Rye Barcott, Marine veteran, co-founder of With Honor, and author of the New York Times bestseller Courage Can Save Us, joins Dean Seth Green for a conversation that is part of the Graham School’s America at 250 series. Barcott opens with a personal definition: courage is the decision to face risk in the service of the common good, distinct from bravery, which can be instinctive or self-serving. That distinction traces to his father, a Vietnam-era Marine who returned to combat after being wounded in 1965, and it carried Barcott through his own service from 2001 to 2006, co-founding CFK Africa in Nairobi’s Kibera settlement, writing his first book It Happened on the Way to War, and eventually launching With Honor alongside the late David Gergen. The organization formed in response to data showing that the share of veterans in Congress had fallen from a high of roughly 70 percent to around 20 percent, and a West Point analysis suggesting that veterans in Congress voted in a more cross-partisan way and showed higher rates of bill co-sponsorship.
Courage Can Save Us profiles ten members of Congress, five Democrats and five Republicans, each written as a mini-biography tracing early life, the choice to serve, and a defining act of political courage. The conversation moves through specific chapters: Dan Crenshaw, who lost his eye in combat and later lost a primary election to what Barcott characterizes as a campaign of false claims, and Senator Todd Young, a University of Chicago alumnus whose chapter, titled Prefer the Hard, centers on the military’s meritocratic ethos. Later segments address the role of Stoic philosophy in military leadership, General Mattis’s reading list including Marcus Aurelius and E.B. Sledge’s With the Old Breed, and the question of whether a common good can exist in a country where survey data shows 80 percent of registered partisans describe the other side as the enemy. Barcott draws a distinction between ideological and affective polarization, argues that belief in the common good and commitment to truth are inseparable, and closes with a discussion of policing, mental health, the 988 suicide hotline, and the book’s ongoing distribution to low-income schools.
Lecturer bio:
Rye Barcott is a Marine Corps veteran, social entrepreneur, and author of The New York Times bestselling book Courage Can Save US. He is co-founder and CEO of With Honor, a cross-partisan organization that fights polarization by supporting principled veteran leadership in public office. While serving in the Marines, he co-founded CFK Africa, a locally led youth leadership and public health organization based in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, Kenya. His memoir, It Happened on the Way to War: A Marine’s Path to Peace, tells the story of that work. He received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Dartmouth College.
