Faith and patriotism favorite subjects in Charlie Daniels' commentaries

Music legend Charlie Daniels

When country music legend Charlie Daniels died Monday of a stroke, the nation lost more than the creator of the 1979 hit "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," a County Music Hall of Famer, Grand Ole Opry member and winner of Dove and Grammy awards.

It lost a pithy, to-the-point, patriotic commentator on American politics and culture, who spoke to the nation through his weekly Soap Box column.

His request, "Pray for our troops, and for the peace of Jerusalem," appeared in every column.

His last posting, last Friday, was an unabashed promotion of patriotism.

Title "My Beautiful America," he talked about celebrating the nation's 244th birthday.

His words included:

Have you ever spent the late afternoon,
Watching the purple shadows deepen in the Arizona desert?
Or seen a herd of Elk plow their way
Through waist-deep snow on a cold Colorado dawn?
Did you ever see the sun go down in Hawaii
Or seen the stormy waves break over the rockbound coast of Maine
Or have you ever see an eagle fly up out of the mists of Alaska
Or a big October moon hanging full over the still Dakota badlands?

Have you ever tasted the gumbo in New Orleans, barbecue in Carolina
Or the chicken wings in Buffalo?
Have you ever had Brunswick stew in Macon, or cornbread in Birmingham?
Or briskets slow cook over hill country mesquite wood?

Did you ever drink the water from a gurgling branch in Utah,
Or stand on the mountain above El Paso Del Norte
And see the lights twinkling clear over into Mexico
Did you ever jingle horses in the pre-dawn stillness of a perfect Texas day
And watch their shod hooves kicking up sparks on the volcanic rock?

"No Eiffel Tower: no Taj Mahal, No Alps, No Andes No native hut, nor Royal Palace - Can rival her awesome beauty, Her diverse population, her monolithic majesty. America the Free America the mighty America the beautiful."

In recent months he addressed the "defund the police" movement, which he condemned as a bad idea, unless you "want to have an armed escort to go to the grocery store."

Tragically, he said, the people who want to get rid of police are the ones who would suffer the most, those in the poorest neighborhoods.

"The very concept is so impractical and ridiculous, it’s amazing that, even considering the deplorable condition of politics and media, it ever gained any traction in the first place," he said. "If someone steals your car, who do you call? If someone is at your front door with a gun and a sledgehammer who do you contact? If there is a missing person do you call the local chapter of Antifa? When there is a wreck who will come and clear up the snarled traffic?"

He pointed out that despite the coronavirus, the economic devastation and the riots over the death of George Floyd, God is in control of everything.

But it doesn't hurt to own a 12-gauge.

Don't watch the news all day, he counseled.

"You’re basically not getting anything new, and the media loves to beat the same old tired horse, and the worse scenario they can project the better they like it," he said.

And if you don’t own a firearm, "get one, and it doesn’t have to be a 9mm semi-automatic or an AK-47."

"Get something you can handle and are not afraid of. The more basic, the better, the best home protection I know of is a double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun with hammers you cock by hand before you shoot, it doesn’t jam and when loaded with double aught buckshot and both barrels fired simultaneously, can take down any three people coming through your front door," he said.

He took blasted "scammers, gougers and hoarders" seeking a quick profit amid the COVID-19 crisis.

"Then there are the politicians who try to gain political advantages by playing the blame game, who lack the honesty to admit their own faults," he said.

"Nobody personifies the worst in America more than Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff who are, even now in the middle of a situation that threatens America’s health and economy and it affects every man, woman and child in the nation, are making plans to hold a hearing on President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

"The words I would need to express the contempt I have for them are not in my vocabulary," he said.

Daniels was honored for his gospel music, Southern rock anthems and country hits.

He started out in the blue grass genre with the Misty Mountain Boys and moved to Nashville in 1967.

Elvis Presley recorded a tune Daniels co-wrote titled "It Hurts Me," which was released on the flip side of "Kissin’ Cousins." He played on such landmark albums as Bob Dylan's "Nashville Skyline."

He started the Charlie Daniels Band in 1972, and among the many hits he's known for are "Long Haired Country Boy," "The South’s Gonna Do It Again," "In America" and his signature, "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

When Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer threatened members of the Supreme Court at a pro-abortion rally, Daniels was terse: "This is not the act of a rational patriot, rather the act of a hate crazed loose cannon who desperately wants to take back control of the Senate in the coming election and is pandering to any pressure group he thinks can help him.

"If an ordinary American citizen stood in front of a highly charged partisan crowd on the steps of the Supreme Court building and screamed out these words, they would be charged with threatening, by name, Supreme Court Justices and probably hauled off for questioning by the Secret Service," he wrote.

He warned several times about socialism creeping into America, arguing it never works.

"Not Karl Marx's version, not Fidel Castro's version, not Bernie Sanders version, not the insane version Alexandria 'Cookie' Ocasio-Cortez is pushing, not Elizabeth Warren's Pollyanna ramblings that will probably include free pedicures before it's over, nobody, no how, no way has ever been successful at socialism," he wrote.

He blamed schools for pushing children that direction. And universities for their "Marxist professors who subtly convince their young charges that America is not really what it claims to be, that it has stolen everything it has and has marginalized and depressed minorities and that it’s time for America to be cut down to size and the way to do that is to level the playing field, to take away from those who have accumulated some degree of wealth by stealing it from those poor unfortunate souls who never had a chance under this unfair form of governance."

He warned those who support abortion at all times that they eventually will face a judge for their actions.

"He is waiting behind the final veil at the end of the road we must all walk, where we will all appear and give account for the things we have done while on this earth and we will all stand there, with no place to hide, where the verdicts are final and eternal and there is no appeal," Daniels said.

His comments follow New York's adoption of a law allowing abortion until birth and the Virginia governor's apparent approval of infanticide.

"If a seed has the potential to become a tree, if an egg has the potential to become an eagle, there is absolutely no denying that life begins at conception and common sense tells you that abortion at any stage of pregnancy is tantamount to murder, but what has happened in New York and Virginia has gone beyond the pale of anything civilized people would allow," Daniels wrote.

He said the wildest of the left's voices need to be called to heel or there "will be blood."

"Maxine Waters' maniac raving, encouraging the harassment of those who disagree with her and her party's politics, is motivated by the same evil purposes as the creation of the Brown Shirts and could give birth to a very nasty movement, a 'law' unto itself and totally out of anybody’s control," he said.

The aim of such terrorizing and harassment he said is "complete political dominance by one party."

"But this is not 1930s Germany and the Democrat Party is not the Nazi Party and the citizens of America are not a helpless ethnic minority and are awakening to the fact that they are under attack and the manifestation of their anger will soon surface, and unless these radical voices and financed mobs are called to heel, there will be blood," he wrote.

He even commended Barack Obama, of whom he was a critic, of being right about one thing:

"They do cling to their God," he wrote. "The guns are not clung to, but you can bet they're around."

Daniels was referencing Obama's comment during the 2008 presidential race, when he criticized Americans who live in "old industry towns decimated by job losses."

Obama said, "They [Americans] get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."