About

I am The Gentleman, and I am a real person. I am a retired United States Army veteran who served in combat through the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. I also spent considerable non-combat time in Europe, other parts of the Middle East, and Africa. I am a husband and a father. I learned a good deal from being bad at both roles before getting better at either, and I pray to forever be a work-in-progress on both counts.

I read hard books and I also pray. People have sometimes treated that as a split personality, and for much of my life, so would I have. I no longer treat them as rivals, and they now steady each other: one keeps me from superstition, the other keeps me from arrogance.

I have spent much of my life on foreign soil, both under orders and by choice. I have been a guest in other houses that did not look like mine. I was an outsider at tables where I did not know the customs, and an interloper in communities with standards of conduct of which I was woefully ignorant. That way of living gives a kind of education but it does not make a man clever. Rather, it keeps him from mistaking his own front porch for the whole country or the whole world. In my case, it spared me the ignominy of being too certain too quickly, and made me much slower to take offense.

I love my country with my eyes open.

Every word published here is mine. Every letter that comes to this desk is read by me.

The Gentleman's Desk is a study ruled by civility. The fire of Truth burns in the hearth, but it is the warmth of curiosity that must draw you nigh. This is a place for men to learn and grow. I desire readers who are willing to cultivate habits long out of style. You should be willing to take a hard piece all the way through, hear an argument out before you answer it, and answer an argument on its merits with a genuine desire to engage. Also, with true humility of spirit, we should willingly admit to being wrong in public when honesty and integrity demand it. By exercising these habits of mind and action, we can excel at the soul-satisfying work of being foundations of support for our wives, our children, and our communities.

The term Gentleman here is a standard of conduct. Not a costume and not a class.

Read it. Disagree if you must. Write back. Contempt is a poor disguise for commentary, and it will not carry weight at this desk.

The study is open and the desk is stocked. Pull up a chair.