Joseph Stack, the guy who took the law and his life into his own hands by crashing into an IRS office, is being lauded as a hero by some right-wing anti-government groups and probably Patrick Swayze’s character in “Next of Kin.”
J.J. McNab, a guy who is a writing a book about something, said of Joseph Stack, “He did the ultimate flipping of the bird to the man.” Last time I checked every time I flip somebody off, nothing explodes, which does make his bird flipping pretty rad compared to mine, but that is still no excuse for vigilantism like Stack’s.
Vigilantism looks awesome when the ninja turtles do it. It is always fun to watch Bruce Willis take the law into his own hands and bust a few heads. But in reality if a bunch of turtles got a bunch of ancient Japanese weapons and tried to kill a guy things would, I assure you, go terribly, terribly wrong. I don’t care how fun those turtles were to hang out with, or no matter how often they let you have some of their pizza, problems would still arise as a result of their unsupervised violence.
In fact, I have long advocated against giving turtles any kind of powers whatsoever, be they Samurai or non-Samurai. But turtles aren’t the only ones who shouldn’t use random acts of violence to address their grievances. Joseph Stack, like the ninja turtles, should not use violence to solve his problems.
Everybody hates something about the government, and most people hate something about the IRS. Thomas Jefferson suggested we rebel every twenty years, even overthrow the government if it becomes too corrupt. But violence is not conducive to positive rebellion. Sure the government, ninja turtles, Bruce Willis, and Patrick Swayze’s character in “Next of Kin” are all violent, but that doesn’t mean we have to lower ourselves to their level. Our grievances should be dealt with through education and public discourse.
The only logical reason a plane should ever be flown into a building is if the building is owned by a rich old man who bought all the ice cream in the world and he won’t share it, and all the ice cream is in that building, and flying a plane into his building will make all the ice cream fly into bowls so we can eat the ice cream.
(Photo Via: Nbc)
Comments
No comments.