Soap Box

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a brand new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, here is a rewind from 2008. - TeamCDB

When I was a kid, the men in my life were straight-spoken, hard-working characters with sun-ripened faces and calloused hands. They got up early, drank coffee and ate a big breakfast before they headed out to another day of giving their bosses a days labor for a day's wages.

Their favorite pastime was hunting and fishing, and they did business with one another on a handshake. They honored the flag, and took care of their families come hell or high water.

There was a time in my life when I had never met a man who didn't believe in God. They believed that if you raise up a child in the way that he should go when he was old, he would not depart from it, and they taught their children right from wrong, taught them to respect other people and their property.

They were honest and would no more cheat a person than they would call in sick to work when there was nothing wrong with them.

They were male in the truest sense of the word. Unabashed masculine he-men with hard muscles and rough beards who stood up for what they believed in, even if they were the last ones standing.

I miss those guys. Whatever happened to the American male? There are still a few around but for the most part Americans have been convinced that there's something wrong with being a real man.

It was a sad day for mankind when the word unisex crept into our vocabulary. Men and women are different because God intended them to be different.

Now before you cherry pickers try to twist what I'm saying, let me tell you that I am in no way belittling the fairer sex. Women are perfectly capable of running corporations, serving in the military, competing in the arts and the marketplace and I am a total advocate of equal pay for equal work. Some of my most valued and responsible employees are women and they run the biggest part of my professional life.

But too many men nowadays are wimpy and mealy-mouthed, afraid of speaking their true opinions, willing to sit on the sidelines with a let-somebody-else-do-it attitude, shying away from responsibility and involvement.

In my opinion, a man who will not support the children he helped to bring into this world is not a man at all and neither is a man who physically abuses his wife.

When I talk about real men, I am not speaking about the mislead individuals who think they have to present an implacable facade of toughness and bravado 24-7. The strongest men I have ever known in my life were all able to shed tears, to pity the unfortunate, never take advantage of a weaker person, they practiced charity and restraint and were capable of great tenderness.

I just don't have much in common with the politically correct, soap opera watching, Perrier and lime-sipping bunch.

Give me a good-hearted redneck, preferably one who drives a four-wheel drive pickup truck with a winch on the front bumper, and a Dale Jr. sticker on the back bumper, with rifle racks in the back window, and a big trailer hitch for pulling his bass rig to the lake.

Now, me and him will get along just fine.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops.

God Bless America

— Charlie Daniels

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