Where Courage Lives: Rye Barcott On Servant Leadership In The AI Age

Rye Barcott is someone who is known for applying U.S. military experience in an unusual way – toward the coherence of civic values, and in service to overarching concepts that are more about cooperation than violence.

The leader of With Honor, an organization promoting bipartisan cooperation by supporting military veterans in elected office, Barcott has been working in this space for over a decade. But a new book, “Courage Can Save USs,” outlines the principles that are involved in a way that is clear, and compelling. By his own count, nearly fifty With Honor veterans now serve in Congress, Democrats and Republicans who have pledged to work across party lines.

Starting with a visceral anecdote about Barcott’s father’s service, and some thoughts from his own, the book goes on to profile, in depth, ten Americans now holding elective office: five Democrats and five Republicans, nine of them military veterans and one a former FBI agent. In office, each has taken the With Honor pledge to serve with integrity, civility, and courage.

The result is an eye-opening look at America’s civic structure taking on big questions: who are we? Where are we headed? What principles will improve the civic cohesion of the country through the challenges of tomorrow?

Obviously, AI has a lot to do with all of this. We are going to need that coherence, that dedication to principles, to preserve what is human as digital life develops. We’ll need a compass, so to speak, more than ever.

With that in mind, I wanted to talk a little about what’s there in the pages of Barcott’s book.

Profiles in Courage

The Essential Conflict

Reading these chapters, you can see how each person’s career develops in the context of fiercely maintained rivalry between two very different American political groups.

Kelly himself explains, as quoted in the book:

Barcott, in fact, does that with each chapter, from the beginning to the end, and the backdrop of the book is a major part of the story.