Peter Boyle played the title character, Joe in the 1970 movie. Joe Curran was a profanity spewing racist blue collar worker, angry at the world for its perceived injustice.

Dennis Patrick, who made a career out of playing oily types, portrayed Bill Compton, a wealthy businessman who was trying to bring his wayward daughter, Melissa, played by Susan Sarandon, home. He confronted her drug dealing boy friend, Frank Russo, played by Patrick McDermott and they got into a fight. Patrick slammed him repeatedly against a wall, finally killing him in, what is for me, one of the best murder scenes in movie history. You empathize with Compton.

Compton, dazed by what he had done, then wanders around and into a bar, sits down while Joe, a few stools away, rants about ‘the f—-ng n—-rs (blacks)’, the hippies, the wealthy and just about anyone else that he had a gripe against. When he blurts out that he’d like to kill one of them, Compton says, “I just did.” The story goes on from there.

Joe was an uneducated boor and just one year later, Norman Lear would present another bigoted boor on television, Archie Bunker in ‘All in the Family.’. But while Archie Bunker was a racist, he was ultimately a harmless teddy bear. Joe Curran had no redeeming qualities. While Bunker was steeped in stereotypes of minorities, he’d be horrified at the Ku Klux Klan. Joe Curran might be a member.

Joe Curran and Archie Bunker satisfied liberal Hollywood’s need to marginalize anyone of a what could be called a conservative slant at the time. The New York Times could trot out its warnings about ‘night riders of the right’ as it did with James Buckley’s senatorial campaign to portray naysayers as rabid race baiters. All conservatives are uneducated racist boors was the take home message. It was all very convenient and serves the Left’s purpose to this very day.

And so it has gone decades. The liberal educated elite could bask in their smug self assurance that those who opposed them were Archie Bunkers and Joe Currans not far under the surface.

Liberaldom was always concerned with Hollywood’s portrayal of blacks. In high school, our teachers often would underscore it. Blacks, to their dismay, were always servants or in menial jobs.

There was Eddie Anderson who played Jack Benny’s valet, Rochester and Stepin Fetchit who became synonymous with a slow witted, servile fool and never forget Little Black Sambo who used his guile to save himself from threatening tigers. Suddenly, such portrayals became anathema and disappeared but the Joe Curran and Archie Bunker persisted. The irony must never have occurred to Liberaldom.

Fast forward to 2008. In about the most infamous encounter of the campaign, in Ohio, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher asked Sen. Barack Obama about how his proposed tax changes would affect him. Wurzelbacher was considering buying a plumbing company with revenues in the $250,000 to $280,000 range.

Obama’s response reeked of the Marxism that lies in his heart. It was his stated goal that he would take more of any money that Wurzelbacher’s company would make above $250,000 to make sure that those making less had a chance at success. In other words, he would confiscate it to give it to others. That simple encounter set off a firestorm.

With his shaven head, muscular physique and mode of dress, Wurzelbacher looked to be the very epitome of the blue collar worker that liberals despise. The kind of a guy who had learned a lot in The School of Hard Knocks. This was the most symbolic encounter and even shootout that anyone could ever envision.

By contrast, Barack Obama had been the Left’s very idea of cool. Why he had even attended Columbia and Harvard Universities! How dare a commoner challenge so worthy an intellectual, especially one who agreed with them. Barack Obama was their next great chance to return intellectual liberalism to the corridors of White House power. Why he might even be the next (dare we even say it?) John F. Kennedy!

They gave him the nickname Joe the Plumber but he was no racism spouting boor. Instead, he was measured and articulate in his questioning. He had to be stamped out. He could be to ordinary Americans what William F. Buckley had been to intellectualdom, the anomaly that had to be destroyed. Liberaldom kicked into high gear.

A state worker in Columbus, Helen Jones-Kelley, did a data base search on Wurzelbacher to try to dig up embarrassing information on him. She later resigned. Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit on behalf of Joe the Plumber against Jones-Kelley and two other members of Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services in a civil torts action. Finally, the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police admitted that a contractor used state files to try to ferret out deleterious information.

These things should raise the concerns of all libertarians, civil and otherwise, about the harassment of dissidents and what it means for our society for the future. It is perfectly in keeping with Marx’s agenda to use all the powers of the state against rebels, up to and including confiscation.

But the ultimate shocker for liberals & Nanny Staters arose with the revelation that, (gasp, clutch your chests, horrors, egads), Joe the Plumber wasn’t licensed in Ohio. Why this struck at the most cherished of collectivist presumptions. Can you imagine the arrogance of anyone thinking he can do a job without government approval or, worse yet, that the people can decide for themselves who can do it? Such audacity! Why no ordinary person could be intelligent enough to make such determinations!

The latest is Andrew Joseph Stack, Joe Stack, the frustrated soft ware engineer who flew his Piper PA28 into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas killing himself and Vernon Hunter, a 68 year old employee and veteran of the Viet-Nam War. The new immediately spoke about a manifesto that Stack posted on his website. It can be found in its entirety with just a routine web search. There are an abundance of comments, pro and con, at both Business Insider and The Week.

Portrayed as a screed against government and especially the IRS, it is anything but. In fact, it’s a coherent, fairly well organized personal history of how he came to his plight and solution.

Also coming in for his ire are labor unions, large corporations, big medicine, big pharma and just about anything else big, including a swipe at the Catholic Church. As a Catholic, I think my religion is correct but there can be no doubt that over the years it has had its share of corruption, think Martin Luther and his 95 theses, not to mention the Borgias.

Stack’s problems with the IRS began with his affiliation with the Universal Life Church. Founded in 1959, it just about handed out ordinations for a registration fee. It soared in membership when many tried to use their positions as ordained ministers to avoid military service and taxes.

In its fight against the tax dodge, the IRS got into the sticky business of defining what actually constituted a church and a religion. Interestingly, despite its oft asserted claim that it wants to protect religion from government, I remember no objections from ACLU about the IRS’ efforts. They must have been too busy suing to have fish removed from the flags of small towns and the Ten Commandments from Court Houses to notice that the government was defining religion.

Stack also poured out his wrath on GM, Arthur Andersen, Enron, George W. Bush and the bailouts.

Almost immediately, the establishment liberal media lined up to marginalize Stack. One article by some pyschobabbler called attention to the ‘narcissism’ that ran throughout the essay. But Stack’s Manifesto was his statement so what sentiment other than narcissism could anyone expect? Others called him a tea-bagger. My response, “And?”

The overwhelming impression that anyone can get from reading it is that Stack was telling the world that our government simply doesn’t care about nor will it listen to the little guy, the guy who gets up in the morning, trudges off to work to hump a living. The guy who has no union, no corporation and no organization talking for him.

Stack makes it clear that he thinks that the government wasn’t listening to anyone but those big boys and making violence the only solution. Such a warning was articulated by none other than John F. Kennedy.
I do not endorse violence as a solution to the problems that are sucking America into a quicksand pit but it seems to me that Stack’s Manifesto has the kernel of a clarion libertarian cry to the world. Should the establishment media and the government continue to ignore it, they run the risk of many Joe Stacks.

The problem is, I think they will ignore it. You see, anyone who disagrees with them are just ordinary worthless Joes.

~ About the Author ~
Dr. Roderick T. Beaman is a board certified family osteopathic physician who practices in Jacksonville, Florida. He is a published poet, has composed a blues song and is trying to have his first novel published. It deals with the dangers of big government. He offers anyone who wishes to dignify the trash he writes with a comment, to do so.