While traveling in Europe during December 2025 I visited three countries. That makes a total of 46 countries I have been privileged to set foot in over the course of my life, not to mention all seven continents and each of our fifty states. A friend recently asked if I had any takeaways or words of wisdom from all these travels and interactions with people across the country and planet.
Perhaps the most universal takeaway was best voiced by Tony Blair, who served as British Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, in his July 2003 remarks to Congress. “Anywhere, anytime ordinary people are given the chance to choose,” he said, “the choice is the same: freedom, not tyranny; democracy, not dictatorship; the rule of law, not the rule of the secret police.”
As for that 46th country, it was Estonia. The other two: Sweden and Finland, the newest North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members. All three countries are ramping up military spending, along with aid to Ukraine, in anticipation of Russian President (and murdering despot) Vladimir Putin’s threats to restore the old borders of the Soviet Union, which fell in 1991. Estonia shares a border with Russia and was occupied by the former Soviet Union from 1939 to 1991. Estonians lived under the yoke of Soviet oppression for over fifty years and have been preparing for the worst since Russia invaded Ukraine.
“It is horrifying that some legislators follow the lead of our delusional 45th [now 47th] president in supporting Putin, a murderous authoritarian leader who has no regard for national sovereignty or human life,” Ellen Moore wrote in the March 1, 2022, Grand Junction Daily Sentinel. “It is appalling that anyone would support authoritarianism … We take what we have for granted. Ask a Ukrainian or an Estonian or Lithuanian or any other former Soviet Bloc citizen what freedom means to them.”
This serves as a reminder that freedom isn’t free, as our American freedoms are being pilloried by a lawless Supreme Court majority, President Trump, and his billionaire-buzzard cabinet.
While visiting Tallinn, Estonia, I toured the Museum of Occupations And Freedom along with the KGB Prison Cells Museum, in a building which formerly housed one of the most notorious and feared prisons during the Soviet Occupation.
“This exhibition is about the cruelty of … the KGB, and the suffering of people who were imprisoned, tortured, and murdered here,” an interpretative sign explained. “While the KGB Cells serves as a somber memorial, this exhibition honours the courage, strength, endurance, and hope of the victims who perished and survived.”
Unfortunately, we’re drifting dangerously close to that kind of despotism here in the U.S.
“As a retired Air Force officer, I swore an oath to defend the Constitution. That oath didn’t mention a political party, a specific person, or a monarch,” Lt. Colonel (Ret.) and South Dakota U.S. Senate candidate Brian Bengs wrote in his October 2025 opinion piece, “Why I Went to the ‘No Kings’ Rally in Rapid City.” “What we’re seeing now is a dangerous trend where too many politicians put loyalty to one man or one party ahead of the rule of law and the foundational truths of this republic that make it worth defending.”
In the months before the 2024 presidential election, I wrote an opinion piece for Colorado Newsline warning about the dangers to democracy from Trump and his cabal of billionaire buzzards, detailed in their Project 2025 document. “If anyone has any doubts that American law is now just politics (i.e., the Supreme Court is captured), consider that nowhere in the Constitution is it ever suggested that the holder of the highest office may have free rein to break the law,” I explained.
“In fact, it explicitly states that public officials may be subject to ‘indictment, trial, judgment and punishment, according to law,’” I added. “This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America, but Trump’s Supreme Court has paved the way for him to be one, if we let him.”
In his July 2003 speech to Congress, Tony Blair added, “The spread of freedom is the best security for the free. It is our last line of defense and our first line of attack.”
As a former Air Force officer, I too took an oath to defend our freedom and Constitution from “enemies foreign and domestic.” And I haven’t spent a lifetime traveling the country and world, plus 15 years of military training and service, to let a bunch of billionaire buzzards and oligarch-wannabes waltz in and dismantle our great country and democracy. Like the free peoples of Estonia, Finland, and Sweden, we’re not backing down.
David A. Lien of Colorado Springs, Colorado, is a former Air Force missile launch officer and author, In 2014, he was recognized by Field & Stream as a “Hero of Conservation” and urges action at backcountryhunters.org/get-involved/take-action. This is his personal opinion and not that of any other group/organization.
