The Advent of the Pro-Marxism Conservative, Apparently

You've heard this story, unless you've been living under a rock: A couple of weeks ago, a man named Joseph Stack wrote an angry tirade against the IRS (and George W. Bush, his wife, and the Catholic Church), climbed into an airplane, and dive-bombed a building housing IRS offices in Austin, TX.

You've also probably heard, unless you're still under the aforementioned rock, the mainstream media linking Mr. Stack to the political right, even going so far as to proclaim that Mr. Stack has become a "right-wing hero."

Um. What? How many conservatives do you know who espouse communism? One of the final lines of Stack's rant was: "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." So he was an anti-capitalism, pro-Marxism right-winger? THOSE DON'T EXIST.

I'm not saying that Stack was a left-winger, either. His ranting against the IRS was more right-wing than left-, but the sum total of the arguments advanced by Stack leads to one conclusion only: Stack was CRAZY. He was mentally unstable. He had taken to blaming everyone but himself for his failures in life, and both sides of the political spectrum were fair game.

Look, I don't care what your views are. I really don't. I might disagree with you, possibly vehemently; I might not understand how someone as smart as you are can see take the same set of facts as I do and yet come up with a completely different conclusion (which begs for the rejoinder that it must be me who's stupid, and some days I would agree with you). But let's agree not to vilify each other this way. Let's not take the actions of a crazy person and assign the motivations behind them to entire swaths of the population. Let's not stoop to this childishness.