Frank Salvato

Instituting a Safeguard Against Political & Ideological Tyranny

It is fairly clear, to anyone paying attention, that the people of the United States are currently suffering the political tyranny of the special interest minority. We arrive at this point not because the character of the nation has changed dramatically – we are still a center-right nation ideologically, although we have become more permissive in our social views – but because we have fallen prey to exactly the political malady James Madison feared we would: factionalism.

Amid All the Celebrity Deaths, A Reality Check

Some have labeled the summer of 2009, the Summer of the Celebrity Death Watch, and one could successfully argue the point. Ed McMahon, Karl Malden, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, David Carradine, Koko Taylor, Fred Travalena and, most notably, Michael Jackson – to name but a few off the top of my head – have all passed away over the course of June and July.

When In The Course of Human Events…

“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.” – The Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776

The Path to the Future Requires a Return to the Roots

As President Obama thunders ahead with his liberal agenda, unencumbered by any significant opposition in either chamber of Congress, the focus for the Right has been on how to re-invent the Republican Party so as to be competitive in the 2010 and 2012 election cycles. This renewed and urgent focus is more akin to a meeting of rival mafia families, each faction unwilling to cede influence, power, control or status to another, than it is a quorum of individuals dedicated to true and original Republican principles. In light of this it is appropriate to revisit the founding platform of the party.

With All Things, Facts & Truth Matter

“Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.” – Samuel Johnson Few things are more important in life than the facts and the truth. Ironically, the quest for both has waned over generations. Today, fact and truth suffer the narcissism of a generation of self-indulgent ideologues who have sought to shape the world to their belief system, doing so armed with little more than falsely elevated self-esteem. The result has been to bring our great nation to a divide not seen since the US Civil War; a divide of politics, ideology and culture; a divide that threatens our Republic's very existence.

Gitmo, Liberals, Politics & Deceit

The debate over the disposition of the terrorist detainees currently housed in Guantanamo Bay's detention centers (Camp Delta, Camp Echo, Camp Iguana & Camp 7) rages on. The anti-war/anti-Bush contingent continues to call for the shuttering of the facilities while those in support of fighting the war against violent Islamist aggression challenge them on their alternative for the securing of the enemy combatants housed at the facility. And as this debate drags on one thing has become painfully obvious: the efforts of the anti-war/anti-Bush contingent are not only visionless, they are purely political.

Obama, Cheney & The Bright Shiny Thing

It couldn't have been planed more perfectly. President Barack Obama uses the power of the presidential bully pulpit to show his dismay with anyone and everyone who dares to question his version of morality where the war on terrorism is concerned. Just moments later, former Vice President Dick Cheney effectively rebuts the president and dismantles several of the president's talking points. The “impromptu” tele-debate made for great television. What it didn't do was move anyone to question what they believe on the issues that were presented. In fact, it simply ensconced each to his or her position.

Nancy Pelosi: Damaged Beyond Repair

“I think this is the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort I have seen in my lifetime...She is a trivial politician, viciously using partisanship for the narrowest of purposes...She dishonors the Congress by her behavior.” – Former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich

Radical Islam By Any Other Name…

Honesty and transparency in government are rare commodities, especially in the United States. While some information is legitimately kept from the public for reasons of national security, still other information – and quite a lot when the information flow from the Obama Administration is concerned – is either kept from the public or manipulated for the public's consumption, having been so for ideological and/or political purposes.

Celebrating the Exit of a RINO, Cheering as Rome Burns

With the defection of the traitor Specter from the Republican Party came cheers from the hard Right. “We are better off without him,” they said. “We're flushing the RINOs from the party,” they asserted. “The Left can't blame us anymore for what government does,” they exclaimed. While this may be so – and perhaps even what the Republican Party needs to motivate it to honestly look at re-evaluating its platform and philosophical strategy, which is being held hostage by an impossible acquiescence to unreasonable individualism – Specters defection will be horrific for the country in the immediate. Anyone cheering for that on the right side of the aisle is a fool, an idiot or both.

Specter: An Opportunist Guilty of Political Treason

US Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) announced this week that he was switching political parties. Initially he said that he was doing so because he didn't want to be "judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate," the same electorate he courted in his last election. But later, after he realized his statement depicted him as an ungrateful political opportunist, he said his decision was based on the idea that the Republican Party – which has moved more to the center in recent years – has “moved too far to the Right.” The truth is that Specter is a political opportunist who has literally thrown his constituency under the bus just to save his political career. In the political sense, he is a traitor.

A Week for the Earth; A Day for the Constitution

Each morning, as I drive my wife to the train, we listen to our local news talk radio station, WIND AM560 in Chicago. Their morning team, John and Cisco, offer a solid discussion on most issues presented, much more balanced and cerebral than the other talkers in Chicago. On this day, and, in fact, for most of the week, they have been addressing “Earth Week.” Today, as we made our way to the train, Cisco said something that struck a chord with both of us. To paraphrase, he said that he was a bit annoyed that Earth Day had morphed into Earth Week. To which my wife, Nancy, said, “You know, they have a week for the Earth but just one day for the Constitution.”

The Left Is Making a Mistake in Ridiculing the Tea Parties

The political Left in the United States is making a grave mistake in diminishing and dismissing the anger of the American people. Where it may be common place for liberals, Leftists, neo-Marxists and Progressive-Leftists to take to the streets over anything and everything, including a change of wind direction, it is entirely a different story with conservatives and Republicans. Conservatives and Republicans don’t march in the streets for anything. The fact that they have now taken to the streets in protest of massive government spending and government’s encroachment into our liberties speaks volumes to those who would listen.

Obama’s European Tour: Arrogance, Ineptness and an Abdication of Leadership

Many observations have been made regarding President Barack Obama's recent trip overseas. Most of them have been quite severe and rightly so. His many “appearances” bore a striking resemblance to his nauseatingly long campaign for the presidency; a campaign devoid of specifics and substance and rich with swagger and rhetoric.

The Two-Faced Brutality of Hope & Change

As the leaders of the G20 assembled in London to discuss the economic woes of the world, so too came the dregs of the Earth. Under the ruse of assembling as tolerant, engaged and caring members of society – activists concerned with war, the environment and the economic crisis – anti-war activists, eco-zealots, anti-Capitalists and anarchists descended on the city by the Thames causing havoc, damaging property and, in one specific instance, interfering with life-saving emergency treatment of one of their own. Interestingly, these are the same throngs of adoring “citizens of the world” that greeted Mr. Obama when he went on his campaign swing through Europe; the same assemblage of inhumanity that then candidate Barack Obama embraced as the “future.”

The United States of America Is Not a Democracy

“Pure democracy is the most vile form of government...such democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.” – James Madison, Father of the US Constitution

The ‘Give Obama a Chance’ Trial Period is Over

Like many conservatives, traditionalists and Republicans who didn't want to ape the caustic rhetoric of the neo-Marxist Progressive-Left used during the entirety of the Bush Administration, I promised myself to refrain from immediately assuming that Barack Obama was going to bring with him to the White House the backroom politics of Chicago's Democrat Machine. I employed the Reagan doctrine of “trust but verify.” Well, the verdict is in and the political tactics and policies that Barack Obama has brought to the Executive Branch are not only of the old school “Chicago Way,” they are literally neo-Marxist and naïve.

Recognizing the Reality of Radical Islam

Newsweek recently ran an article by Fareed Zakaria titled, Learning to Live with Radical Islam. In this article Mr. Zakaria contends that in our quest to prevail over the virulent factions within the fundamentalist Islamic culture we in the West must learn to discern the radical Islamist from the jihadi; the fundamentalist from the terrorist.

‘Oh, God!’ It’s Bobby Jindal!

It is no secret that today’s mainstream media has morphed into an ideological and agenda-driven propaganda machine, complete with preconceived notions and pre-existing biases. We witnessed the repercussions of this ethical degradation first-hand in the mainstream media’s failure to critically examine the Obama presidential candidacy prior to the 2008 Presidential Election. This bastardization of the media’s informational charge can only be understood as being detrimental to the United States.

It’s Not Obama’s “Stimulus” Bill

Now that the behemoth “stimulus” package has been reconciled in conference it appears that we, the taxpayers, will be saddled with financing a superfluity of special interest projects and entitlements. From programs that serve to combat sexually transmitted diseases and facilitate smoking prevention initiatives to the $30 million earmarked – yes, earmarked – for a wetlands restoration project meant to protect the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse, We the People have been bamboozled into financing the biggest raid on the US Treasury in the history of our nation. But before we grab the pitchforks and the torches and start marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House in protest, we should consider the facts surrounding the crafting of this abysmal piece of pork legislation.