Showing Moral Courage: Cardinal Joseph Zen

By | February 12, 2018

[February 12, 2018]  It has been said that the world’s intellectual elites have been attacking Christianity generally and Roman Catholicism specifically for at least a century.  Communist nations led this effort but there is one person who stands up against the state’s efforts and that man is Cardinal Joseph Zen.  Cardinal Zen is well known for his outspokenness on… Read More »

Core Values: National Security Agency

By | February 11, 2018

[February 11, 2018]  Just a few weeks ago, the U.S. National Security Agency made changes to their published core values (see them below and here on the NSA website).  While the agency received criticism for this change1, that is not as big a problem as we are led to believe by the media.  First, the criticism.  Changed from the NSA’s… Read More »

On the Venezuela Border: by Army Vet

By | February 10, 2018

[February 10, 2018]  Army Vet has just returned from the border between VENEZUELA and COLUMBIA to tell his story.  Don’t believe what the mass-media talking heads tell you.  There’s a real fight going on, a bloody nasty rock & roll fight that pits the  country of Colombia against the socialist-dictator controlled Venezuela.  If you believe nothing is going… Read More »

Characteristic # 106: Self-Awareness

By | February 8, 2018

[February 8, 2018]  Leadership today involves navigating some of the most difficult situations without any signpost markers along the way telling us which way is best.  That means a leader must be, by definition, resilient, tough-minded, and inner directed  But more than anything else, a leader must have the self-awareness to “see” solutions to the obstacles of life.… Read More »

Celebrate the Success of Others

By | February 7, 2018

[February 7, 2018]  I was a Private in the U.S. Army due for a promotion in rank.  My Company Commander made the promotion into a special event that I never forgot and thereafter used his philosophy to reward achievements of my soldiers. Good leaders go the extra mile and celebrate the success of others. When leaders celebrate the success of others, it… Read More »

War, Politics, the Media, and Leadership

By | February 6, 2018

[February 6, 2018]  It has been said many times that war is simply a continuation of politics by other means.  Actually the Prussian theorist Carl von Clausewitz wrote it in his book On War (1832) and is one of the most important treatises on political-military analysis and strategy ever written.  Clausewitz, like so many other theorists closely links war,… Read More »

Political Leadership: Heather MacDonald

By | February 5, 2018

[February 5, 2018] Just a reminder that this section on political leadership is part of an on-going series in which I focus on new and controversial ideas. Today, my focus is on Heather MacDonald, Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor of City Journal. She, like so many others on this site, is provocative in her ideas;… Read More »

Leaders! It’s not about You

By | February 3, 2018

[February 3, 2018] That’s what I was told as my girlfriend pinned my Second Lieutenant bars on me at our commissioning ceremony. “Leaders! It’s not about you,” the commandant of the ROTC program spoke to the new military officers at Penn State University. Not about you? The message was unclear but later, after I had more experience, his… Read More »