Welcome to Copy Book Warrior. This page is devoted to sharing the wisdom and truth I’ve encountered as a career soldier and former legislator. Like many of you, I have benefited from the knowledge and wisdom of others. In that regard, English journalist, short-story writer, poet, and novelist, Joseph Rudyard Kipling poignantly contrasts the eternal wisdom of the ages with the fashionable and naïve ideas of modernism in his poem “The Gods of the Copy Book Headings”. In his concluding verses, he is blunt.
“As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began
as the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!“
Kipling’s abrupt prose reveals a simple truth. Proverbial wisdom—once scrolled on the headings of the copy books used by British students to practice calligraphy—will ultimately outlast the frivolous notions that seek to supplant timeless truth and proven wisdom.
I hope to share some of that truth and wisdom. Here you can digest my commentaries in national journals and newspapers, particularly centered on our culture, history, national security, and the major political and social issues of the day. You can also purchase my latest historical book, Desert Redleg: Artillery Warfare in the First Gulf War published by the University Press of Kentucky under the auspices of the Association of the United States Army and the First Division Museum, home of the storied heritage of the 1st Infantry Division, “The Big Red One.”
Finally, you can also sign up for my “Copy Book Warrior Weekly Update” where I examine the important issues we face in America and abroad, and—if you are inclined—donate to the operation of this page.
Throughout all of my work I am guided by the wisdom of great minds like Kipling, Churchill, the Greek and Roman classical and the Enlightenment thinkers, Christian and Jewish biblical writers, notable historians and leaders, and our Founding Fathers to whom we owe so much. All of them formulated great thoughts—the ancestors of our own thoughts—and their actions have reverberated throughout history. I want to share these ideas and lessons for today’s thinkers and tomorrow’s leaders. Let us begin.
Scribendo cogito.
