Charlie Daniels Speaks the Truth and Shames the Devil

I remember when I was a kid, I heard a song called “Uneasy Rider” by a guy named Charlie Daniels. I didn’t even know what he was singing about, but, the tune was catchy, so I bought the 45.

Of course, Charlie went on to become an American Legend, performing songs such as his trademark hit, “The Devil Went down to Georgia”, “The South’s Gonna Do It Again” and, “The Legend of Wooly Swamp”, which I along with anyone listening that morning in the Mid-South, got to hear him perform live in studio on Rock 103 while visiting the Wake Up Crew: Tim Spencer, Bev Hart, and the late, great Bad Dog McCormack.

A master of both the fiddle and electric guitar, Charlie Daniels remains one of the most beloved American musicians in both the fields of Country and Rock.

There’s another side to this man, though. Charlie is a great Christian American Conservative, who is not afraid to speak his mind.

For example:

There’s a move afoot to change life in America into a totally European – I’ve heard that so much I’m getting sick of it: ‘European’ – socialist thing,” says country-music legend Charlie Daniels, “but it’s the dag-blamed truth [sic], and it don’t work, it never has worked, and if America goes that way, America will never be America again.”

Daniels told WND in an exclusive interview that he expects 2012, with the nation’s very identity on the line, will be “the biggest election we have ever had.”

“In my 75 years on Earth, it’s never been as clear-cut as it is now,” Daniels said. “We’re either going to go into socialism, where part of the people work and the rest of them don’t, and the ones that do will be taxed to death, or – I got the point where I don’t trust politicians anymore, but hopefully – the other side represents, ‘Let’s put America back to work; let’s re-instill the work ethic back in people.’”

Since the 1950s Daniels has been a country singer and famed fiddler, perhaps best known for his hit song “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” He was inducted into the Grand Ole Opry in 2008.

But he also writes frequently on culture and politics, no stranger to bold statements in defense of God and country, and maintains a “soapbox” blog on his website, CharlieDaniels.com.

For Daniels, the word “socialism” – synonymous in his mind with the big-spending, tax-the-rich, government-welfare, spread-the-wealth policies of President Obama and his fellow “progressives” – is a system not only destined for failure, but also inherently tyrannical.

“You cannot enforce socialism without some force,” Daniels told WND. “It’s a very top-heavy society, and every society that’s ever tried it has fallen, because you finally get to where there’s so many people, you cut out the work ethic, you make people think they have to be dependent on government for everything. It’s a mindset.”

Daniels brought up the recent controversy about Chick-fil-A restaurants – in which the Democrat mayors of Chicago and Boston threatened to ban the chicken sandwich makers from their respective cities because the owner is an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage – as an example.

“To me that tips off where these guys are coming from: ‘If you don’t agree with us, we don’t want you in our town, we don’t want you in our country, we don’t want you in our political system,’” Daniels said. “Is it not downright un-American for an elected official to stand up and try to destroy a business? As bad as we need jobs in this country?

“This is not about ‘gay’ marriage; this is about America being America, about people being able to stick by their deeply held religious beliefs and not to have these people trying to put them out of business,” Daniels said. “That’s what this boils down to: Are these people going to try to shut up everybody who doesn’t agree with them?”

In one word, sir: Yes.

Back in 2007, Jonah Goldberg wrote a book titled, “Liberal Fascism”. For two years after that, he wrote a “Liberal Fascism Blog for nationalreview.com, when he decided to end the blog in 2009, he wrote about how, if you wanted to see what he was talking about in his book, you just had to read the newspaper:

Let’s see. Off the top of my head, in the first six months of Obama’s presidency we’ve seen corporatism  and “state capitalism”   run amok, in the government takeover of two car companies and numerous banks. Labor unions have become increasingly indistinguishable from the government and the party that controls it. Herbert Croly  and the Progressives have once again been rehabilitated as founding fathers of the New Age. The entire liberal intellectual class is convinced that this the time for a new New Deal. Critics of statism are vilified by liberal elites as racists and fascists. (And those who refuse to get with the Gorian program are guilty of “treason against the planet“). When out of power, liberals lionized free speech and celebrated dissent as the highest form of patriotism. Now, they label dissent “un-American” and the president insists hedoesn’t want to hear a lot of talking from anyone who disagrees with him. While the stench of eugenics and euthanasia do not quite sting the nostrils yet, the odorisdetectableandthe  liberal impulse for controlling the lives of others has been re-exposed.

Indeed, our own messianic president, who insists that we can create a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, also apparently believes that “we are God’s partners in matters of life and death” and that religious organizations that are true to their calling should rally behind a united front to expand the scope and role of government.  When the head of state says such things, it is hard not to be reminded of the Progressive concept of the God State, a major theme of Liberal Fascism. The “State is the actually existing,  realized moral life . . . The divine idea as it exists on earth,” Hegel declared in The Philosophy of History. The State, according to Hegel, was the “march of God on earth.” The progressives agreed.  Richard Ely, the founding father of progressive economics, proclaimed “God works through the State in carrying out His purposes more universally than through any other institution.”

These clowns don’t worship the God of Abraham, as 78% of Americans, including Charlie Daniels, and myself, do.

And, that is why they will fail. C’mon, November 6th.

The European Socialist Slide

Americans have watched as Europe has teetered on the brink of economic chaos, reminiscent of a Buddhist monk preparing to set himself on fire.

It appears that the match has been lit.

French socialist Francois Hollande has won a clear victory in the country’s presidential election.

Mr Hollande – who got an estimated 52% of votes in Sunday’s run-off – said the French had chosen “change”.

Admitting defeat, centre-right incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy wished “good luck” to Mr Hollande.

Analysts say the vote has wide implications for the whole eurozone. Mr Hollande has vowed to rework a deal on government debt in member countries.

Shortly after polls closed at 20:00 (18:00 GMT), French media published projections based on partial results giving Mr Hollande a lead of almost four points. Turnout was about 80%.

Jubilant Hollande supporters gathered on Place de la Bastille in Paris – a traditional rallying point of the Left – to celebrate.

People drank champagne and chanted: “Sarko, it’s over!”

Mr Hollande – the first socialist to win the French presidency since Francois Mitterrand in the 1980s – gave his victory speech in his stronghold of Tulle in central France.

He said was “proud to have been capable of giving people hope again”.

He said he would push ahead with his pledge to refocus EU fiscal efforts from austerity to “growth”.

“Europe is watching us, austerity can no longer be the only option,” he said.

Mr Hollande has called for a renegotiation of a hard-won European treaty on budget discipline championed by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Mr Sarkozy.

Meanwhile, in Greece…

Greece’s former finance minister and Socialist party leader called for a broad coalition government of pro-European parties, ruling out a two-party government with his conservative rivals after his party received a drubbing in Sunday’s parliamentary elections.

Official projected results showed Evangelos Venizelos’ PASOK party plunging to third place with 13.6 percent and 42 seats in the 300-member parliament. The conservative New Democracy was projected in the lead with 19.18 percent and 109 seats, far below the 151 needed to form a government. The margin of error was 0.5 percentage point.

“A coalition government of the old two-party system would not have sufficient legitimacy or sufficient domestic and international credibility if it would gather a slim majority,” Venizelos said. “A government of national unity with the participation by all the parties that favor a European course, regardless of their positions toward the loan agreements, would have meaning.”

If borne out by final results, the outcome is devastating for PASOK, which won a landslide victory in 2009 with more than 43 percent of the vote.

Voters outraged by Greece’s protracted financial crisis and the austerity measures imposed in return for international bailouts punished both main parties, turning to smaller anti-bailout groups instead. The leftist Syriza, which was projected in second place with 16.3 percent and 50 seats, has been strongly opposed to Greece’s bailout agreements.

“For us in PASOK, today is particularly painful,” Venizelos said. “We knew the price would be heavy and we had undertaken for a long time to bear it.”

Things aren’t  so peachy-keen in Germany, either:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition lost power in the state of Schleswig-Holstein, first estimates showed Sunday, after a vote that could presage national elections next year.

Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) scored 30.6 percent, according to ARD public television, with her junior partners at the national level, the Free Democrats (FDP), winning 8.3 percent – not enough to retain power in the northern state.

However, the opposition – combining the centre-left Social Democrats and ecologist Greens – also failed to gain sufficient support to form a government, with 29.9 percent and 13.6 percent respectively.

This left as a strong possibility a so-called “grand coalition” between the CDU and SPD, which many believe could be the final result of the national elections due in September or October 2013.

The big winners on the night were the Pirates, an upstart party that has shaken up the staid world of German politics with a campaign based on more transparency in the political process and internet freedom.

For the third consecutive regional election, they breached the five-percent mark needed to enter the state parliament, winning 8.2 percent of the vote.

But for the FDP, although they lost more than six percent compared to the last election in 2009, it was a better-than-expected result, given that they are polling nationally at around three percent.

Turnout was low, with around 60 percent of the 2.2 million registered voters casting their ballot, compared to more than two-thirds in 2009.

The socialist Left party failed to clear the five-percent hurdle, scoring around 2.4 percent. A party representing the state’s small Danish minority also fell below the threshold, with 4.5 percent.

The parties will now engage in days of horse-trading before the final make-up of the state parliament is determined.

However, the election will have little impact on the make-up of the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament where Germany’s 16 states are represented, and Merkel’s personal popularity remains high.

Back on April 24th, Robin Wells reported on the effect of what was happening in European Politics on the markets, for guardian.co.uk:

When markets contemplate that it’s likely that another austerity-skeptic, François Hollande, will win the presidency in France, then the pattern becomes impossible to ignore: the “core” eurozone countries are fragmenting. While it would be foolish to make predictions, what is probable is that Germany’s political isolation within the eurozone will deepen, leaving German taxpayers unwilling to continue backstopping the whole system.

Unthinkable as it seems, the logical conclusion is that the eurozone cannot continue to exist, at least in its present form. Markets, which hate unquantifiable uncertainty, are sensing this. We are likely to be in for an extended period of gut-wrenching turbulence.

What are the implications for the US, economically and politically? Direct links between the US and eurozone economies are fairly minor: we don’t export that much to them, they don’t import that much from us, and US banks have had an extended time to cut their exposure to eurozone risk. Yet the collateral damage could still prove significant.

When the stock markets fall, consumer and business confidence falls, leading to cutbacks in spending – bad news for an American economy that is still mired in recession. In addition, crisis in Europe makes for a stronger US dollar, as investors flee to safer abodes. Again, bad for the economy as a stronger dollars hurts US exports.

The reality of the eurozone’s troubles should lend support to President Barack Obama’s campaign against GOP presidential nominee presumptive Mitt Romney and congressional Republicans. It provides a demonstration that austerity is self-defeating, that fiscal stimulus is needed in a deeply depressed economy, that recovery from a financial crisis is a slow and halting process, and that by grasping the nettle immediately, the Obama administration has succeeded in stabilizing its financial sector – while the Europeans have made a hash of it.

Ms. Wells’ thoughts about our economic plight are way off…unless she calls the Obama Administration embracing of European Socialist-style Big Government, spending like there’s no tomorrow, and keeping unemployment at over 8% “stabilizing the financial sector”.

It is imperative that America not follow Europe’s example, this November 6th.