive was murder–only one person died. Was it outside of office hours? The one person killed was a manager, who stays until the work is done; the clock-punchers were gone.
Moral of the story: if you work for the government, don’t work late.
I am glad he didn’t target St Mary Cathedral in Austin, a beautiful 19th century building, right downtown, that would have been a full target on Ash Wednesday during services. The irony! Ashes to ashes this, bitches!!!
His wife and child left the night before out of fear, and saved themselves–good for them.
He was smart to go all the way with his protest attack.
Last week, a disgruntled student threatened the financial aid office at another community college in my system, over a financial aid dispute.
The police were called, she was charged with terroristic threatening, and put in jail. Bail is $5,000–probably costing more than the disputed amount in financial aid, plus a criminal record to boot.
Go big or don’t go at all.
the bleeding edge of any revolution looks like a disjointed mess of individual actions intended to engage the remainder of the populace.
i would suggest that most popular revolutions could be defined as self defence actions by a populace against it’s governments and associates (typically heavily monied and rooted in a status quo profiteering on the backs of that populace).
if the current system can be shown to be responsible, but uncaring, of a large number of preventable deaths due to profiteering motives rather than a lack of ability on the part of the populace then expect it to stress to the breaking point and be perceived as self defence to lower long term body counts by transitioning to new leadership with any and all available means.
the current examples of leadership include a ammoral disambiguation from humanism to pure materialism. if the populace is intended to be kept in check by moral responsibility, then leadership needs to at least pretend it gives a shit. at this point there is no such pretending.
Leaving aside the efficacy of the action (which, if the intent was precipitating the downfall the US government, was totally non-existent, as it played directly into the hands of the power-mad statists), I would like to return to the matter of the morality of the action. I’m in the camp of those who decry it.
This whole matter goes to the issue of the definition of “terrorism.” In my opinion, “terrorism” is the intentional infliction of harm on civilian non-combatants for political ends, and is always and irredeemably wrong.* In contrast, attacks on military targets, or on their political masters, are appropriate and morally defensible actions of insurgents, revolutionaries and freedom fighters of all stripes. Collateral damage, in the form of civilian casualties and property damage, while unfortunate, may sometimes be inevitable, but as long as such was not the primary objective of the attack, and reasonable efforts were made to avoid/minimize it, its existence does not turn an otherwise appropriate insurgent action into “terrorism”.
The distinction is crucial.
Turning now to the Austin lunatic, in my opinion his action was immoral. The building he attacked, although it did house a small IRS office (and, apparently, a few other government offices as well), was primarily a garden-variety commercial office building. Most of the inhabitants were not IRS agents, or even government employees at all, but simple “civilian noncombatants”. The building itself was not owned by the government, but by private investors. Attacking it was wrong. Conversely, a similar attack on the IRS’s headquarters in DC would not have been.
* Those who claim that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” are abject fools.
“America is at that awkward stage. It’s too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.”
– Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do ‘Til the Revolution
I condemn this attack, and I don’t sympathise with it. But, that’s not what interests me about this.
As other have mentioned, this man was a socialist, a moonbat. His suicide note mentions that. What I think is most interesting here is the response of the folks here combined with the response of Socialists.
Socialists and Social Democrats are not getting Socialism. Supporters of Capitalism aren’t getting free-market capitalism. We’re all getting Crony Capitalism.
I think that from the point of view of terrorism the current reign of Crony Capitalism will generate the most resentment and the most terrorism. To us supporters of free-markets the current situation is evil and destructive. Perhaps a very small number of us will be tempted to take violent steps. The current situation is also evil and destructive from the Socialist point of view.
But, surely true Capitalism would be looked at the same way from the Socialist viewpoint? I don’t think so. I think Socialists if they think about it honestly see free-market Capitalism as quite fair, it is jealousy that drives them towards Socialism.
So, our particular form of Crony capitalism is likely to generate a lot of resentment within Socialist circles. Because, it is morally wrong and socially destructive from a consistent Socialist perspective, and from a consistent free-market perspective. And, to top it all, it feels morally wrong from an intuitive perspective.
“I think Socialists if they think about it honestly see free-market Capitalism as quite fair…”
Current: I’m slightly curious to know from whence have you gotten hold of that impression..
Socialists, in my experience, universally consider socialism to be the only fair system; they just have a concept of fairness which differs from mine.
In response to Brian’s original question, “Do you believe that such acts of violence are justified?”, this depends on the variations implied in the term “such”, but regarding this particular act, I would say no; it was unequivocably, absolutely wrong. He was, at the very least, reckless in respect of whom he injured, and whose property he damaged. Even if the result was just the destruction of the IRS office, this would have totally failed to address his grievances.
Now, if he had destroyed the IRS database, that would be a different matter.
“I would not be surprised if this is used by the Obamamaniacs to smear the Tea Party movement, BTW.”
They’ve been doing that all along, anyway. What’s the difference?
The leftist “mainstream” media are doing their best to smear people who favour lower government spending (such as the many millions of people who support the Tea Party movement) by trying to associate them with this murderer (they would have done the same with the murderer in Huntsville Alabama a few days ago – if it had not been so well known that the women was an Obama worshipper, even so they left out of their reports the fact that she was a far left person) – we should not help them in their disinformation task.
This man not only attacked religion (O.K. not an odd position to take among British libertarians – but very weird if he was the American conservative the lamestream media are trying to pretend he was) he also attacked capitalism.
Not just his hatred for health insurance companies (those evil people who make an average of 3.4% profit – the 88th most profitable industry in the United States), but also GENERALLY.
“The Communist creed is to each according to their need, from each according to their ability. The Capitalist creed is to each according to their GREED, from each according to their GULLIBILITY”.
Does not sound much like a Tea Party goer to me. Any more than he really was a “Texan”.
Actually this man was from New York State – and had been living in California, he went to Texas in search of work, did not find it and then………..
We have to guard constantly against the lies, smears and general disinformation of the “mainstream” (i.e. far left) media.
We must not see the world through the lense they present to us – for if we do (even with the best of intentions) we see everything twisted.