“Adventures are not all pony rides in May sunshine.” So JRR Tolkien warned Bilbo Baggins – and the rest of us – early in “The Hobbit.” Like Friendships, and Marriages and everything else, relationships are easy when the sun is shining, when, as the poet Robert Browning would tell us: “God’s in his heaven, all’s […]

There’s a strange fascination in warfare with the idea of killing the enemy’s leader. We often hear talk that: “if General X” (Sultan/Pharoah/King – pick you character in history) was killed, the war would end (or never take place). The favorite such figure is Hitler; if only he’d been killed, the war would never have […]

The philosopher David Hume wrote that: “Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what […]

Imagine someone discovered a cure for all childhood cancers, but it required killing every eagle on the planet. Would you choose eagles or children? Everyone seems to know environmental activist Greta Thunberg these days, a 16 year old (17 in January 2020) high school student. Ms Thunberg insists the world is on the brink, that […]

The recent Washington Post (WP) expose on Afghanistan tells a hard tale: more than 2,300 US soldiers killed, another 1,100 Allied soldiers, some 3,400 US contractors, and some 150,000 Afghans (including some 42,000 Taliban) killed, and a bill of almost $1 trillion dollars to DOD. The Institute for Spending Reform estimates that Afghanistan has cost […]

During my first year in the Navy, onboard USS Ranger, I saw something that I have never forgotten: an officer, a fellow just a few years older than I, sent home because he couldn’t make the cut. LT X, had made it through the F-14 replacement squadron – though I later learned he had made […]

Thanksgiving is upon us and most of us are taking some time to think about things we have for which we are grateful. The list is long. I start by thanking God for his mercy, thanking my parents (and three brothers) for bringing me up properly, and thanking my friends for keeping me out of […]

In George Washington’s “Rules of Civility,” we are advised to “Show not yourself glad at the misfortune of another, though he were your enemy.” That advice isn’t really heeded in Washington, nor has it been for the last 45 years or so, but it remains good advice. And in that light I’ve been looking for […]

Numbers tell interesting stories; some people become quite fascinated with them. In monitoring government programs perhaps the key number that will be quoted is how much money went into the program. I suppose the analogy in the private sector is market capitalization, or, more simply, how much is something worth, how much wealth has been […]

Editor’s Note, 04 November 2019: this is timely and goes in front of the roll-out of the Mac Showers biography trilogy which has slipped to tomorrow. – Vic . Author’s Note: Several long talks with a couple of old friends (Navy and Marine) this week – we are much worse than it looks I’m afraid… […]