Soap Box

Let me preface this piece by saying that I claim allegiance to no political party, I vote for the person not the party, neither am I an apologist for George W. Bush or any other president or politician, I am willing to admit that President Bush made mistakes in office and sometimes the supposed "conservatives" in power do some really dumb things.

I am neither racially prejudiced nor closed minded and I love the United States Of America, I have for as long as I've been alive and will until the second I take my last breath.

I know my beliefs are at odds with a lot of other folks and have the utmost respect for their point of view and their absolute, constitutionally mandated right to say it, whether
I happen to agree with it or not, and expect nothing less out of the people I converse or otherwise correspond with.

Okay having got what I feel to be a necessary preamble out the way I'll get to the crux of my intent.

It seems that intelligent verbal discourse in this country, especially when it comes to politics, has been replaced with profanity, vulgarity, insults, childish hyperbole and a game of vicious one-upmanship that accomplishes absolutely nothing except to make you scratch your head and wonder what the heck these people are talking about.

I will, for obvious reasons, not give examples of profanity and vulgarity but will attempt to enforce my words here with non-verbatim examples of the others.

Insults: "You're just a racist"

First of all, if you'd ask these people to define racism, over half of them would probably equate it with disagreeing with President Obama. They expect everybody else to wear the same rose-colored blinders they are wearing and since Barack Obama is so wonderful, if you disagree with him you must be a racist.

Hyperbole: "Why don't you guys legalize nuclear weapons, they kill people too."

Statements like the one above must be a jest or the product of either a mind completely void of rational thought or someone who stepped out of line when they passed out the creative genes, but took a double shot of asinine instead.

One-upmanship: "Well, what about what Bush and Cheney did?"

As aforementioned I admit, and probably in hindsight they would too, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney made mistakes, but come on folks, it's four years and six trillion dollars later, is the whole history of 21st century America going to hinge on what the Bush-Cheney Administration did in office?

When does the president who promised us the economy would be straightened out in his first term, that he would bring the country together and restore America's flagging international prestige and he would accomplish all this with the most transparent administration in recent memory, when does he assume some responsibility.

Was President Obama not responsible for the loss of the Keystone Pipeline and twenty thousand new American jobs?

Is President Obama not the one who pulled presidential rank and issued an executive order to stymie the Fast and Furious investigation before the higher up culprits, who were responsible for distribution of the guns that murdered an American ATF agent and untold numbers of Mexican citizens could be identified.

So much for a transparent administration.

Was it not President Obama whose Justice Department sued the state of Arizona for enforcing existing federal laws that Eric Holder refused to enforce.

Selective enforcement of the law, smacks of banana republic policies.

Was it not President Obama who tried to first blame a murderous attack that killed four Americans on Islamic protestors angry about some obscure video and still refuses to identify or allow access to the survivors of the attack who are qualified to tell the nation what and how it happened?

See folks, there's enough responsibility to go around, present administration notwithstanding and whether you want to admit it or not, President Obama owns the economy, the military action we're involved in, Gitmo, the War on Terror and hundreds of other issues that will decide if this nation goes on being the shining city on the hill or some scared, unproductive, backward third world village that sits around and wonders where it all went.

If President Obama is not going to adopt a "the buck stops here" attitude, we're going to be in even bigger trouble because to be a leader you have to take the awesome responsibility that goes along with it.

There, I said it.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​