Marine Veteran and With Honor co-founder talks about new book

WASHINGTON (KYMA, CBS) - Rye Barcott, a Marine Veteran and co-founder of With Honor, spoke with Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation Sunday about his new book.

According to Brennan, With Honor is an organization that works to elect military Veterans and other who have dedicated themselves to public service, with the organization saying they have helped over 100 Veterans get elected in the last eight years, and there are currently 50 of them serving in Congress.

In the book, "Courage Can Can Save Us: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future," Barcott profiled five Democrats and five Republicans who have had military service as well as FBI experience.

The ten people profiled in the book are the following:

• Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.)
• Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine)
• Gov. Mikie Sherill (D-N.J.)
• Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.)
• Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.)
• Rep. John James (R-Mich.)
• Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.)
• Gov. Wes Moore (D-Md.)
• Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas)
• Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.)

When asked what made him want to write about them, Barcott said:

"I've been leading With Honor. I co-founded it with the late David Gergen and another Marine that I served with during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, about eight years ago, and through that period of time, we've helped recruit and train and help elect Veterans that take our pledge to serve with integrity, civility, and courage, including the courage to work across party lines at a difficult time to do so. Through that process, I've gotten to know many of them quite well, and so what I decided to do was select 10, an even balance of five and five, all of whom were in office at a very difficult, challenging time for the country, and really unpack where their courage came from, and then look at moments of courage, both in military service as well as in politics and elected office. Sometimes that courage is quieter, it's more of a moral courage versus a physical courage, which they may have encountered in the military, but that was the- that was my approach to this book, which I've written principally for students. I'd like to see more students being able to study courage. I've defined courage as a form of service, that it is taking risk in the service of something larger than yourself. It's not self-interested, it's serving what's referred to oftentimes as the common good."

Brennan brought up a Pew Research poll saying 17% of Americans trust the government while also bringing up a CBS News poll saying the younger generation is dispirited and are anxious about their futures.

This prompted her to ask Barcott how he will inspire them to join a system they believe is broken, to which he said:

"I think a lot of young people are, they're feeling lonely. There's a lack of a sense of purpose. One of the great things that I found through military service was that it gives you, it gives you some...a sense of something larger than yourself and a common mission with Americans from all different walks of life. So one of the key takeaways for the book is to find a route into public service, and that's one of the goals with this. The Veterans, and the book obviously focuses on Veterans, we have a partnership With Honor, the nonprofit that I lead, of which the proceeds of this book go to, it partners with Gallup every year and trust and measures the trust in veterans. And Veterans is one of the few groups within the United States, nurses is the other, that has particularly high trust across party lines. Again, I think that's because of the service mentality and that's a special thing and something that we need to, you know, safeguard."

Brennan then asked Barcott if he's worried that we are at a point where moral courage is nearly impossible to fill, and he said:

"The forces are really going against us, and most Americans want courage, but feel like they see very little of it, or none of it. And what I wanted to shine a light on is to say that this still exists. It still exists, here are 10 examples of it. It's hard. We need to celebrate it when it arises. And yeah, many concerns about the overall sort of structural factors that are making this more difficult, because people are humans, you know. We're all flawed. These 10 are not perfect. There are many things that they do that, you know, folks will disagree with by nature, because half of them are on one part side and half are on the other."

"Courage Can Save Us: Ten Extraordinary Americans and the Fight for Our Future" will be released Tuesday in bookstores and online.

To watch Brennan's full interview with Barcott, click here.