Soap Box

Do you remember whom you admired, maybe evenly grudgingly, in high school? I'm not speaking about the best athlete or teenaged Lothario or the guy who made straight A's without ever seeming to crack a book.

I'm speaking about the guy who spurned peer pressure and went his own way, the guy who didn't dress like everybody else, didn't have the hair style du jour, didn't try to hang in the cool crowd, read different books, had different hobbies and stated a different opinion when he had one.

Someone who refused to conform to society's opinion of what he should be, one who pushed the envelope, approached situations from an alternative perspective and had no fear of being different.

That kind of person and that kind of thinking is being frowned upon these days as bigger and bigger government constantly interferes in our lives and it's obedient, willing accomplice the major media, try to instill the population with a herd mentality, in a steady slide toward a one size fits all, don't bite the hand that feeds you and don't go thinking outside the box collectivism.

Conforming to society, politics, accepting the opinions of others, without really digging deep enough to form one of our own, has become a way of life in America and I suspect the rest of the world also.

The whole concept of the American dream started with the chance takers, the different thinking few who were willing to leave the confines of the familiar and comfortable and take the other fork in the road, fire the other barrel, walk on the thin ice and attempt something that had never been done before.

The people who spent their last dollar on a new shovel so they could dig another foot to find gold, the kind of man who found a workable filament for his newly discovered light bulb on the one thousandth try, the man who, after being told by his engineers that a V8 engine was undoable, said, "I want it and I will have it" and told them to keep on trying.

Are there still people around like that today?

I submit to you that there are, but the habitat and incentive they need to achieve is being reduced every day.

The American way has always been to reward the exceptional few who brought us a better mouse trap, but the creeping encroachment of socialism and the accompanying "you didn't make that" mentality are fast reducing the risk-reward ratio.

The federal government's insatiable appetite for regulation and the loose cannon of a president careening around on the deck of the ship of state, nobody knowing which way he's going to slide next has created an uncertainty in the market place amongst those who could lead the nation into the next big breakthrough.

How many plans have been taken off the drawing board and are gathering dust on a shelf, how many revolutionary ideas are not being funded because of the bureaucratic hoops one has to jump through, how many young minds are being dulled and dumbed by the sub standard education that is being offered in public schools by unions who are more interested in power and politics than education?

The conformity of socialism creates a defeatist mind set "Why should I try harder when I'm rewarded the same as the lazy slug who works next to me" mentality. It represents the slow death of progress, the repression of young minds, the levying of burdensome taxes and the onset of totalitarianism.

Some people will say that that America is not headed for socialism and a monolithic totalitarian government and they'd be right.

We're actually well on the way.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels​