[November 19, 2016] Most of us have been watching of late about college and university students across the United States protesting, conducting “cry-ins,” group-therapy sessions, and similar acts as a response to U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s election victory; the epitome of privilege. Students have been, if we look to the past, often on the forefront of positive change… Read More »
[November 18, 2016] When soldiers complain, we are told, that means they trust you as a leader to help them. This was not to be the case when our commander one day told us to keep quiet about the poor quality of services provided by an army contractor. We were told that it was none of our business… Read More »
[November 17, 2016] Leaders are trained to be and experienced in being proactive; aggressively pursuing missions, tasks, and goals is expected and good. Inaction is shunned like Joan of Arc who was burned at the stake in 1431. Great leadership means patience and knowing when to employ the precise timing of rare, aggressive action. “Patience is not an… Read More »
[November 16, 2016] Most people that I know from Europe or the Americas care nothing about the city of Mosul, the on-going war in Iraq, or the war’s effect on global terror. A few of them have never even heard of the city and their ignorance was a surprise to me after it being in the news. The… Read More »
[November 15, 2016] If there’s ever been a group of leaders stereotyped as falling into the trap of groupthink, it’s the military. Groupthink, however, is real and is a leader’s curse to be avoided like a pestilence of locusts. The recent U.S. election is a classic case of the media, pollsters, and political experts who fell for groupthink… Read More »
[November 14, 2016] While waiting to vote this past week, Election Day Tuesday, I struck up a conversation with an older gentleman and his wife. He was a Korean War veteran, she a retired state judge, both were vivid reminders of how much our older generation still has to contribute. While none of us volunteered who we would… Read More »
[November 13, 2016] The United States of America is an unusual nation in many ways; including a short and sometimes violent history, a strong belief in democracy, freedom, and liberty, and Judeo-Christian values. There was a time however that it was a nation that did not look beyond its borders and it explains why the government passed what… Read More »
[November 12, 2016] As a U.S. Army Private (the very lowest rank), I had the dubious task one day of escorting our new Lieutenant around to meet all the unit’s soldiers on our military base. The location was small because it was in West Germany and it had been a World War II German Army ammunition depot …… Read More »
[November 11, 2016] Speeches sometimes have good information in them, sometimes the speaker is actually good, and sometimes both come together for remarkable experience. I don’t personally believe that I’ve reached that pinnacle but nothing will stop me from trying. For Veterans Day my speech at an upstate New York college is presented here in full. The speech… Read More »
[November 10, 2016] The first election I can remember as a young child was when John F. Kennedy (Democrat) ran against Rich Nixon (Republican) in 1960 and won. Rarely am I any longer surprised about election results but I had bought into current predictions of all the pollsters, political pundits, news reports, etc. that Hillary Clinton would easily… Read More »