America is Deeply Broken (Here's How We Can Fix It) - Rye Barcott

0:00They know courage matters. We know it. It matters not only in our leaders, but it also matters in our own lives. For sure, it matters in our kids' lives. This is a total mental health crisis that we're going through. I didn't even hear the word, you know, suicide when I was growing up in junior high or high school. It wasn't even in my consciousness. And now I got kids that are in middle school. One of my kids is in sixth grade, like the first two days. She comes home and she's like, Daddy, this guy next to me who's like had a wrinkled up piece of paper and said that I feel like I can't, you know, go on with my life.

0:28And the teacher doesn't say anything. in response to it. Courage is about service. Service is about purpose. And I think that's why people are hungry for a message like this. Welcome to Open Book. I am your host, Anthony Scaramucci. Joining us today is Rye Barkat. He's the co-founder and CEO of With Honor, and he is a New York Times bestselling author. That's right. And it's about this book, actually. The title is Courage to Save Us, 10 Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future. It's a brilliant title. Ryan, congratulations on the success of the book. It's well-deserved. The book is amazing.

1:02But I want to go to your career, if you don't mind. I want to go to the veteran that you are, why you decided to serve, and then how you started with Honor and what With Honor is about before we get into this sensational book. Thanks so much, Anthony. Great to be on. We've known each other for almost 10 years. And I started With Honor about 10 years ago i co-founded it with the late david gergen who passed away one year and a day uh last year so actually his his his anniversary the passing was was is tomorrow so we're going to do a special posting on with honor for that and another veteran that i'd served with in the marine corps and this was 10 years ago and what we saw was that there was a group of vets that had served in post 9-11 that were eager to answer the call to serve again in another hardship post which is our modern politics.

1:56And they actually were running across party lines. And so we decided to set up an organization called With Honor. It's a nonprofit organization. It's got a political arm to it. Veterans who we support have to take a pledge to serve with integrity, civility, and the courage to still work across party lines, which is hard to do. But Vets in Congress used to be at a high watermark of 70%. It's down to about 20 % now. We support not every veteran. Not all are sort of part of the solution, but as a group, veterans tend to act in a more cross-partisan way. We like to say cross-partisan because we support independence as well.

2:32And all the proceeds from this book, every dime that I bring in, and fortunate that it's been on the list now for four weeks, goes to the organization. And what the organization does is it recruits, it trains, it then supports, and then it helps bring cohesion and have accountability to veterans across party lines, particularly in the U.S. Congress. There are about 50 of them. They still trust each other. They often don't agree on issues, but they trust each other, and they're able to work on some difficult things. And frankly, they just treat each other with respect and dignity, which is in scarcer supply these days as is courage.

3:10Okay. I mean, listen, I think you came to the first SALT conference in 2019. Is that correct? That's right. That's right. With Mikey Sherrill. Mikey Sherrill, who is now the governor of New Jersey. I've had a chance to meet her at several conferences and love her. I mean, she's doing great work. You obviously have her here in the book. You've got so many others. But I want to go to what it means to be a humanitarian. Because I think character does matter, right? You've got loads of it. You've got buckets of it. And you write about character mattering in the book. But really, if you are a public servant in the right kind of way, you've got to be a humanitarian.

3:58So define that for me. Tell me what that means. Well, thanks. I mean, I got that principally or I think I try to aspire to humanitarianism thanks to my mother, who's a nurse. Nurses happen to be the one profession that ranks higher in trust than veterans in the United States. Almost everything else is in the gutter. But the commonality that they have is service. And, you know, at its core, this is a book about courage, but it is about service because courage is service. courage is the decision to take a risk, sometimes to face fear, but the decision to take a risk to serve the common good. It can be many things.

4:37It can be your family. It can be your friends. It can be the Marine to your right or left. It can be your country, but it is fundamentally not yourself. Now, I believe that humans are self-interested. Don't get me wrong, but if you pursue a path of service, what you end up doing is you focus less on yourself. You find purpose, and that brings a lot of meaning to individual lives and frankly is better for the country. So right now, less than 2 % of Americans serve in either military or in civilian capacities. It's a slightly larger percentage when you broaden out to some great ways of serving that are not in government, of course, nonprofits, nursing, I mentioned teaching, et cetera.

5:22But fewer and fewer folks are serving and more and more Americans, particularly younger Americans, which was the audience principally that I wrote this book for high school and college students are finding paths of service. And listen, you can still find a path of service too while you're in a business. And frankly, business can be a great source of purpose. So don't get me wrong. I'm not like exclusionary to a piece, but it is first and foremost, less of a worship of yourself. you know we are in such like a me worship culture and that is uh just it's just toxic for everybody it's toxic for yourself it's toxic for everybody around you so humanitarianism is about service right it can take many different forms but it is it is fundamentally saying hey listen uh i'm gonna i'm gonna uh i'm gonna i'm gonna put myself at risk in order to assist others and at its core Or that is what the military is about.

6:21You know, 18, 19 years old is when most folks are signing up and they are signing a piece of paper that says that if I'm so called, I will give my life. I will give my life. I may never have kids. I may never have a wife. I may give my life for my country. Thank you for tuning in to Open Book. And if you haven't already, please hit the subscribe button below so that you're the first to know when our new episodes drop each week. We've got a lot more coming. And now back to the show. It's very, very compelling. You and I are at the 250th anniversary of the founding of the nation. I feel like the book is well-timed.

7:01Before we started and went live on the show, you said you had been working on the book for three years. And it seems like kismet, like you've got the book launched right at the perfect time. So tell me what you think is going on in America right now as to why the book has been so well received, Brian. Well, I think there are two things. And first of all, I feel fortunate for it. You know, you just don't know. I've only done one other book that was 15 years ago called It Happened on the Way to War. And my wife jokes that the years that I'm writing are the grumpiest years. The grumpiest years around me, which is saying a lot.

7:42But but but I think, listen, this is a book about courage in different forms. First of all, it's where courage comes from. So I profiled 10 Americans that I served with, five Democrats, five Republicans, you know, hard to find. But we're actually working with them. And these are folks that I know. And so they opened up their lives. I went in many cases when their parents were still alive. I visited their parents. I went to their hometowns. I met with their siblings. I got to really know them and built trust over years. And trust takes time. to build, but it can be, of course, demolished very quickly.

8:14But the trust that we built enabled me to get real stories, real profiles that I think, you know, is written in such a way. My goal with the writing is that the pages move. And I'm specifically got high school and college students in mind. So the pages move. The stories are interesting. There's a narrative arc, but they are fundamentally true. They're not like just hagiographies. They show that we're all flawed as human beings. Courage is not a static thing. You know, we aspire towards courage. Most of our lives, we don't live with a lot of courage necessarily in your average life. And I differentiate between courage and bravery, where bravery is often what we train in the military.

8:55It can be instinctive. It can be self-serving. But courage is always a decision to serve that common good, what Marcus Aurelius called the common good. And so why is this connecting right now? Well, I think there are two things. The first is the country, right? We are in this place of, you know, bitter division, but also like it doesn't feel real, right? I mean, for a lot of Americans, it's like, okay, this place, D.C., doesn't work for me, but I'm still in my community and we're still Americans and we still believe in this country. And a lot of the polarization is actually driven by the algorithms that are feeding our brains and feeding our kids' brains with outrage and nonsense.

9:48I mean, just flat-out lies. So I think Americans are eager to find some different path. And this is an example, I think a hopeful example, but also an honest one, that it's still there. You know, the last place that you may think about for courage, and it's understandable, would be Congress. Like the last. But what I show here is that here are 10 examples of people that are in the arena that have served before, that have put their lives on the line, that have served before, worn the cloth of the nation, and are continuing to serve with a different form of courage oftentimes than they faced in the military.

10:28because military, it's often about physical courage. You know, it's what you think about. You think about, you know, going into battles and risking your life. But the acquire form of courage, which can be just harder to muster for many, including myself, is moral courage. You know, when your friendships are on the line, your reputation's on the line, it's easy to go with the flow. It's hard to like break from the tribe. And so what I try to do is show, hey, where did that come from? And then here are some specific moments like in in it. I mean, we started with Mikey Sherrill. Mikey Sherrill is the first ever woman veteran to be elected governor.

11:09You know, the first ever one. And she was very shy growing up. I remember when I sat down with her father, father said, listen, she would she would not talk to kids. She was very anxious. We were moving around from from city to city. but then one day when in like third or fourth grade she came home and she was like mommy daddy i'm tired of being anxious i'm just gonna start smiling and so she did and then she decided that she was gonna fly it because she had a a hero and her grandfather who had flown in nazi occupied behind enemy lines in nazi occupied germany was shot down she says when she's like yeah i don't 10 years old 11 years old she's gonna fly she's gonna go to the naval academy she sets that as a goal and she goes and does it.

11:54The first action that she took in Congress had guts because she said she wasn't going to vote for Nancy Pelosi, a Speaker of the House. And that was like kind of popular on the campaign trail, but it sure wasn't popular when she got in and she stuck to her word. A lot of the others didn't, but she stuck to her word because it was her word. You know, That meant something. And that came with some cost. So there are many examples like that, and they're across party lines, but that's fundamentally what this book's about. And I think Americans are really eager to say they know courage matters. We know it.

12:31It matters not only in our leaders, but it also matters in our own lives. And for sure, it matters in our kids' lives. I mean, it's crazy. This is a total mental health crisis that we're going through. I mean, I didn't even hear the word suicide when I was growing up. junior high or high school. It wasn't even in my consciousness. And now I got kids that are in middle school. Sixth grade, one of my kids is in sixth grade, like the first two days. She comes home and she's like, Daddy, this guy next to me who's like 12, you know, had a wrinkled up piece of paper and said that I don't feel, I feel like I can't, you know, go on with my life.

13:08And the teacher doesn't say anything in response to it. So courage is about service. Service is about purpose. And I think that's why people are hungry for a message like this. Yeah, Lucinda, the message is very resonating. You know, Dick Gephardt, I think you may remember him. He was a former Democratic majority leader in the House from the great state of Missouri, lovely guy, 85 years old, was a bipartisan guy, got heavy criticism in the early 90s for his bipartisan cooperation with George Herbert Walker Bush. He once said to me, and I want you to respond to it. The exact quote is, Anthony, we are in politics because politics is a substitution for warfare.

13:53In other words, meaning if we weren't political and backstabbing each other and fighting with each other verbally, we'd be on the battlefield shooting at each other. I want you to react to that statement. What do you think of that? Because you've been in both places. You've been in the world. Yeah. I mean, it's really interesting too coming from Gephardt because he was somebody that would that would that stuck to his principles and would fight but he also knew how to like actually get something done and like you know and and and eventually say hey listen you know in order to get something durable done especially in a place like congress it's got to have bipartisan support otherwise it's just going to be you know sort of fleeting so what do i think about the actual the comment on this it reminds me of a great book called war is a force that gives us meaning by Chris Hedges.

14:38And I do think that there is like a natural pull from the human condition to conflict. And that's part of the reason why our algorithms are going nuts on the conflict because it works, right? It sells. But leadership is about being able to like rise above that. And frankly, especially for those that served in the military, there's this great study that's out there by a guy named Peter Fever. He's a professor at Duke. He looked at military members in decision-making positions in national security for the last hundred years. And basically what he found was that most military members are less interested in using force to solve problems, especially those that are combat vets and have seen, you know, what happens when the dogs of war slip.

15:24You know, the cost to prevent violence is always easier than, or is always less than the actual cost to intervene. And we're certainly in a moment right now with that, where foreign escapades after going through these so-called forever wars are essentially an 80-20 issue in opposition to them. So I do think conflict is part of the human condition. And I also think that leadership is about being able to recognize that, pick your battles, and figure out how to frankly, again, put the interests of something larger than yourself ahead of you. I think, you know, the thing that impressed me the most is the trueness of the stories.

16:10And so what do I mean by that? I've been in politics a long time, and a lot of people fabricate their stories right. They inflate their resumes. They inflate their time on the battlefield, or they'll say something about themselves that isn't frankly true. But, you know, you have picked people who are true blue. So, you know, you pick people to me who are the Eagle Scouts or the Eagle Girl or Boy Scouts of our society. And so how did that happen? What was the criteria? How did they find you? How did With Honor find them? You know, give me a little bit of the backstory. Well, it's, it's, it's, thanks.

16:50It's over nine years of working with these particular members and they're 10 out of, you know, more than we've screened more than 2000. We've supported more than a hundred. So the commonality that they all have is that they're willing to lose. They're actually willing to lose their office. So it's not going to be – and there are certain red lines that they'll cross in order to do so. I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example that also speaks to your comment about not always being – not inflating the resume and just speaking the truth. Brian Fitzpatrick, who's a Republican from Philadelphia.

17:26He's the only member in this book that's not military. He was FBI, and he helped establish an anti-corruption unit in Ukraine, in the FBI. He also served in Iraq, in the FBI. And I had to, like, tease this story out that starts this chapter. But it is a crazy story. His first assignment in the FBI, he was given a case that was assumed to be a cold case. It was an anti-corruption case that went all the way up to the Speaker of the House in New York. But they had been working it for like five years. They'd gone nowhere. Brian, it's an individual named Brian McLaughlin. He's a New York state assemblyman at the time.

18:06He'd stolen millions from the government, but they couldn't bust him. Fitzpatrick spends three years on the case, is able to turn him, and he starts rolling up all of these different guys all the way up to the Speaker of the House eventually falls on these anti-corruption cases. Well, Fitzpatrick had never spoken publicly about this. He just hadn't spoken publicly about this. So I asked them for permission to talk to McLaughlin. And they met for the first time after 15 years. He put him away in jail for like eight years. But he maintained his humanity with him. I remember he told me that he went to his kids.

18:42One of his kids was eight years old when they went to prison. And he looked at the girl, the eight-year-old, and he said, you know what? your dad has made mistakes but he's a good person and one day he's gonna walk you down the aisle and mclaughlin never forgot that and uh and he has this amazing quote the first time i met him at like 6 30 in a starbucks in manhattan at the end of the meeting and you know i'm recording the meeting with his permission he says i got one hand and on this hand i got my mother my father my brother my kids and there's brian fitzpatrick this is a guy that put him to jail and he's never seen him so they got together for the first time like three weeks three months ago when we were because of the book book project so that speaks to his character but fitzpatrick has also taken real stands on political courage you know he was one of the only people in his party to vote against It's a signature bill.

19:40He was holding the line on Ukraine issue in particular. Like I said, he served there. It's near and dear to his heart. It's part of the fight for freedom. He traveled with our organization with honor and bipartisan delegation to Ukraine, all the way out to Kharkiv, the front lines, like pretty dangerous place. And so he believed it. And the way that it works, as you know, because you've been in this business, is it starts with your friends and they're like, hey, Brian, what are you doing? And then it's the subcommittee chair. And then it's the committee chair. And then it's the deputy whip and then it's the whip and then it's the deputy speaker.

20:12Then it's the speaker and then it's the president. And they're all on the phone. And are you holding the line? It's hard to hold the line. And after that one particular vote, he doesn't show up to caucus meetings anymore. You know, but he took a stand and he's taken other stands like that. And I just think that it's easy in the United States right now to rip people apart. Right. Just rip them to shreds to not have heroes. Just it's just like the natural instinct. And again, it's also what our algorithms are feeding us into. Algorithms that, by the way, are not just American creations. I mean, they're foreign entities at work here as well, dividing us.

20:49That is happening. But here are 10 examples. Again, not perfect people, but folks that can be emulated. And certainly you can appreciate their service, their call to service, and their ability to make an impact. I'll give you one other example. We're talking about mental health. The first bill that we really worked when we started this organization, we only had 20 veterans in the caucus eight years ago, and we teamed up with my friend Seth Moulin. Seth's the one in the book that I know the most because we went to the basic school together. He pulled four combat tours in Iraq. And Seth had the courage to say when he was in public office that, hey, I've needed help.

21:32You know, I've needed help. I've struggled with PTSD. I've needed help. And that takes guts to say it's an important thing to say. And so that helped set the stage to pass the night to initiate and pass the 988 National Suicide Hotline. He got he helped get it done. We were there with him. It was across party lines. There was another veteran who's a he's a Democrat. There's one who was a Republican that helped push it through. And that's another example of, you know, courage can take many different forms. And it's just it's just the essential that virtue and value, I believe. There's something in the book that really reached me, and that was about isolation.

22:14That was about loneliness. That was about what it really means to be a leader, the burden of responsibility. In politics, you and I both know this. I'm sure this is also true on the battlefield. You're making decisions, and some of these decisions are, wow, this is going to be really bad, and this is going to be slightly less bad. It's not like, you know, so binary, this is a great decision and that's a bad one, you know. And talk just a little bit about that. Talk a little bit about how you and your friends and colleagues and the people you're writing about handle that type of stress and that type of decision.

22:50Well, the worst moments are the ones where your decision hurts somebody and you can't take it back. You know, Kipling wrote the poem, The Unforgiving Minute is from Kipling's poem. it's a it's a title of a friend of mine craig malaney's book it's a beautiful book and craig talks about this moment he's an he's in an army afghanistan that and you make a decision and that decision you own it there's nothing you can do to roll back and god forbid if somebody gets hurt killed and it was the wrong damn decision and that's the type of stuff that is just it's really really hard to like it's just like a boulder that you carry along along causes some of the pts ASD though as well, right?

23:33You know, you're, you, you have a little bit of survivor guilt over things that go on. And unfortunately, a lot of those things are outside of your control, even though if you think they may be inside your control, you know? Yeah. And, and listen, I mean, you know, the, it, it really is. I mean, I'm married to a child psychologist. So, so I have a benefit here of, of benefiting from her expertise, but it, you know, it is essential to be able to have some outlet for that. I mean, it just is. Unless you're, you know, some people are able to really, you know, carry that boulder forever, but it's not the healthy thing.

24:08Eventually it kind of comes out. And so loneliness is, the antidote to loneliness is to be able to actually have real conversations outside of the screens. And frankly, fundamentally, those conversations are easier if you're actually doing something, right? I mean, especially for guys, it's like, I don't want to just pick up the phone and talk to talk. We got to do something. So, you know, pick something, go do something and preferably do something that's fun, but also maybe help somebody, you know, that can that can be a way to to address things. And and then, you know, just recognizing that when people do a courageous act, that that can inspire others.

24:54I've got on my website for the book, Courage and Save Us, I've got a new kind of platform where folks can submit a moment of courage that inspired them. Not a single person has talked about their own moment of courage. Every single person has talked about something that they observed. It's often from a parent or loved one, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's from a stranger. I had this student that wrote the other day and he said, hey, I am like physically large. I mean, I'm a freaking beast. I'm a linebacker. I'm big. And this punk was picking on this kid that was smaller. And the kid that was and there was this kid that was smaller that broke it up.

25:36And I was sitting there and I wasn't doing anything about it. But this kid did. And that that bothered me, but it also inspired me. And so, you know, again, like the courage moments can come in very different shapes and sizes, but seek them out because they make you better and they make the people around you better. You're going to run for office. You know, I'm not doing it for that for that. I get it asked a lot because it is in politics. It's kind of a nice way to I find it's a nice way to to frankly serve and do something worthwhile running with honor, working with people that are in the arena.

26:14but frankly also having the luxury of being able to be more entrepreneurial with my time so i i'm not planning to run for office i'm probably unelectable uh like truly as somebody that supports uh people from both tribes that is not where the uh the country is but it's also like i'm not seeking that um that as a a box check or or a sense of like self-validation and i ended the book with two veterans that are leaving office, Jerry Golden and Don Bacon. And I mentioned earlier in the podcast, I think a commonality is just the healthiest thing with somebody that's not only in elected leadership, but in a leadership position is entrusted in a leadership position, has that privilege, whether it's running a company or a nonprofit or in government, it is a privilege to have responsibility and to be in a leadership position.

27:13Sure, it can be a burden as well but it is fundamentally privileged but both of those guys are leaving office on their own volition and Jared Golden had this really powerful line I included in the chapter he said you know the fear I have is not of losing it's of winning you know his house is like two minutes away from where a mass shooting happened in Maine and he had the guts to take a change his position on an issue and say he was wrong after that happened. And he's also had been just both of them, both Don Bacon and Jared Golden, like many of our elected folks these days, get a lot of threats.