Topic: CNSNews.com
By dint of his friendship with Brent Bozell, Charlie Daniels has always been the Media Research Center's exception to its shut-up-and-sing policy regarding entertainers with political opinions. It helps, of course, that Daniels reliably spews right-wing talking points with a fair amount of venom; that's why he has a regular column at the MRC's "news" division, CNSNews.com.
Take, for example, Daniels' attack on President Obama in his June 24 column:
I don’t think Barack Obama really wanted to see America be all it could be. I believe Obama saw America as a bully, as an expansionist nation forcing our will on the world at large, a repressive tyrant that needed to be brought down a notch or two and take its place in the New World Order, a placating, passive nation of repentant supplicants, forever apologizing for our greatness and paring it down by sharing it with the world.
I think the statements Obama made to describe those he so disagreed with and feared – the ones about people clinging to their “guns” or “religion” and that America is “no longer just a Christian nation” – most clearly define the disparity of his ideas about America.
Most all the people I associate with believe in Almighty God and own guns that they will never give up without a fight. And I don’t know where President Obama got his stats, but America is still, by and large, a Christian nation.
Daniels then gushed over Donald Trump, "a New York real estate developer and former television star – brash, abrasive, pugnacious, plain-spoken, and afraid of no one – who could trade punches with any politician or pundit, and who was willing to stand toe to toe with any detractor and insist that his concept of America was totally different from Obama, Clinton, et al. ... He was pro-gun, pro-Israel, embraced Christianity and told us that with the easing of regulations and some sane tax policy that the manufacturing jobs we had lost, or basically given away under Obama could be brought back on shore." Daniels seems bamboozled into thinking Trump has genuine convictions and is not simply doing what he thinks will get him votes and clicks.
Daniels used his June 27 column to rant further:
I can’t bring myself to believe that there aren’t enough Americans alive who still remember the reality and abject failure of socialism and the wide path of human deprivation and suffering, shattered societies and failing dictatorships all socialist governments eventually morph into.
[...]
But behind all the high-flying phraseology and the inflated promises lies a world that actually differs little in philosophy from the plantation days, when a hand full of the elite who wield the power live in splendor with different health care plans, different benefit and retirement packages, different pay scales and different privileges than the lumped-together, one size fits all, numbered but unnamed masses who live under their thumb.
God forbid that that day should come, but the indications are strong that we are headed in that direction – a socialist America.
We could end up another deceived nation on the scrap heap of history.
But after peddling all that hate, Daniels suddenly decided he wanted to tone it down, trying to go all kumbaya in his July 1 column headlined "Can We All Put Aside Our Differences, Recommit Ourselves to Each Other, Our Nation?" which concluded:
In my opinion, what separates America today is that we dwell too much on the things we disagree on and not enough on the things we have in common, on what’s wrong instead of what’s right.
Yes, America has a lot of problems. Yes, there is injustice, inequality and unnecessary human suffering. Yes, there are many inequities, but we will never solve them as a divided people.
Can we just stop for a minute, put aside our differences, count our blessings, ignore the politics of division and recommit ourselves to each other and to our nation?
So, let’s start with me.
But before he got there, he was somewhat less than interested in setting aside differences, complaining that "the American dream has tarnished, which he blamed in part on how "the wanton taking of unborn human life is treated as casual as having a manicure." And that put-aside-our-differences blather differs greatly from the politics of division that dominated his two previous columns, which makes us wonder about his sincerity.
You want people to put aside their differences and ignore the politics of division? You first, Charlie.
