Thread: Joe Stack and the 2010 Austin Plane Crash

I live here in Austin. That plane hit a couple miles away from my school. Luckily, by chance alone, he completely failed in his attempt to kill many people. I have a feeling that only negative stigma toward some of the ideas detailed in that letter will come as a result of this man's ragequit. When will people learn that killing lots of innocent people is never the best way to get your point across?

I remember the last time our fair city got national media coverage.

I have been considering moving to Austin for a while because it is like New Orleans... except safe. I was just there for Thanksgiving and the next few days. I walked all over the downtown/university area two days in a row. Despite the insane incident today, I love Austin.

I agree with the guy that we need to look into other ways of taxation, but he should have learned from 9/11 that flying an airplane into a building with people in it is no way to win over the American public. It can only backfire. Now the left is going to call every libertarian a terrorist or terrorist lover every time there is mention of changing the American tax system.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I have been considering moving to Austin for a while because it is like New Orleans... except safe. I was just there for Thanksgiving and the next few days. I walked all over the downtown/university area two days in a row. Despite the insane incident today, I love Austin.

Hah, really? To think we could have brushed past each other and not even known it...

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I agree with the guy that we need to look into other ways of taxation, but he should have learned from 9/11 that flying an airplane into a building with people in it is no way to win over the American public. It can only backfire. Now the left is going to call every libertarian a terrorist or terrorist lover every time there is mention of changing the American tax system.

I dunno. He seemed to have some pretty pro-socialist ideals from what I read in that letter.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I have been considering moving to Austin for a while because it is like New Orleans... except safe. I was just there for Thanksgiving and the next few days. I walked all over the downtown/university area two days in a row. Despite the insane incident today, I love Austin.

I agree with the guy that we need to look into other ways of taxation, but he should have learned from 9/11 that flying an airplane into a building with people in it is no way to win over the American public. It can only backfire. Now the left is going to call every libertarian a terrorist or terrorist lover every time there is mention of changing the American tax system.

My first instinct, with limited information, was to assume this was an incident of right-wing terrorism to be added to the Holocaust Museum shooter and the Kansas doctor-killer, but the letter makes it pretty clear that this guy was largely in line with the professed agenda of the current administration, but frustrated with the innate tendencies of entrenched bureaucracies and the outsized influence of the corporate elite in this country, as were those of us who protested the policies of the previous administration.

I hope there won't be too great an effort to conflate this man's personal setbacks vis-a-vis the tax codes with Libertarianism, but ultimately I think you're worrying about nothing, because this was a white guy who owned an airplane, and to the American public, that will make all the difference. You should worry more about him being raised up erroneously as a hero of the Tea Party movement.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Tea Party movement.

You'd be surprised to see how many libertarians hate the Tea Party movement.

Either way, I don't think libertarians have anything to worry about.

I didn't read the letter. I assumed he was a libertarian because he hated the IRS enough to fly an airplane into one of their major buildings. That seemed to have Tea Party written all over it. He's the first socialist I have ever heard of who felt that way.

BLUELINE, why do some libertarians hate the Tea Party movement? I have wondered for a while why Ron Paul won't show up for one and give a speech.

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

I didn't read the letter. I assumed he was a libertarian because he hated the IRS enough to fly an airplane into one of their major buildings. That seemed to have Tea Party written all over it. He's the first socialist I have ever heard of who felt that way.

He did complain about the tax system and the government itself, along with its bailout policies and, of course, corporations. Overall I actually liked where he was going (in his ideas, not the fact that he flew a plane into an IRS building) until the end where he wrote this gem:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

BLUELINE, why do some libertarians hate the Tea Party movement? I have wondered for a while why Ron Paul won't show up for one and give a speech.

It may have started out as a libertarian/constitutionalist movement, but it was rather quickly turned into a Republican movement, filled with lip-service and inconsistency. I mean, Sarah Palin spoke at one of the Tea Party conventions...

I don't know; to me, the movement isn't really special anymore, since it's been taken over by Republicans trying to gain ground against the Democrats.

Strange that there were no "tea parties" during the Bush years, hm?

Joe Stack is an example of how most americans are feeling about the gov, especially the IRS and government corruption. They try to make his letter sound crazy and out of order but i have read it a number of times and he seems to be pretty cognitive if you ask me. the tea party has been taken over by the neo cons and thats pretty obvious as well. WAKE UP PEOPLE ITS COMING. (not a threat from me but just a warning that i come to from the events of recent and the basic FEELING a lot of people have.

I think it was only a matter of time before something like this happened and we can probably expect an escalation of these sorts of things in the near future if the country remains on the same track it is on now. What saddens me is that this first visible event of this nature was so misguided. Any real attempt at drastic change from a populist perspective cannot sacrifice innocent lives and expect the cause to gain meaningful traction.

The letter didn't read as "crazy" in the sense of delusional, but this guy was clearly wound pretty tight.

The domestic terrorists of fifteen years ago are back, and in full force. Now is the time for the FBI to stop focusing on a beheaded al-Quiada and stop letting crazies like this guy fall through the cracks.

Originally Posted by mini0991

The domestic terrorists of fifteen years ago are back, and in full force. Now is the time for the FBI to stop focusing on a beheaded al-Quiada and stop letting crazies like this guy fall through the cracks.

Are you serious? you let the tv keep on educating you and these are the types of ideas you have. dont let it convince you that other americans are your enemies...just because people arent happy with the track our country is going down doesnt make them terrorist you FOOL.

Originally Posted by mini0991

The domestic terrorists of fifteen years ago are back, and in full force. Now is the time for the FBI to stop focusing on a beheaded al-Quiada and stop letting crazies like this guy fall through the cracks.

It's a pretty scary idea to "stop letting crazies like this guy fall through the cracks" when what you're advocating is the incarceration of people that haven't done anything to deserve it, but are merely deemed by some entity to be likely to do something. As far as I can tell from this story, this guy never gave any signs that he would turn violent at all, by what reason would you have him locked away? Because he disagreed with the current tax system?

When you start locking people away based on behavioral profiling when no crime has been committed, you end up with a state of fear where everyone is afraid to say anything negative about authority what-so-ever for fear of being locked away as a "high risk individual", and freedom of speech and healthy discussion go down the shitter. It's a bad road to go down, unless you like totalitarian rule and thought police.

For anyone who hasn't yet, I urge you to read Joseph Stack's Suicide Manifesto. Once you read it you may realize that this was not the act of an insane extremist, but the desperate last act of a man who had honestly (if he is indeed honest in the letter) exhausted every lawful option he saw available to him in order to enact change. He intelligently tells a life long tale of endless and futile battles with the government and it would do us all good to learn from him so that other violence might be avoided. If we (as a nation) do not learn from this kind of lesson quickly, then we will ensure many more violent and probably bloodier lessons to come.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

For anyone who hasn't yet, I urge you to read Joseph Stack's Suicide Manifesto. Once you read it you may realize that this was not the act of an insane extremist, but the desperate last act of a man who had honestly (if he is indeed honest in the letter) exhausted every lawful option he saw available to him in order to enact change. He intelligently tells a life long tale of endless and futile battles with the government and it would do us all good to learn from him so that other violence might be avoided. If we (as a nation) do not learn from this kind of lesson quickly, then we will ensure many more violent and probably bloodier lessons to come.

Well, you might also see an individual with a persecution complex who blames all of his failures on others and probably chose the IRS as a scapegoat when the last straw was probably actually his divorce.

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Well, you might also see an individual with a persecution complex who blames all of his failures on others and probably chose the IRS as a scapegoat when the last straw was probably actually his divorce.

This is possible. However, if all of the incidents in his life that he wrote about were real, then he was negatively (and expensively) affected by the actions of our government more than any average person would hope to. I think it is at least fairly common for anyone who tries to change the status quo with this sort of bottom up everyman approach gets the feeling that the government is out to get them, and for the most part they are right. Our government does not like and does not respond well to individual citizens who don't have a lot of money making a lot of problems for them.

I think as a society we tend to try to write off anyone who has become fed up and does something drastic as having a complex because we don't like to admit that

A) The system sucks
and
B) We as individuals aren't doing anything about it and wouldn't even know where to begin if we wanted to.

I know that I personally haven't endured nearly as much as this man seems to have and yet I feel many of the same emotions that he does. My particular outlook on life bars me from any violent protest, which is why I currently don't really do anything at all to change things. I really just don't know what to do at all. If I were of a slightly different moral bent I could easily be driven to violence after trying as many different avenues as Mr. Stack did.

Originally Posted by Xaqaria

This is possible. However, if all of the incidents in his life that he wrote about were real, then he was negatively (and expensively) affected by the actions of our government more than any average person would hope to. I think it is at least fairly common for anyone who tries to change the status quo with this sort of bottom up everyman approach gets the feeling that the government is out to get them, and for the most part they are right. Our government does not like and does not respond well to individual citizens who don't have a lot of money making a lot of problems for them.

I think as a society we tend to try to write off anyone who has become fed up and does something drastic as having a complex because we don't like to admit that

A) The system sucks
and
B) We as individuals aren't doing anything about it and wouldn't even know where to begin if we wanted to.

I know that I personally haven't endured nearly as much as this man seems to have and yet I feel many of the same emotions that he does. My particular outlook on life bars me from any violent protest, which is why I currently don't really do anything at all to change things. I really just don't know what to do at all. If I were of a slightly different moral bent I could easily be driven to violence after trying as many different avenues as Mr. Stack did.

My impression on admittedly limited data is that he was blind to his own faults, high on anxiety, and went to great lengths attempting tax evasion (from the letter, it sounds like he and his friends tried to set up a pseudo-church).

Still, the gestalt of what you're saying has some truth to it. The system(s) certainly has the capacity to crush individuals, in part at the whim of bureaucrats. My own impression is that the private sector bureaucracy scores a lot more kills than the IRS or any government agency, and indeed business encroachment upon government is a greater threat in this country than vice-versa. We have corporations that approach the size of our government and dwarf many governments on this planet, and they suffer the same hangers-on, sycophants, and short-sighted promotion-seekers as any public sector bureaucracy, with the exception that NO ONE is there for the good of their fellow man, and few for the advancement of the professed mission of the organization beyond how it impacts their paycheck.

He brings up a point that I myself am quite fearful of. The idea that nothing will change without massive bloodshed. George Carlin was of the same opinion and I've always wondered if he was right.

Originally Posted by BLUELINE976

You'd be surprised to see how many libertarians hate the Tea Party movement.

Either way, I don't think libertarians have anything to worry about.

Damn right, to me it seems most tea party fools are brainwashed hijacked neo-conned lemmings.

Half of them love sarah palin the neo-con-nazi.

Libertarian tea party? yea right


To me it seems this guy just flipped, its a shame he didn't crash the thing into a more important building such as the federal reserve.


Stonedape, i think carlin was right....protesting and whining like brats WILL NOT change a freaking thing, its a waste of time because the elites don't give two shits about the world and its inhabitants.

The elites care about money and power..nothing more.

Massive bloodshed of rich elitists is what george carlin was for, and I think he was on the right track.

I mean cmon, the 'system' we are dealing with is responsible for the deaths of MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS of innocent human beings, and then I hear all these fools talk about peaceful protest...grow some balls!

I am not saying go crash planes into buildings or attacking the feds but im saying, FORGET PROTESTS, they are useless.


What im trying to say is that if you're door is busted down one day by government cronies, don't sit there and take it like a bitch, fight back and never surrender.

Don't start the fight either, let those scumbags start the fight, so they are the ones to blame not innocent people who just want to fucking live their lives out in TRUE FREEDOM not a quasi 1984 freedom.

I don't know how I missed the tea party going to shit, I guess I should watch more news.

Actually I think Carlin thought that we will see massive bloodshed of normal people in the near future. He probably wanted to see "elites" being killed, but that wouldn't change the structure, it would merely open up slots for new assholes.

In order for the structure to change people need to experience the violence inherit in the system first hand. In other words the governments wrath would need to be directed at it's own people. It already is in some ways like taxation, but it's a very low heat and won't ever bring things to a boil at the current rate.

People are currently in a brainwashed state, thinking that coercive governments are the only possible kind. They think that violence is a neccessary part of any system and that as long is it is directed at someone else it is ok. This is madness and eventually it will catch up with us.

Now that we have the internet we are very close to having free exchange of information; actual freedom of speech. Because of this, more and more people will come to the realization that our government is not so benevolent as it claims. We have been had. As more people realize this, dissatisfaction with the government will increase. As this increases, we may end up seeing more Joe Stacks and more organized groups with similar motives. This could lead to martial law and eventually to mass bloodshed. However, I think that this is unlikely as the powers that be are likely aware that this will change the structure and detroy their stranglehold.



In the meantime we can at least try to keep people alert.

Martial Law is what they want dude, don't you see, thats what they want to happen so they can bring the iron fist down on us.

They need people to go nuts and go blow stuff up, so they have a GOOD reason to enact a martial law state.

I really don't think that they are that malicious. They just want to be in control.

They've already got the invisible fist on us and that's alot worse than an iron one. People don't even realize that anything is wrong. If they did they would want real change, not just chump change.

I disagree because I believe that the NWO is only achieved through totalitarianism not through manipulation, the manipulation is the means to an end.

Most people would surrender and put their tail between their legs if a big martial law event occured, they wouldn't demand anything other than protection from our wonderful big government

They want complete control, your right. But they don't neeed marshal law for that to happen. The only way that they can achieve their NWO is through deception. They need to convinve people that Big Brother is their friend. The corperation is your friend, drink pepsi.

Martial law and violent totalitarianism are always temporary. The NWO is about permanant and total control(which is why I believe that it is just the impossible dream of a few rich bastards).

There can be no system of taotal control. This is ignorance of reality and they will fall because of it.