The Best Decision I Never Made
In the fall of 1968, I was considering where to go to college the following September. I was ambivalent and not a strong student. To be sure dyslexia and lousy study habits did nothing to improve my grades. I thought about different colleges. I Read more
Integrity in the Scales
Some years ago, when preparing for battalion command, I joined others attending a pre-command course to brush up on Army operations, planning, training, and personnel matters. There is much on the plate of a battalion commander. For the most part, those selected Read more
Defining Deviancy Down
In 1992, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY) penned an article in The American Spectator titled “Defining Deviancy Down: How We’ve Become Accustomed to Alarming Levels of Crime and Destructive Behavior”. In it, Moynihan addressed the permissive decline of society in the 1990s. If he was Read more
Our Circumlocution Office
It’s so easy to complain about the government these days. Particularly the Federal government that has grown in power and reach for the last 100 years. Our Founding Fathers would be horrified by the aggregation of power from the states to the Read more
A New Thermidorian Reaction
The French revolutionaries of the 18th century were so committed to overthrowing their monarchy that they went so far as to scrub from existence the very calendar of the year. Their goal was quite radical; revising the number and length of Read more
Liberation and Lessons
Thirty-two years ago today, the US and its Gulf War coalition were enjoying our first day of ceasefire after vanquishing the Iraqi Army. It was a remarkable accomplishment that was the result of building the most capable military the world Read more
The Lessons of War
On 23 February 1991, we were all very focused and ready to “get on with it.” For the previous 7 days we had conducted destructive artillery raids on the Iraqi 26th Infantry Division that sat in front of us blocking our Read more
Swinging a Bat
It’s been thirty-two years since the first rounds went downrange in what would be eight days of artillery raids on Iraqi forces opposite the 1st Infantry Division. In that war, the First Gulf War, we sought to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Read more









