Charlie Daniels on Coming to America

I love reading Charlie Daniels' web site. A spade is a spade, and if you don't like it, go elsewhere 'cuz it ain't gonna change there!

He loves this country passionately and is never afraid to say so!


Coming To America

I know for certain that my maternal great, great grandfather came to North Carolina from Ireland. I’m not as sure about the ancestral home of the paternal side, but I’m pretty sure that I’m of Scotch Irish descent on both sides.

Many years ago my forebears came to America as immigrants as did all whose offspring populate the United States, with the exception of the Native Americans who were here before any of us.

America became a melting pot of human beings from every continent on earth coming to the New World to find something that was missing in their lives. Maybe it was religious freedom, maybe it was opportunity or perhaps it was to escape from a system where the ordinary man had no chance of ever rising above the condition he was born in.

In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, after the shameful state of slavery had been abolished, our shores were flooded with German, Irish, Scotch, Russian, Italian and just about every nationality coming to America, bright eyed with enthusiasm and eager to stake out their claim to a piece of the boundless prosperity this young land represented.

They brought their Irish jigs and Polish polkas, their music, their food and their dreams along with other bits and pieces of their culture, which so uniquely identified them.

But in spite of their love for the fatherland, no matter how much they missed and revered the old country they all understood that to get ahead in America the answer was to assimilate.
Immigrants went to great lengths to learn and speak English in their homes, making sure that their children spoke the language of their new homeland and no matter what their heritage they transferred their allegiance and their national loyalty and respect to this land known as the United States of America.

They fought her wars and abided by her laws. They settled her frontiers. They farmed and ranched and manned the assembly lines. They became butchers, bakers, tailors, policemen, lawyers, surgeons and a thousand other occupations that went to make America the greatest military and economic force the planet had ever known.

We should and do take pride in our heritage and the customs of our forefathers but personally I believe that there comes a point when we have to put that all behind us and become first and foremost, an American.

What does being an American mean? Is there a national profile of an American?

Of course not, we are as diverse as the flowers, fair and swarthy, black and brown and white.
Being an American to me means that we rise above our diverse nationalities, our differences of opinion and our allegiance toother flags.

Being an American doesn’t mean that we have to agree with everything our government does, but it does mean that we never take sides with a foreign government against our own.
If your sympathies and allegiance are with another countrythen perhaps you could consider moving to that country.

Pray for our troops.

What do you think?

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Copyright © 2004 Charlie DanielsAll rights under copyright reserved. Used by permission.