Andrew Joseph Stack III was not a hero. He was simply a killer.
The Austin, Texas, man, last week, flew a Piper Cherokee into an IRS office building, killing himself as well as Vernon Hunter, a 68-year-old IRS collection agent and a Vietnam veteran. A second man was badly burned.
The death toll could have been far higher as more than 200 people worked out of the Austin Echelon 1 office building that housed an IRS field office.
Stack's deadly attack apparently came after he wrote a post on a Web site about the threats he believed were coming from the IRS, Wall Street, the Catholic Church and corporate “thugs.” He would later burn down his own house and then drive to a nearby airport to climb into the plane.
Such rants against government are hardly anything new in our increasingly polarized political climate. Turn on any of the 24-hour news channels, and objective reporting has been replaced by pundits who rail against one cause or another, casting those who disagree as unAmerican or even evil.
These nutcase rationalizations have long populated the radio waves where there is always some “hero,” claiming to be the one unmasking the boogeyman who has been busy beating up on the average Joe and threatening to steal away the country we all love. Often that boogeyman is never identified — they are just an evil, faceless specter hiding in shadows.
Fear is big business in America in 2010, and it seems every entrepreneur worth his salt is finding a way to do it. What I find frightening is that this lunacy is gaining a foothold in America.
Following Stack's attack, there were more than a few comments on Web sites from Facebook to Craigslist to major news organizations where people were siding with what Stack had done and promising more such actions were on the way. Never mind that the people in the building never passed a tax law themselves. They had just gone to work like any other day.
To approve of such an evil act is to give a pass to Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995. He, too, claimed to be fighting the outlaw federal government. He, too, killed innocent people including children to make a political statement.
Such actions have no justification in rational political debate, and to give it credence, is to give aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe on both sides of the political spectrum in our country.
Stack was no more of a hero than those who attacked the World Trade Center towers, sent anthrax-laced letters to Congress and news organizations, or killed innocents in Oklahoma City. It is time for common sense to return to public debate. It is time to shout down those who would yell fire in a crowded theater. If we refuse to say “enough,” we are co-conspirators to this evil.

Jones is general manager and editor of the Mustang News.