Author: Donald Bolduc

With your shield or on it, we are called to live anchored in sacrifice, honor, duty, and respect, holding the line for the people and principles that matter most even when the cost is personal.

Skelton’s Pledge reminds us that in an age of division and political churn, our strength still comes from individual duty joined to unity, civic accountability, and a shared commitment to liberty and justice for all.

The Senate’s vote is Congress doing its job the way the Constitution intended, putting sunlight on military force and drawing a hard line against any president who thinks war powers come with no questions asked.

Dürer’s knight rides on as a reminder that leadership is measured less by the enemies at your back than by whether you keep your principles intact when politics, temptation, and fear start whispering in your ear.

What should feel like a straightforward moment of recognition too often turns into a slow, bureaucratic grind where lost awards, subjective gatekeeping, and poor communication leave deserving service members feeling dismissed instead of honored.

The tanker seizure off Venezuela, executed under a lawful warrant and powered by tight interagency teamwork from the Coast Guard, FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, and the Department of Defense, shows how the United States can hit terrorist-linked maritime networks where they move money and materiel while staying inside the lines of due process.

Trump’s National Security Strategy reads like a needless pickaxe to America’s European alliances while offering a transactional “reset” with Russia that risks trading long-standing democratic commitments and regional stability for short-term political and economic convenience.

Trump’s National Security Strategy isn’t isolationism, it’s a hard pivot toward a narrower, transactional worldview where borders and identity politics drive the threat picture, “Western civilization” becomes a tribal banner, and allies are left wondering if they’re partners or just the next line item to be renegotiated.

Zelensky’s refusal to trade away a single inch of Ukrainian soil is not stubbornness but the last solid line between a world of rules and a world where every dictator thinks they can redraw the map at gunpoint.

The American people will only continue to trust their military if its leaders meet them with the same honesty and courage we expect from every soldier who ever raised their right hand to serve.

Hard-nosed realism that trades away our commitment to democracy in favor of cutting deals with dictators is not strength; it is strategic blindness that will cost America both credibility and security.

The Trump administration’s self-branded hard-nosed realism is in practice performative isolationism that abandons allies, emboldens authoritarians, and trades American leadership for short-term political theatrics.