Soap Box

The theme of both major political parties this election cycle seems to be that we need to be united.

But as I watched the Democrat National Convention wind down with Hillary Clinton's acceptance speech, she sometimes resembled the grandmother she is and at times become a drill sergeant; scolding, belittling and blasting her opponent, who would soon return the favor at the first available television camera he comes across, it makes you realize to just what low levels political competition has fallen to.

Hillary praised the Obama Administration's accomplishments out of one side of her mouth and used the other side to tell us how truly messed up America is. One sentence was excoriating Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan, declaring America is already great and didn't need to be made any greater, and a couple of sentences later declaring that America is a racist nation who needed to become much kinder and gentler toward minorities, genders, religions and races.

What came out of the whole thing to me is that even though platitudes of coming together were made that, as usual, all the changes must be made on the right, the giving up of certain gun rights, the acceptance of marriage as whatever the implacable left decides it is, liberal concepts of education and foreign policy.

Though many attempts were made to placate Bernie Sanders and his supporters, the firing of Debbie Wasserman Shultz and the dirty tricks the DNC pulled on him were not mentioned, no apology, no referral at an attempt to clean up the corruption.

There was no attempt to doctor the open wound left by the Benghazi debacle and her role it, no explanation, no clearing up of the why she would expose national security to the world's hackers on an unsecured email server.

And amid all the tax and spend propositions and the "make Wall Street pay" (and this from a woman who made hundreds of thousands of dollars doing speeches for the Wall Street bunch and refuses to release the transcripts) there was no plan to reduce the transparent parasite with the potential to take our economy completely under water, our nearly twenty trillion national debt, which will soon consume 100% of our GDP just to pay the interest.

The only thing I could glean from her ISIS, strategy is more Obama tactics, drones and pie in the sky alliances with our "friends" in the region. The only true friend we have in the region is Israel and she's going to have to reach way under the Obama bus to even find them.

She talked about beefing up our intelligence to prevent attacks on the homeland, which I think it's an excellent idea, but only if the shackles are taken off, allowing them to go into whatever neighborhoods and mosques they need to, I�m sure if the terrorists were Southern Baptists no such restrictions would be in place any way.

She mentioned our military but she didn't acknowledge the need to reconstitute our armed forces from the diminished state it's in.

She mentioned the veterans but she didn't decry the ineptness and corruption of the Veterans Administration and Obama's failure to fix it, and ma�am, more of the same in this case just ain't acceptable.

She mentioned appointing more activist Supreme Court justices and we all know what that means, anything she can't get through Congress can be rerouted through the Court for rubber stamping.

She mentioned creating jobs but not relaxing the voluminous federal regulations and exorbitant corporate taxes that would bring manufacturing back on shore.

She mentioned gun control and said she didn't want to take away our guns but protect us from those who acquire guns illegally, but she didn't mention protecting the Kate Steinles of the world who are maimed and murdered by alien criminals who can hide out in legally protected sanctuary cities.

Folks, I take no pleasure in saying that America is more divided now than any time I can remember since the days of the freedom rides and marches.

From a race relations standpoint, the last real uniter to walk on America's national stage was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; a man dedicated to equality for all Americans, a man without ulterior motives, without political aspirations, a highly developed sense of justice and a strong belief in the God of peace.

I wonder what he would think about what is going on in America just four scant decades after he gave his life in the cause of human equality and equal justice for all. I wonder what he would think of the so-called "minority leaders" some of whom he mentored who find it more profitable to engender racial division rather than racial harmony.

I wonder what he would think of America's first black president and how he will leave his race worse off at his exit than his entrance.

I wonder what he would think of politicians on both sides of the aisle who have made the same promises for decades, weakened the minorities with generations of entitlements and turned a blind eye on their real problems, selling out to vote rich unions rather than upgrading schools yielding to connected lobbyists and pressure groups and playing the tit for tat game of scratch your back politics so popular inside the beltway rather than keeping the campaign promises they made to their long suffering minority constituency.

Without divine intervention, the United States of America will never be �one nation under God� ever again.

Even if politicians were willing, the job is too big.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels