Dems Force Out Local Exec Director Who Said, 'I Stand for the Flag, I Kneel at the Cross'
Apparently, standing for the flag and kneeling for the cross is enough to get you pushed out of the Democratic Party these days.
Mark Salvas found that out the hard way. According to KDKA-TV in Pittsburgh, the Allegheny County Democratic Party executive director was forced to resign after a social media posting he made last year.
The social media posting? “I Stand for the Flag, I Kneel at the Cross.”
“I was asked by the chair of the Allegheny County Democratic Party to resign my position due to the controversy that was taking place on social media, and I did,” Salvas told KDKA on Wednesday.
“It’s never easy when people you have never met accuse you of things and call you names, and you’ve never met them.”
Salvas, a Marine veteran of the Iraq War, published the “stand for the flag” post last year.
“I’m not ashamed of my patriotism, not one bit. I fought for this country. I think I have a right to have a voice and be patriotic,” Salvas said.
There was another post that got Salvas in trouble too — this one from his wife who asked for support for a police officer in the Allegheny County burough of East Pittsburgh, who shot and killed a black teenager named Antwon Rose II, who was fleeing a traffic stop in June.
That’s right — you literally can’t support one of your close friends in this day and age, at least if the politics don’t line up.
“What happened to Antwon Rose was a tragedy. I don’t think anybody doubts that. I think we can all agree on that. A young man lost his life and that’s a shame,” Salvas said.
“Officer Rosfeld, Michael Rosfeld, is as close to me and my family as anyone could be. I have known that young man since he was literally 3 years old. They are family to us.
“They have been there for us in hard times, and my wife and I felt it was necessary to be there for them, because family backs family.”
Check out KDKA’s coverage here.
His wife posted about the Rose shooting in July. Both of the posts in question were published before Salvas joined the Allegheny County Democratic Party in September.
But according to other Democratic officials, supporting your friend if he’s a white police officer and he killed an African-American man is no way to be a Democrat these days.
“To put that up on Facebook was, to me, insensitive, also to African-Americans, who, as you know, have backed the Democratic Party for quite a long time, and everybody knows that it was insensitive,” Pennsylvania state Rep. Ed Gainey said, according to KDKA. “If you’re going to be executive director of the Democratic Party, you have to be sensitive to things like that.”
“Sensitive” is apparently big to Democrats in a case like this.
“As an official, he has to be very careful and sensitive that his words and his posts are not necessarily just his. They are reflective of the party in its entirety,” state Rep. Jake Wheatley said, according to KDKA.
When it comes to this case being “reflective” of the party, Wheatley is more correct than he knows, sadly. Democrats are excoriating Salvas for saying he’s Christian and stands for the national anthem. And they’re excoriating him for saying it a year before he he took a position with the Democrats.
They think it’s even worse he’s willing to stand by his friend when his friend is a police officer. Without going into specifics of the case, it’s wholly natural to believe one’s friends are innocent. He’s not even the one who made the social media posting — his wife was.
Apparently, even his wife has to conform to the Democrat ethos. Gainey thinks “everybody knows that it was insensitive” for his wife to support a family friend. Perhaps for everyone he knows in the party, that’s true.
The bigger issue here, however, is the fact that someone professing they stand for “The Star-Spangled Banner” and kneel for the cross is now worthy of a controversy in Democratic circles.
Salvas even noted that athletes have the right to kneel for the anthem — “That’s part of what the flag stands for. It gives them the right to do that,” he told KDKA. But apparently that’s not good enough for the party. This leads to only one conclusion about what they think the proper thing to do before the flag really is.
As for Salvas, he was asked whether he had any apologies about what he had posted.
“Not at all. Not at all,” he said.
Well, apparently there isn’t a place for him with the Democrats. However, I can think of a major American political party where standing for the flag and kneeling for the cross aren’t verboten. It’s a party that believes in liberty, too.
Salvas might want to look around a little.
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