The Michael Berry Show

I was raised in a home to respect your elders and to respect authority

But there was always in our family a sort of grinning respect for the Robin Hood outlaw

That's what the Duke's of Hazard captured

Straighten the curse, yeah, flatten the hills

Sunday the mountain might get over the lawn every year

Lakin' their way, the only way they know how

Let's just a little bit more, they'll go over the line

The authority Boss Hall was corrupt

Roscoe was an instrument of his evil

But make no mistake

That was a very revolutionary mindset to instill into people

And we've always had a respect in this country for an outlaw with some pizzazz, Bonnie and Clyde, Jesse James on and on and on

And so I believe that is because the American spirit is one that does not trust government or any authority

We were a very independent people, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about this in his piece on American democracy that was in the first third of the 19th century

Really the epic explanation to Europe primarily as to who are these Americans

But what is there? Because remember there's no internet, there's no television

It was hard to travel here

People didn't know who these Americans were, these were white people who had left mostly England, although Germany and France as well and some others

But who are these people? How are they different from us?

And one of the things he described was this fierce independence

A pioneering spirit, a frontiersman spirit, why is that important?

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