One of my earliest remembrances of major world events was a bleak Sunday afternoon in December of 1941. The news came over my grandparents big floor model radio that the Japanese had bombed our base in Pearl Harbor.

At the age of five I had no ability to grasp the importance and the gravity of the situation, but I knew from the way all the grown people were acting that it was something very serious and something that would affect our lives for some time to come.

And affect our lives it did. My hometown of Wilmington, North Carolina is on the Atlantic coast and a strategic shipping port for fuel and other cargo bound for our forces in Europe and more than one oil tanker fell victim to German U-boats just off the coast.

We had air raid drills and the top half of the headlights on cars had to be blacked out so they couldn't be seen from the air. Everything from gasoline to sugar was rationed and families had cards that limited the amount of rationed products you could get.

America was ill prepared for war when Pearl Harbor was bombed but soon found herself fighting two deadly and well-equipped enemies in two different parts of the world.

America huddled around their radios and heard FDR tell us that the only thing we had to fear was fear itself, and America believed him and rolled up her sleeves, ready to make whatever sacrifices and work as hard and as long as it took to keep America free.

We collected scrap metal, saved tin cans and newspapers and even discarded nylon hosiery. I don't know how they were used but they told us it would help out with the war effort and that's all we needed to know.

There were weeks when the casualties were higher than the total casualties in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. There were dark days when battles were lost and things looked all but hopeless.

But America came together, mourned our losses, licked our wounds and said our prayers to Almighty God, knowing that in spite of the odds and no matter what, that no swastika or rising sun would ever fly above our beloved United States of America.

Let me tell you something people, watching this incredible nation operating at 100% is an awesome sight to see. When everybody put aside their personal differences, dug in and refused to be shaken. We had a war to win and we wouldn't stop until it was done.

Of course, we all know the outcome. We won the war.

Why did we win it? Of course most of the credit goes to the fierce tenacity of the men and women who actually did the fighting.

But beyond that we were all enjoined in one effort, we were in this thing together, we would either all win or we would all lose and losing was unacceptable.

Today we face a different kind of war, an economic war, brought on by greedy citizens and inept and ineffective politicians in both political parties, and the sad thing is that we are depending on the same people who got us into this mess to get us out of it.

Well America's greatness is not in the White House nor either house of Congress. It is not on Wall Street or the oil patches. It's not in the boardrooms nor the caucus rooms, nor the bank vaults or Fort Knox for that matter.

Prosperity is not what makes America great, but the people who, with Almighty God's help, created the prosperity, the hard working honest men and women of this nation.

We definitely have some tears in our moral fabric; we have some politicians who should be moved from the congressional house to the outhouse, we have some business people who have bilked the American public out of their life savings and the government is printing and spending money like so much green paper.

Yes we've got major problems, but we've still got each other. Politicians will never pull us out of this mess, they don't know how, no matter how many pork barrel billions and trillions of our money they spend.

But praying, God fearing, hard working Americans can.

I don't know about you all, but I want my America back. I want to take back the sovereignty of this nation. Take it back from Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barney Frank, Maxine Waters, Chris Dodd and all the rest of the self-serving power junkies in Washington who act like royalty and circumvent the Constitution.

People, we can't afford to be divided anymore, we need to come together, I know we'll never all think exactly alike but can't we put aside at least our petty little differences and put our country first?

So hold your head up America. Don't listen to the twenty-four hour doom and gloom drivel of the media.

Work hard.

Vote every time the polls open.

Say your prayers and never, ever give up.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

www.charliedaniels.com/soapbox-2009/soapbox-2009-0223.htm