Soap Box

*NOTE* Charlie will be back with a new soapbox on Monday, in the meantime, we're running a soapbox rewind from 2009, just a few days before the 4th of July. - TeamCDB

Every year it is a God-given blessing of mine to travel the length and breadth of this, the greatest and most beautiful nation on Earth, the United States of America, and I never tire of it.

I love this country. I never cease to be fascinated with America from the teeming streets of New York City where everybody is in a hurry, to the dusty back roads of the rural South where nobody is in a hurry.

The mountains of Wyoming are wonderfully green this season and the Mississippi River is still wide and muddy as it meanders south on its lazy way to New Orleans.

It looks like a bumper grain crop in Nebraska and Kansas this year, the high desert country around Elko is glistening with new grass and fragrant sage and the San Joaquin Valley is bustling with tractors and heavy farm machinery tending the nation’s breadbasket.

The alfalfa fields are ankle deep in lush green plants that will soon be cut and baled to get the livestock through another hard Colorado winter.

Up in Alaska, the big fish will be schooling up the Kenai and the grizzlies will be trying to put some fat on before the fireweed starts to bloom and the termination dust signals time for another long nap.

The lights are blazing at the major league baseball stadiums across the country and the little league is taking the diamond heads full of dreams about being the next Chipper Jones.

Fat Black Angus dot the plains of Western Utah and the boys at the 06 will be rounding ‘em up in the Big Bend Country.

There are fairs and rodeos and picnics and family reunions and campers lining the highways as America goes on vacation and cars full of bright-eyed little ones on their way to get their first glimpse at Mickey Mouse in the flesh.

It’s a glorious, beautiful, wonderful time of year in a glorious, beautiful, wonderful country.

As the Fourth of July approaches, my mind wonders back to that fateful meeting in Philadelphia in 1776 when a handful of patriots came together and decided that the United States of America would no longer submit to British rule.

They knew that signing the Declaration would lead to war with the most powerful army and navy on Earth, and our fledgling nation had nothing more than a few cannons and an unorganized army of settlers and hunters with muskets. Dark days were to follow as the British wrought havoc on the Northeast with their superior strength and arms.

The British had us outgunned all right but two things came into play, the first, American ingenuity, in America if we can’t get what we want, we take what we can get and make what we want out of it.

The ragtag Continental Army couldn’t stand shoulder to shoulder and face a long line of English soldiers across an open field, which was the European style of waging a war, so they hid behind trees and in swamps and ambushed the British with the crack shot backwoodsmen shooting and running away in a kind of guerrilla warfare the redcoats had never seen and were ill-prepared to deal with.

The second thing was the insatiable American desire to be free.

“Give me liberty or give me death.” We all know those words said by Patrick Henry, and we would do well on this Independence Day to remember that millions have fought and died in defense of our beloved America over the centuries.

The tyrants are still there, our enemies are lurking, more dangerous than ever, and I for one feel that this Fourth of July -as we celebrate the 233rd birthday of our nation- it’s a good time to renew our resolve to defend America against all enemies foreign and domestic and to paraphrase the motto on the license plates in New Hampshire, “Live free or die trying.”

Happy Birthday, America!

What do you think?

Pray for our troops

God Bless America

— Charlie Daniels

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