Country music superstar Trace Adkins isn’t exactly known for holding back what’s on his mind. And if the millions of albums he’s sold are any indication, when Trace talks, people listen. Now, in A Personal Stand, Trace Adkins delivers his maverick manifesto on politics, personal responsibility, fame, parenting, being true to yourself, hard work, and the way things oughta be. In his inimitable pull-no-punches style, Trace gives us the state of the union as he sees it, from the lessons of his boyhood in small-town Louisiana to what he’s learned headlining concerts around the world. Trace has worked oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, been shot in the heart, been inducted into the Grand Ole Opry, and braved perhaps the greatest challenge of all: being the father of five daughters. And shaped by these experiences, he’s sounding off. • I’m incredibly frustrated with the state of American politics. If there were a viable third party, I’d seriously consider joining it. • If anybody wonders who the good guys are and who the bad guys are in this world, just look at the way we teach our children as opposed to the way the fundamentalist Muslims teach their children. • Organized labor now exists for the sake of organized labor, and not for the workers it once protected. • I believe the easiest way to solve the illegal immigration enforcement problem is to go after the employers who hire illegal aliens. • As a society, we’re unwilling to sacrifice our luxuries and our conveniences in order to conserve. We won’t change until we’re forced to. • The war on terror is like herpes. People can live with it, but it’ll flare up from time to time. Brash, ballsy, persuasive, and controversial, A Personal Stand isn’t just the story of Trace Adkins’s life; it’s the story of what life can teach all of us. Trace Adkins was born Tracy Darrell Adkins in Springhill, Louisiana. He learned to play guitar at an early age and eventually played with the New Commitments. In the early 1990s he performed solo in honky-tonks, and after gaining some fame he moved to Nashville and signed with Capitol Records. He has released seven albums. His most recent, Dangerous Man, debuted at number 1 on the Billboard country chart. A member of the Grand Ole Opry, Trace Adkins has appeared on numerous television shows, including The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Late Night with Conan O’Brien, Hannity & Colmes, and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. He lives in Nashville with his wife and five daughters. Chapter One The Day There Were No Planes It’s a damn good thing I wasn’t the president after 9/11 because I would have . . . let’s not go there yet. But there are defining moments for every generation. The events of 9/11 were my generation’s defining moment, so we’ll start there. On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was sitting in my garage watching TV like I usually do. It’s my morning ritual. When I’m home and off the road, I go out into the garage for a cigarette—because I can’t smoke in the house, which is cool. On that fateful day I dutifully retreated to the garage with my big mug of black coffee. I watched the Weather Channel to see if I was going to bother going outside, and then I flipped over to Fox News to start my day. I was watching live news coverage when the second plane hit. As the shocking facts came together and it was apparent that the Twin Towers were being attacked by terrorists, I felt a deep rage building up to a boiling point. I was seething inside over the fact that someone would hate Americans so much as to commit such a heinous crime. Then, like so many Americans, I needed to deal with the 9/11 tragedy on my own home front. By lunchtime, after I had gotten over the initial shock of what had happened, I focused my attention on Mackenzie, my three-year-old little girl. I knew that what had just happened didn’t mean anything to her and that she had no idea what was going on. At the time we lived just south of Nashville International Airport, far enough from it that the noise didn’t ever bother us, but still within its busy flight patterns. When the winds came out of the north, the aircraft flew high over our house on their approach to BNA. My little girl loved to watch the planes come over. So that day, I took her outside and went to the front yard where we could both clearly see the sky. We lay down on our backs on a grassy knoll with the noonday sun beating down on our faces from a completely cloudless canopy. I leaned over to Mackenzie and said, “Let’s see how many airplanes we can count.” She was excited. So we waited. And we waited. There were no planes. No planes at all. Now, you can’t keep a three-year-old’s interest for very long. “There are no planes,” she finally said and jumped up. “C’mon, Daddy, let’s go do something else.” I held Mackenzie in my arms for a little while. Then I said to her, “Look at me, sweetheart, and I want you to remember this. There was a day when Daddy took you outside to see the planes