Will Grigg?s Liberty Minute

February 25, 2010

Joseph Stack?s murder-suicide attack on an IRS office building in Austin, Texas was an act of irrational criminal violence. A lawsuit filed against Stack?s family by the widow of his victim, IRS employee Vernon Hunter, make result in lethal collateral damage to individual rights.

Before his attack on the IRS office, Stack had become sufficiently threatening to his wife Sheryl that she and the couple?s daughter fled their home and spent the night in a motel. Valerie Hunter has sued Mrs. Stack, claiming that she had a duty to ?avoid foreseeable risk of injury to others,? including Hunter?s late husband, Vernon.

It isn?t clear how Mrs. Stack could have carried out that supposed duty unless she was either clairvoyant or a co-conspirator ? and there is no evidence that she was either. The legal principle advanced in the lawsuit would require that family members contact the authorities when relatives give voice to anti-government opinions ? a genuinely totalitarian assumption.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.