Monday, February 22, 2010

Hero?

So the whacko who flew his plane into the IRS building in Austin... you know the one who set his house on fire and filled his plane's tanks with gasoline so there would be a nice, big explosion? ...the one who killed an IRS office worker in the act of crashing his plane into a federal building? Well, his daughter, who lives in Norway, says that while his last actions may be inappropriate that he is a hero for his opposition to the government.

"...if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice, then nothing will ever be accomplished," she said in an interview with ABC's Good Morning America. "But I do not agree with his last action with what he did. But I do agree about the government."

I'm sorry, but I don't care how righteous your cause may be or how angry you might be at the government. When you fill a plane's gas tank with highly-combustible fuel and fly it into a federal building, with the intent of harming the people who work in that building, you are not a hero. You're a terrorist. There is no level of populist rage, righteous indignation, etc., that would justify such an action. It doesn't matter if your cause is as justified as the civil rights movement, equal voting rights for women. The moment you cross the line and decide that violence against your fellow Americans is your chosen course of action you stop being a protestoe or activist and you become a vigilante, a terrorist. Joe Stack is no more a hero than Timothy McVeigh or Mohammed Atta and there should be no equivocating about that fact.

What really infuriate me however is that fact that Ms. Bell, Joe Stacks daughter, live in Norway and is saying that her father is a "hero" for standing up to the government. Norway? And you're spouting anti-government rhetoric? From Socialist Norway? Where the government pays for your healthcare and your education and you pay taxes as high as 49% of your wages? This person has room to talk about government controlling their life?

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