Remember Andrew Joseph Stack III? He was the 53-year-old computer engineer who last year flew a plane into an Internal Revenue Service building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and another man.

He left behind an anti-government, anti-big business, anti-tax manifesto and torched his house before taking off. His rambling suicide note revealed a man who felt powerless to succeed in the United States with so many forces conspiring against him.

"In my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind," he wrote in a suicide note. "Nor, for that matter, are they the least bit interested in me or anything I have to say."

Commentators around the country immediately seized on the story to assail political opponents. Some on the left labeled him as an only slightly extreme version of members of the tea party.

Many on the right elevated him to a symbol of the consequences of an out-of-control government.

The truth is that he was a troubled man who did an awful thing. End of story.

But the drive to derive meaning from horrible events is atavistic and defies reason. Thus the lionization of the alleged 60-something, 150-pound armed man who last Wednesday bludgeoned the windshield of a speed camera car on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway while someone was in it. Police closed the highway for hours, snarling traffic.

He was not found. And he left no treatise on the evils of speed cameras so no one knows the motive for the attack.

But the lack of information has not mattered. Many online comments on reports of the story characterize him as a "hero" for mangling a car fashioned with a device that many people think is an intrusive, back-door means to tax the state's already heavily levied residents.

Everyone knows passenger safety, the supposed reason for the cameras, is a euphemism for revenue generation. And I hate speed cameras as much as anyone. (My husband has an uncanny ability to exceed the speed limit only while passing the speed camera on northbound I-95 on his way to work, generating almost monthly tickets. Otherwise he is one of those annoying people who drive the speed limit in the left lane.)

But the window smasher is no John Galt. He is a criminal. To make him into a beacon of liberty is to use the same faulty logic that elevates graffiti to an art form.

That so many adulate the perpetrator speaks to how little trust residents have in a government that increasingly treats them only like ATMs, however. And it's not just anonymous online venters who are upset with the direction of the state. Supporters of a referendum to repeal in-state tuition for illegal immigrants gained enough signatures to make it on the ballot, an almost unheard of feat in this state. So, lessons learned: There is no higher meaning to crazy, and follow the rule of law if you want the government to.