Soap Box

***NOTE*** Charlie has been cutting down the number of soapboxes a week due to his deadline to finish his autobiography by December 1st. Once a week we will be running a soapbox from the past until he turns in his manuscript. This one is from 2011 - TeamCDB

I will ask a favor of all who are reading this column. Could we just for three minutes put aside our conservatism, our liberalism, our Republican or Democrat party affiliations, our race and gender and all the other superficial things that separate us?

Can we just for a few minutes, in the true sense of the word, just be Americans?

Can we all just briefly put aside the animosity, clear our minds and exercise common sense without the media sensationalism, the political rhetoric and all the other distractions that influence our opinions?

The reason I'm asking this, is that America is literally coming apart at the seams and cannot continue on the path we're traveling and exist as the sovereign nation that has taken on all comers and survived as the greatest the world has ever known for 236 years.

What no nation, power, political system, Ideology or war machine has ever been able to accomplish is being fomented right here in our midst, weakening the fiscal infrastructure, eroding our sovereignty and tearing the fabric of our society to shreds.

I have lived under every president since Franklin Roosevelt and they have all made glaring mistakes, sometimes inadvertent miscalculations and sometimes brazen political moves having more to do with the furtherance of their party's power structure than the welfare of the nation.

There has never been a congress that has been completely honest with the American people.

I am not here to make excuses for the shortcomings of George Bush or for Ronald Reagan nor am I a shill for Mitt Romney and claim allegiance to no political party. No organization owns my vote, I will give it to whoever I feel will serve the nation best regardless of the letter next to their name.

So let's come in off the playground, lay aside the juvenile game of "gotcha", the "everything we've done you've done something worse" pettiness and, acknowledging that we have come to this point through the mistakes and blunders of left, right conservative, liberal, Democrat and Republican, lets begin our conversation, accepting that we have painted ourselves into a corner and regardless of whose faults brought us here, we have to forget yesterday, live in the here and now and move forward as a nation, not a gaggle of self-interested factions, because this horse we're riding is going to lay down and die if he doesn't get some relief.

So accepting the premise that nobody is perfect, that nobody is always right or always wrong all the time, can we begin a discussion about what is happening to our beloved United States of America, the incredible danger we are in, why our time to rectify the situation is rapidly sifting away like sand in an hour glass and that when the sand has all fallen through, we cannot simply right the hour glass, and start over again, the damage will be irreversible and Pandora will have escaped the bottle for good.

Okay, the president and factions of Congress clamber for more money, they want to raise taxes.

How about for every percentage point taxes are raised the same percentage has to be cut from the government budget and 100% of new taxes raised has to be applied to the national debt?

How about a federal law that requires that the oil pumped out of American soil has to be marketed in America until we don't import a single drop of foreign oil?

How about closing down the redundant bureaucracies that are stumbling all over each other and wasting billions of our tax dollars? It can be done. It just takes leadership.

How about requiring congress to read every word of the legislation they pass, anything less is arrogant and slothful?

How about an across the board cut for all government agencies? You are forced to live on a budget and they should too. They'll holler but they can live with it.

I won't even go into entitlements, and I'm not talking about Social Security and Medicare they are not entitlements, they are savings accounts that would be fine if the government had kept their grubby hands off of them and the crooks who stole from Medicare had been weeded out and put in prison.

The rest of our entitlement program is a joke. It is often used and abused by people who have no intention of ever bettering themselves, people who have children for no other reason than it fattens their monthly check and slugs who father children and leave them for society to care for.

It has to be dealt with and no politician seeking reelection is going to touch it.

Therefore, every time I bring up term limits, I have people telling me that the elections we have every couple of years suffice as term limits.

While that (in the true sense of the word) may be correct, it does absolutely nothing to alleviate the problem of the established power structure on Capitol Hill.

With years of tenure come alliances that are more about the proliferation of power than taking care of we the people.

The in place cartel controls committee appointments, the ability of having a piece of legislation brought to the floor, in other words if a rookie wants to get anything done, they have to play any game the power brokers want to play, and that means dancing on the end of their string when it comes to voting for pet legislation and earmarks and confirming cabinet appointments and Supreme Court justices.

They corrupt everyone they touch and we the people pay for it. Time to clear out the hornet's nest.

Eight-year limit for president, and congress.

Lastly and most importantly, if we are to make it out of this catastrophe we find ourselves in, we have to come together as a people.

Too many self-seeking sound bite hogs on both sides of issues are all too willing to stand at the front of a crowd and stir up racial tensions for nothing more than a few seconds in front of a television camera to justify their existence.

Too many unscrupulous politicians stoop to hyperbole and downright lies. They all need to be put in their place.

This nation has to change and let it begin with me.

I reach out my hand in brotherhood to every American. And assure you I hold no animosity against any man, woman or child. I promise to give a reasonable hearing to other's opinions and try to be fair and objective in evaluating them, and would only ask that you use the same values when evaluating mine.

I pledge my continued support to the military of this nation and pray that the powers that be will prayerfully consider the profound responsibility and consequences of deploying them.

I will continue to express my opinion in the voting booth and in whatever medium I find available to me.

Believing that a return to the values of the Creator who made us is the only true way back to sanity I will continue to pray of spiritual revival in America.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops, and for our country.

God Bless America

� Charlie Daniels

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