Sadly, Charlie and I come from the same generation. We have listened to those that lived through the Great Depression, they were our parents. We learned to have pride in work and accomplishment. We also learned how to win and lose gracefully. We came from a generation that was taught what respect, honor and loyalty meant. Once the liberal ideology took over the teaching of our children, they had a foothold in changing the scope of not only the American dream but the very fabric of our lives. They claim there is no war on Christianity while demanding removal of all things that remind them of it. They have replaced the good morals and ethics of past generations with the greed of today's generations. Liberals decry the violence while reveling in it to make that dollar. So, yes, we definitely are a divided nation and there just might not be a way to heal it.

I sincerely hope so, Mr. Daniels, but I am afraid that it might not be so and am prepared for those consequences, as much as one can be prepared. I've admired you as an iconic artist of Americana and now as a true patriot with a strong command of much needed language for the survival of our nation. I'm not the least bit sarcastic in my request for you to consider entering the public forum as a statesman for the people...maybe even as our future president. I would never consider you to be a politician, but you exude leadership qualities that are now so very rare and so desperately needed.

It's the left wing degenerates who are causing the downfall of this country.

Once again Mr. Daniels, you've taken the words right out of my mouth. I agree with you more often than most columnists. Keep up the good work - it's encouraging in times like these, and we need lots of that seeing how there seems no such revival on the horizon.

I did my genealogy and got records of my ancestors who came to North America. They expected to work for their own benefit (and for their children) and they did just that without entitlements. They "did build that" no matter what any liberal AH may say! That is the truth and the story not only my ancestors, I dare say!

Same here. My great grand parents came from Poland, enjoyed their Capitlaism, had many children, and to this day, not one offspring wasted their productive years accepting any kind of welfare.

The perversion of the American dream didn't just start. It has been progressing for generations now. As long as politicians say things like "social security is untouchable" and they keep voting to perpetuate the current spending spree and wealth confiscation in opposition to those that elected them. Further we keep electing them. The divided states of America is inevitable. Communities are going extinct being exchanged for semi anarchistic population centers ever reaching for ways to get the government to pay their bills rather than approaching the church communities for real help out of their situations.

The federal government stole our communities and it is time to make them stop forever.

Yes, this country is divided. Why not put an end to the bad marriage? I guarantee, the marriage isn't going to get any better.

Charlie sums it all up, and eloquently. I wonder how long it's going to be before the Obama Regime bans Stetson hats?

Charlie Daniels is awesome.

I'm impressed. An opinionator who can naturally use the word 'gelded'. Must be your farm-boy upbringing. However, I would caution you on the use of the word 'progressive.' It is now just another of the excellent English words that has been hijacked by the cesstodian socialists to disguise their true agenda of creating a kommietopia where they are the owners of the plantation and we are their slaves. Fine words such as spade, gay and liberal no longer mean what they meant, and we are all the poorer for it. Marxist, kommienist, socialist, liberal, progressive, and democrat are for all intents and purposes synonymous now.

What do I think? I think I'd like to buy you a drink at Tootsies across the alley from the Ryman.

Happy New Year!

"Marxist, kommienist, socialist, liberal, progressive, and democrat are for all intents and purposes synonymous now."

I see you forgot to mention Republican, as if they are not part of the collectivist game.

With the spinelessness of Republicans when it comes to opposing the Democrats, you're right.

Can you think of anything that divides the American people more than the 2-party system? They group us up to fight eachother, as if our Nation was not based on Individualism.
Yes folks--it is by design.

Nothing on Earth, divides the American people like the 2-party system does.

We need a election system that allows any individual to be able to "win" (not just run) for office--but based on merit, not the size of the pocket book or party affiliation.

We have a lot of sharp Individuals in our nation, but they don't dare run against a progressive 2-party system and their media.

You're right. Liberals are the ones who abandoned the country, not Conservatives. Therefore, it is they who should take a hike and take all the illegals, drugs, crime and perversion their philosophy has brought into being, taking it to the West Coast and Northeast. The rest of us can return to sanity in the remainder. That's the sensible way to handle it: they hate things here so much, they can have their own new countries to start from scratch, and promptly wreck it.

The phrase "a house divided" comes from the NT. Jesus was speaking about Satan's demonic kingdom dividing to imitate God in the performance of miracles. He, of course, disabused them of the idea. If you all have noticed, it is exactly the same way with the Democrats. They stand TOTALLY UNITED in order to get their candidates elected because they have no sense of morality or decency whatsoever...NONE. They don't care if their candidates are pro-abortion, pro-homosexuals, anti-gun owner, big government, higher taxes, pro-unions, etc...They don't care if they are breaking every one of the ten commandments to vote for these DEMONIC HORDES, they will sell their very souls and damn the eternal consequences for the government freebies it will bring them...at the expense of their neighbours? So what? It's all relative right? Morally speaking, I mean? RIGHT? You only go around once, right? At least that's what they believe, according to their political platform. Well...those of you who believe otherwise, I would encourage you to take about ten minutes sometime today, tomorrow, this week, and read Psalm 37. It is so full of promises for the child of God, and so awe-inspiring that it will bring you to your knees with tears in your eyes, as you realize that we are not weak, or in this fight alone. We need to be praising Almighty God for what we know He is about to do. As much as I love Charlie D. and his music, he is sounding a little too defeatist...God is never defeated...ever...and "The Lord knows the days of the upright, and their inheritance shall be FOREVER. They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be satisfied. But the WICKED SHALL PERISH..."(PSALM 37:18-20).

Amen!

Christian, singer, songwriter, American, man, philosopher, etc.
What would Plato have thought of you, CD?

Here is an open letter to a guy who wants to know why our generation did not solve the problem that resulted in libs getting a stranglehold on the education system:
YOU ARE RIGHT. We could have solved the problem and spared your generation the left wing disease. IF we had the knock-down evidence about commies in 1960 we would have them exposed and discredited and marginalized. They would not be doing their "march thru the institutions" including the Education System. There would not be any sixties radicals, or they would be too ashamed to show their face in public. That would have prevented all the stuff you are complaining about. There would be no Che t-shirts, nobody chanting 'ho ho ho chi minh', nobody waving little red Mao books. Noam Chomsky would be doing linguistics instead of politics. Whittaker Chambers and Joe McCarthy and Birchers would not have been demonized because they would have facts and evidence to go up against the NY Times and that bunch. Americans would be aware that there are totalitarian tendencies in the Left. So, at worst you would have to deal with midwest style populists.
But why didn't that happen ? Because Venona was top top ultra secret. Too bad the KGB already knew about it, but we didn't know that. Besides, it would not have been sufficient. You really need the Soviet Archives together with Venona, to make a knock down argument that commies are totalitarian creeps, rather than 'liberals in a hurry', and make it stick. Remember - there was no Rush. There was no Levin. There was no Talk Radio. There was no Right Scoop. There was no Ann Coulter writing 'Treason' because her book was based on Venona and the Soviet Archives ! Nobody really knew how utterly creepy these totalitarians are until Richard Pipes wrote 'The Unknown Lenin" and other works exposing what the commies did, based on the archives. There WAS Robert Conquest, but he said that 'after the archives', the history of the whole period has to be re-written.
The upshot is that the Left got a free ride for nearly 40 years - the Abbie Hoffmans, Jerry Rubins and SDS and Bill Ayers, Angela Davis and Kathy Boudin - all doing their best to turn the educational system into what you complain about, and libs were giving them the benefit of the doubt, because there was no knock-down expose of their totalitarian crap. Libs were making excuses for the Left. That began to turn around in the 90s. It STILL needs turning around.
Now, I want you to appreciate this: How did we get the evidence we needed ? Give thanks to Dimitry Volkaganov. He was a historian and went to Boris Yeltsin with this idea of exposing the Bolshevik secret archives. Americans theoretically decide about Venona, but we have no influence over this sort of thing. And how many countries make any such thing available ? It might as well be an 'act of God' . What if Yeltsin thought it imprudent to open the archives ? It makes me very nervous to think that history depends on such a slender thread. We would be in the dark, and the commies would be re-writing our history with impunity.
I can go on and on about this, but frankly, I have to deal with the Feinstein-Obama juggernaut when american parents are outraged, and the entire freakin liberal media wants confiscation. I am doing what Heritage ought to be doing, and nobody is handing me any grant money. Frankly, unless you spend a few years reading all this depressing crap about what commies and what made them tick, instead of reading what might advance your career, then you simply don't have the intellectual ammo to deal with them. Like Mark said 'thank me very much'. Like Lubos says 'that's the memo'.

We are too divided to go back to the great country that we once were. In conversations I have not only found it impossible to reason with those who desire a socialist state but also found it to be a conversation full of hostility on both sides, I am not innocent of that. The great experiment has failed and it is time to move on. It is time for a split within the country and for there to be more than one country here. The socialists may go their way and we may go ours. It will not come to be without a fight, but the fight is coming. For if we do NOT fight for our freedom then we will become like Cuba and the former USSR and Sweden. And I do not want to live under the thumb of repressive politicians. It is in my blood to to free. Who will join me?

Charlie is spot on and history has shown that democracy's have a life expectancy.

I believe that it is easy to look at what is going on in America very fundamentally and by considering the fundamental elements that lead to the fall of Rome, Greece etc.

The effects of greed* in government power and on society. Moral decay and it's effect on the fundamental building block of a culture (the family). Growing lack of trust for a dishonest system of government. A reduction in patriotism to support a dishonest system of government.

A federal government was designed by our founders to be a small centrailized government with the States themselves having greater influence in the sum of the parts and our individual rights of course protected. Today we have a large federal government with leadership that trumps state govenors and our individual rights are eroding away with the passage of some laws, entitlement programs and legislating from the bench. Couple that run away spending and unsustainable debt and you have a recipe for collapse. Since Obama claim(ed) to be a Constitutional law professor, he knows this and he also knows exactly what he is doing to this country.

Thanks to the divisive class warfare tactics of our first Bi-racial president who is 50% White and 50% Black and who promised to bring us together as a nation as only someone of his heritage could do - we are more divided as a people and nation today than anytime since the Civil War. Good job Oblamer!!!

God Bless You Charlie!

Thank you, Charlie, for summing it all up so nicely. If the President can read, maybe he will "get it". But I think he already does and just doesn't believe in our country.

Our country seems to be tottering on the edge of what may very well be our next civil war. The divide in this country is deep and getting deeper by the hatefiled language that has spewed from from the mouths of homeland security, DOJ, democratic party, Obama discribing republicans,so called rich,Teaparty members calling them racist,extreamist, the real enemies, home grown terrorist ect.. This is our nations new message, nolonger is it about coming together, but envy, and hatred of those that are sucessful, country loving ,God fearing, constitutional following, gun owning Americans. We are the jewish of 1930's in this now crumbling country, cancer filled government of communist and terrorist. The leaders out of this is ourselves, each of us have the duty to protect our country, our values, our rights and our liberties, we as the signers of the Constitution put our lives on the line to protect what so many sacrificed to obtain or we will not have them period! The leaders see themselves in the mirror every morning, plain old farmers,welders,bankers,nurses,factory workers ect... We The People are the ones that should be holding the ground!
DO NOT TREAD ON ME!
THE TREE OF LIBERTY MUST BE WATERED!
GOD BLESS EVERY AMERICAN WHO REJECTS THIS CURRENT GOVERNMENT!

Too late. Just rename it to USSA or United Socialist States of America. Seriously do you see the type of leadership it would take on the horizon that is electable? www.nickathens.com is a good read

United States of America: March 1, 1781 to November 6, 2012. Died of cancer ... R.I.P.

Very well said my friend.The takers in this country are increasing and the makers are decreasing and soon to be taxed more and more to feed the big government.How has one man and his slanted believes been able to get elected twice and continue his left wing movement and philosophy .No one is challenging him not even our own leadership.I know the issues Charlie is expressing is very true and much more important than my rant but this current regime is destroying our Freedom,Free market capitalism,children's future with massive debt, splintering all of us against each other and causing anger and division .He over rides the constitution,has not addressed this country's budget,addressed the border issue,16 trillion in debt heading to 20 Trillion.We have so much waste and fraud in this country entitlements explosion last 4 years,people conning the system.Family values deteriorating,state agenda's working on legalizing drugs, gambling,same sex marriage and state like California wants government to pay for a Trans sex change.Can we go down anymore.WHAT NEXT????????

HI Charlie!

We are divided, but not conqured!

God is good!

When God's people get crooked, the is a need for strightening. When Gods's people get lost, He will come and find. HE will never leave nor forsake! We will need to be at a point that the world will know that it was not USa but HIM that straighten and found.

I am going to enjoy this time you sung about:

"Blue skys in the mornin' there
And there's green trees and breathin' air
Rockabye in my easy chair"

Then do what is nessesary when the time for straightening comes.

We need to know, this is not ours to wrestle with: but God's.

It's a Free Country! ... or is it?

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/79...

Please educate others!