Tea Party Malcontent? Hardly: Joe Stack Was a Leftie

It didn't take long after Joe Stack's suicide terror attack on a Texas IRS building before two distinct story lines began to emerge.  The first attempts to link Stack to the Tea Party movement and would have you believe he was one of those "right-wing extremists" Janet Incompetano was trying to warn us about. Never mind that the Austin Tea Party has no records of any "Joe Stack" being involved with their organization, donations or otherwise.

Granted, they've stopped short of actually claiming he attended Tea Party events, but it doesn't take much mental prowess to catch on to the media's implication.  As an example, take this gem from Johnathan Capehart at the Washington Post:

"But after reading his 34-paragraph screed, I am struck by how his alienation is similar to that we're hearing from the extreme elements of the Tea Party movement."

The observation might seem plausible if you've only read the selective quotations Capehart provided, but even a cursory reading of the actual document reveals this observation is merely an attempt to co-opt this tragedy for political gain.  For starters, Capehart conveniently leaves out the line right before Stack's signature where he praises Communism and bashes Capitalism.  Who knew the Tea Party crowd was full of closet Marxists?

I won't delve into the far more baseless accusations floating around that Limbaugh, Beck, and Hannity are responsible because they ostensibly created the atmosphere that led to this atrocity.  Instead, I'll address the second story line which claims that Stack was essentially apolitical.  This group acknowledges that Stack was upset with government, but avoids classifying him as right or left-wing.  This is essentially the same crowd that tries to normalize Islamic terrorism by claiming that Christianity has its extremists too. Unfortunately, this is as false as Capehart's jarring conclusion.

How many "right-wingers" do you know who rail against "the joke we call the American medical system ... murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple?"  How many complain about tax exemptions "that make institutions like the vulgar, corrupt Catholic Church so incredibly wealthy?"  How many Tea Parties were out protesting "corporate profits."  The answer to all three of these questions is, of course, zero.  If Joe Stack was at a Tea Party, he wasn't there as a participant.

The reality here is: Joe Stack was probably a Marxist, and he was definitely a leftist, just like Amy Bishop, the Obama fanatic who shot and killed three UAH colleagues.  Sure, the right has churned out some wackos too, but far less frequently, and for some reason, the media tends to be honest about their political affiliations.  But let loose a bunch of profit hating G-20 rioters to vandalize a city, and suddenly nobody knows what their ideology is.  And it's not like that's only happened once.  I am continually amazed at our "objective" media's ability to keep a straight face calling anti-capitalist Marxists apolitical while the Tea Party is derided as a racist group of extremist bigots?

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