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Frank Salvato, Managing Editor

Instituting a Safeguard Against Political & Ideological Tyranny
July 17, 2009

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.

This factionalism exists within both political parties, as well as throughout our society.

Neo-Marxists have come to power in the Democrat Party even though the majority of Democrats could be considered moderate to centrist. And because of the hierarchical system utilized by our federal Legislative Branch, this minority faction of the Democrat Party has come to power nationally.

The far right faction of the Republican Party, through their insistence on employing single issue litmus tests for candidates, has factionalized the party and helped facilitate its fall from prominence. Couple this limitation with the horrific performance and fiscal irresponsibility of the most recent Republican run Congress and the party’s demise is understandable.

And the country has been factionalized societally – some use the term Balkanized – through the institutionalization of diversity, multiculturalism and the abandonment of the national conceptualization of e pluribus unum; out of many, one. Instead of celebrating the hybrid identity that is American and standing as one people in support and defense of a singular culture we have become a country of hyphenated Americans all too willing to put our individual and special interest needs ahead of honest politics, good government and Americanism.

So, What to Do About Factionalism
James Madison was quite clear in his warning about factionalism in Federalist No. 10 as published in the Daily Advertiser on November 22, 1787 under the pseudonym, “Publius”:

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for pre-eminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts.”

Madison continues:

“No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity. With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time; yet what are many of the most important acts of legislation, but so many judicial determinations, not indeed concerning the rights of single persons, but concerning the rights of large bodies of citizens? And what are the different classes of legislators but advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?...”

“It is in vain to say that enlightened statesmen will be able to adjust these clashing interests, and render them all subservient to the public good. Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm. Nor, in many cases, can such an adjustment be made at all without taking into view indirect and remote considerations, which will rarely prevail over the immediate interest which one party may find in disregarding the rights of another or the good of the whole.”

Our nation’s first president, George Washington, even included a warning about factionalism in his farewell address:

“The unity of Government, which constitutes you one people, is also now dear to you. It is justly so; for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquillity at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very Liberty, which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed, to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment, that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national Union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the Palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion, that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.”

Both Madison and Washington understood the frailty and fallibility of man, especially in government. They had the brilliance to foresee the exact situation in which we now find our nation’s government: a government run by faction.

Having become politically aware living in a location lucky enough to have had Congressman Henry J. Hyde (R-IL) as a US Representative, I was never a proponent of term limits. In fact, I was adamant in opposing term limits. I felt that Americans should have the privilege to choose whomever they felt was qualified – provided they were qualified – to represent them in our nation’s capitol.

But over the years many elements that led me to believe this privilege was absolute deteriorated:

▪ Civic apathy to governmental oversight grew among the American public, with a growing number of citizens abdicating their responsibility to vet politicians vying for governmental office.

▪ The nation became more factionalized – both ideologically and ethnically.

▪ Special interest groups, including labor unions and single issue advocacy groups, became more of an influence on elected officials.

▪ And ideological groups and foreign interests, including socialist, communist and Islamist political movement groups and individuals like George Soros, encroached upon the sovereignty of the American electoral process.

Each of these elements – each of these factions – has come to serve the demise of the purity of the relationship between the American citizens and the electoral process. Each of these factions serves to promote a special interest over good government; an alien ideology over American philosophy. It is because of this societal and political deterioration that I believe the only thing that can save our Republic from the ash heap of history is the restorative power of term limits.

The Reality of Elected Office
Would term limits be employed, instituted at the state level in an effort to usurp the special interest factions currently in control of our federal government, they would act as a great equalizer – an eradicator – of factions. While no one can extinguish someone’s passions – a thought antithetical to a land that prides itself on freedom of thought and expression – they can limit the amount of authority someone has to pursue those passions when they come to encroach upon another person’s liberty and freedom. This is exactly the balance the Framers – and Madison in particular – were striving for in the creation of “checks and balances.”

Today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), one of the most partisan ideologues to exist within the halls of Congress, has held elected office for twenty-two (22) years. In light of the fact that US Representatives are elected to two-year terms, that means that Nancy Pelosi has been elected to office eleven (11) times. In the last election, Mrs. Pelosi garnered 73.5% of the vote for the 8th Congressional District of California; a total of 199,030 votes. Essentially, that translates to the will of 199,030 people being imposed on an entire nation by virtue of her election as Speaker of the House and as Democrat leader in the House.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), another partisan, albeit for more political purposes than ideological, also assumed office in 1987 having now served twenty-two (22) years. This equates to four (4) terms in office given that US Senators serve for six-year terms. Reid garnered 61% of the vote in Nevada’s 2004 US Senate race; a total of 494,805 votes. This translates into the will of less than half-a-million people being imposed on the nation by virtue of his election as Senate Majority Leader.

And with 53% of the vote, garnering 66,882,230 votes nationally (just 8,538,559 more votes than his opponent and just over 25% of the population with just a little over a third of the nation’s populace voting) Barack Obama was elected president of the United States.

With these three political partisans coalescing into a leadership team controlling the Legislative and Executive Branches of a factionally, contentious government; in light of the fact that well under a third of the nation’s populace voted for any of them in a combined tally; and in light of the grotesquely partisan and almost fascist way they are ramming un-debated, un-researched and, in many cases, unread legislation into law, it becomes apparent that leaving governmental oversight and the protection of the Charters of Freedom to the American citizenry – at least in its current form – is a death sentence for our Republic.

Add to this toxic equation the fact that nefarious forces in the forms of elitists (like George Soros of the globalist movement) and Islamofascists (like Osama bin Laden and certain elements of the Middle Eastern leadership) are using financial avenues to destroy our capitalist system and Constitutional Republic, and the death knell for the United States can be heard in the distance.

The Notion of Term Limits
Our nation’s Founders and Framers believed that government not only belonged – as a creation – to the people, but that it would be the duty of each American citizen to perform public service, elected office being a public service; thus the genesis of calling those elected to office “public servants.” They intended for citizen politicians to fulfill their public service and then return to private citizenry. President George Washington exemplified this understanding when he refused to be considered for a third term.

Many times, concrete solutions to problems and maladies are not pleasurable. To use a analogy, chemotherapy, although it is used to kill cancer cells, also kills healthy cells. It makes the patient purposefully sick in the hope that it will eventually cure the original illness.

I still believe that an educated, aware and engaged American citizenry can provide effective governmental oversight. Our Founders and Framers constructed our Republic’s Charters of Freedom with that understanding. But today, we have become so self-absorbed as a culture that we have placed our personal wants and desires – as a society – above the duty demanded of us by the Framers and by constitutional mandate.

While term limits may impose a limitation on the citizenry’s freedom to elect who they want to office – and whether or not term limits on elected officials are employed with the stipulation that a “sunset clause” be invoked along with their enactment – It would seem clear, to the thinking man, that instituting a safeguard against political and ideological tyranny, especially in light of the heightened level of civic apathy so prevalent in our nation today, would be the intelligent thing to do.

That We the People have the wisdom to hear the voices of our Framers is the question at hand...


About Frank Salvato
Frank Salvato is the Executive Director and Director of Terrorism Research for BasicsProject.org a non-profit, non-partisan, 501(c)(3) research and education initiative. His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His organization, BasicsProject.org, partnered in producing the original national symposium series addressing the root causes of radical Islamist terrorism. He is a member of the International Analyst Network. He also serves as the managing editor for The New Media Journal. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O'Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is a regular guest on talk radio including on The Captain's America Radio Show airing on AM1220 WSRQ and on the Internet catering to the US Armed Forces around the world and on The Roth Show with Dr. Laurie Roth syndicated nationally on the USA Radio Network. His opinion-editorials have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times & Human Events and are syndicated nationally. He is occasionally quoted in The Federalist. Mr. Salvato is available for public speaking engagements.