The Art of Manliness - #182： Continuing the Mission of Service and Brotherhood

00:00:00.000 right mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so by some

00:00:18.340 estimates there are now 2.5 million u.s veterans of the iraq and afghanistan wars and unfortunately

00:00:22.640 in the media they're often portrayed in a negative light i mean the focus is typically on

00:00:26.200 the mental health issues the ptsd the increasing suicide rates the problems at the va which is

00:00:31.240 true it's happening it's a travesty we should be doing something about and we shouldn't ignore it

00:00:34.680 but what often gets overlooked in the media are these untold stories of veterans who are coming

00:00:39.140 home from iraq and afghanistan and continuing their mission of service to their country as civilians

00:00:44.840 and my guest today wrote a book highlighting some of these untold stories his name is joe klein he's

00:00:49.760 a columnist at time magazine and he's the author of a new book called charlie mike and we'll talk

00:00:54.640 about what that means if you're a military you probably know what that means we'll talk about

00:00:59.020 what it means if you don't and in it he highlights two veterans groups one is a team rubicon formed by

00:01:04.260 some former combat marines where they go do disaster relief around the world using other

00:01:09.080 combat veterans and the other one is a mission continues which was founded by a former podcast

00:01:14.100 guest of ours eric gritens he's a navy seal where they fund community service projects done for

00:01:20.500 done by veterans of all of different branches of the military and during this interview we talk

00:01:26.020 about the history of these organizations what exactly they do the men behind it the stories behind

00:01:30.740 it and we also talk about what civilians can learn from these organizations of how service

00:01:36.040 can actually help us spiritually emotionally socially mentally physically really great podcast

00:01:42.840 so without further ado joe klein and charlie mike

00:01:45.640 joe klein welcome to the show it's good to be here uh so your latest book is called charlie mike

00:02:00.860 a true story of heroes who brought their mission home and you highlight these two veterans organizations

00:02:06.480 that are primarily made up of veterans of the iraq and afghanistan wars who the goal of these

00:02:12.520 missions is unique they they get veterans to do community service disaster relief an effort to

00:02:17.280 help the veterans transition to civilian life but also to help the community at large i'm curious how

00:02:22.740 did you get keyed in on these two groups and why did you feel like you need to write a book about it

00:02:27.220 well it's a it it's it's kind of a long story it begins on 9-11 for me when i i had just retired from

00:02:36.300 journalism um and uh but i felt the need to come back and uh i've spent most of my time since

00:02:44.640 9-11 uh you know learning islam learning uh uh the region learning the military from the top down

00:02:53.660 and um and learning u.s intelligence and what happened was um i embedded with our troops in iraq and

00:03:01.520 afghanistan uh and uh and i saw that what they were doing was for the first time really in in the

00:03:10.280 history of our military governing towns under fire uh i especially saw that in afghanistan where you'd

00:03:17.440 see a succession of young captains i kept on going back to this one town uh just outside of kandahar

00:03:23.920 and i'd see these 30 year old captains uh leading a company of 130 men uh and uh you know crowdsourcing

00:03:33.320 the town asking people what they wanted us to build for them uh governing the town protecting the people

00:03:40.060 and uh one day i was watching this uh this captain uh jeremiah ellis um trying to deal with a

00:03:50.120 difficult situation with the town council which was utterly corrupt and he was doing it you know

00:03:56.240 under fire in a in a different language in one of the poorest countries in the world and i figured if

00:04:03.700 he could do all that here he could probably go home to iowa and run for governor and so um i took that

00:04:10.220 idea to to general petraeus who had been my mentor teaching me counterinsurgency tactics um and and i said

00:04:18.620 did you ever think that the new training that you've given the u.s army to do this kind of stuff

00:04:24.240 um is going to have an effect when they come home that maybe they're going to come home pointed toward

00:04:30.180 entrepreneurial things uh because they have a lot of decision-making power in the military

00:04:35.740 that that that soldiers and marines hadn't had before but also it's going to point them toward public

00:04:41.880 service and he said um no i hadn't but then you know that makes sense and he began to look around

00:04:50.440 the country for me for various people who were um you know who would who were coming home and doing

00:04:57.380 good things and uh naturally that search led me to eric wrighton's and the mission continues

00:05:03.500 and uh and uh and also to um uh to team rubicon uh uh which which started because uh uh jake wood

00:05:13.720 uh who's a marine sergeant um uh uh you know started as a mission continues fellow so um that's how

00:05:24.320 that's how i found them um and we could talk a little bit more about about who eric and jake are

00:05:30.640 um but it's only that's only the beginning of the story because of what i've what i've since learned

00:05:36.500 over the last four years of interviewing um you know hundreds of veterans and people involved in

00:05:43.060 these organizations is that they have something to tell us civilians about how to be citizens and

00:05:50.640 about how to create community and how to and how to be happier yeah and i'd love to get into that

00:05:56.160 because i think it's really interesting because as i was reading the book and i saw

00:06:00.200 the transformation that happened in these uh the lives of some of these veterans because these

00:06:05.200 organizations like i need this too like i could use that i'm not in the military um well let's get

00:06:10.400 specific so you start off the book talking about jake wood um this was 2010 when the earthquakes hit

00:06:17.400 haiti devastation and here's a former marine and he decided out of the blue to just go down there

00:06:24.360 and do something um what compelled them to do that one really important statistic that that we should

00:06:30.760 all be aware of and that is that returned 90 percent of returning veterans say they want to continue

00:06:38.120 their service in their communities which distinguishes them from every other generation of u.s military

00:06:44.580 um and you know part of the reason they feel that way is that they all volunteered this is an all

00:06:51.240 volunteer force and uh so jake wood after uh you know two tours in uh one in iraq and one in afghanistan

00:07:01.460 uh second one is a scout sniper um and uh you know jake had been a football player for the

00:07:09.040 university of wisconsin he was dean's list at the university of wisconsin he had six operations on one

00:07:15.140 of his feet um and he uh volunteered to be a grunt in the marines uh and when he came out uh he was

00:07:23.780 filling out his uh mba applications at various uh universities and he's watching the tv one day and

00:07:30.380 he sees the haiti earthquake and he calls a bunch of his friends and say so let's go down there and help

00:07:35.000 and um the amazing thing is that um that they put together uh a couple of doctors as part of this

00:07:45.240 team uh and the jesuits help them with medical supplies and within four days of jake sitting on

00:07:53.100 his couch in santa monica and coming up with the idea four days later they're running the largest

00:07:59.760 emergency room in the country of haiti at the university hospital in port-au-prince and um

00:08:06.140 what jake saw and his partner um will mcnulty saw was that not only were they not only did their

00:08:16.540 military skills um make them very efficient when it came to uh delivering delivering services you know

00:08:24.800 in in what was practically a war zone uh because of the devastation they also realized that the act

00:08:33.020 of giving and the act of serving was having a wonderful almost euphoric effect on them and so

00:08:41.940 team rubicon was born yeah and the story of how team rubicon came to bat it was amazing because like

00:08:47.040 he actually tried to go through official channels first like he went to the red cross and said well no

00:08:51.680 you need to go you need specific training like what do you mean i'm a marine i've done this stuff

00:08:55.840 um and he just decided i'm going to you know circumvent all this red tape and just do it myself

00:08:59.960 so i guess it's that entrepreneurial um mindset that he developed in afghanistan and iraq going coming

00:09:06.260 into play that's right um and uh you know the interesting thing is that the red cross has seen the

00:09:13.460 light and they're now cooperating with team rubicon and supporting them uh as are a lot of other groups

00:09:20.240 but you know this would never have happened uh you know if it weren't for the fact uh that eric

00:09:27.840 reitens who was a navy seal um got blown up in iraq and uh and came back home and he was walking

00:09:37.180 the corridors of bethesda naval hospital with a couple of friends and um and he would ask the troops

00:09:45.380 there i've done this uh and you know you ask them what do you want to do next and uh the answer is

00:09:52.260 always the same i want to go back to my unit and you know some of these kids are very very severely

00:09:59.020 wounded um and they you know obviously they can't go back but you know when eric asked them what they

00:10:05.320 want to do after the military they would say i want to be a little league coach or i want to be a

00:10:09.420 teacher i want to help out in some way and um uh and he he had this killer line when uh when they

00:10:19.260 would say that you know we very casually and almost reflexively say thank you for your service

00:10:26.400 these days um he told these kids thank you for your service we still need you and um he could see

00:10:36.520 that that had a you know an almost physical impact on them it was it was the thing that they most

00:10:42.700 wanted to hear and the thing that they most wanted to do was to continue to be of service

00:10:47.460 and he came up with the idea of providing six-month um uh service fellowships uh to wounded veterans who

00:10:57.300 would hook up with some kind of an agency like boys and girls clubs or um have that for humanity or

00:11:04.400 uh or even the va in in their hometowns and uh and uh he would he would pay them for six months to do

00:11:12.340 it uh and as a result uh jake wood and uh and his best friend clay hunt both of whom had been

00:11:21.140 wounded overseas uh used mission continues fellowships to start um to start team rubicon that's awesome

00:11:29.800 um let's talk a little more about eric ridens um because i've had him on the podcast before

00:11:35.560 talked about his book resilience he's got a really fascinating background that i that made him

00:11:42.560 different from a lot of the other you know seals or even just officers in the military um that's unique

00:11:48.940 can you tell us a bit about his background how his background influenced how he approached warfare and

00:11:54.100 would later uh influence his work uh with the mission continues well eric eric was a stone

00:12:01.460 humanitarian i think from the moment he came out of the womb uh he spent a lot of his youth going to

00:12:08.720 refugee camps overseas um he was a terrific student and athlete uh road scholar he boxed for oxford

00:12:17.400 uh and um on one of his trips to a refugee camp uh it was in africa he saw all these young kids

00:12:27.800 who had had their arms and legs chopped off by machetes and had terrible scarring um and

00:12:36.200 he had this this epiphany um he uh he said to himself um the innocent of the world need heavily

00:12:45.520 armed moral protection and so he decided to become a navy seal it's probably the only navy seal who

00:12:52.380 ever worked for mother theresa and uh uh and and that differentiated himself it differentiated him

00:13:00.120 from a lot of the kind of um you know super macho um behavior you know that uh you know that that

00:13:09.400 the seals do in order to let off steam between very dangerous missions eric didn't drink he didn't

00:13:16.380 have tattoos um you know he was uh you know he he um he put quotes from from uh from sophocles and

00:13:25.420 and and other philosophers up on the walls of his office instead of uh pictures of girls on girls on

00:13:31.940 harleys um he was he was a very strange bird when it came to the navy seals

00:13:38.540 but his superiors thought that he was really onto something when it came to the way um seals should

00:13:47.700 behave and and what was important and he took the you know the the things that he learned as a navy seal

00:13:58.640 plus the the things that he learned academically uh to create the mission continues and it's interesting

00:14:07.140 you say that his background is unusual and it is because he is a remarkable guy but i kept i kept

00:14:13.380 on finding during the course of the research that there were an awful lot of members of the u.s

00:14:18.300 military officer corps who were classics majors or minors who studied ancient greek greece and and rome

00:14:26.840 but especially greece and it and it led to their decisions to first of all to serve but also to their

00:14:34.000 to their definition of what it is to be a citizen for these folks um citizenship is an active thing

00:14:43.320 you have to play your part um for too many americans nowadays citizenship is just being there you don't

00:14:52.440 even have to vote um you certainly don't have to do anything and uh as i watched them in action

00:15:00.400 as i joined team rubicon and mission continues on service projects um i i i began to realize that

00:15:08.880 that sense of community that the military has and that sense of service that the military has

00:15:13.740 is something that is very much lacking uh in our civilian life so yeah it seems like eric is trying

00:15:20.740 to resurrect that you know ancient idea of civic virtue that influenced the founders as well

00:15:26.240 and i thought it was interesting too how he would uh you know use the odyssey with some of these vets

00:15:32.100 and say like the you know the odyssey is as a story of a warrior returning uh and like they would

00:15:38.560 he tried to find parallels and help people the veterans apply that to their own life as well

00:15:43.060 he used it with me he said he said well if you're going to write this book he said the first thing i want

00:15:47.820 to know is um is this going to be another one of those oh woe is me veterans are just you know

00:15:56.160 victims and um and their basket cases and so on is it going to be that kind of book and i said no

00:16:01.620 it's going to be the exact opposite and then he said i want you to read the odyssey and i said why he

00:16:08.080 said well it's the first book ever written about a veteran coming home and uh and in you know um

00:16:15.460 and in mythic ways you know uh it shows the kind of challenges that uh that veterans have kind of

00:16:27.260 dialing it back from a war zone into uh civilian life i mean they don't always meet meet the cyclops

00:16:34.420 uh as as as odysseus does uh but but there are moral equivalents of the cyclops that that a lot

00:16:43.480 of them have to deal with one thing i think you did a good job conveying in the book about a mission

00:16:47.900 continues and and eric's purpose with it he seemed like he was trying to walk this fine line uh from

00:16:54.640 being like a support group right and then actually challenging these veterans to do something

00:17:00.600 right and he was and it was he had that struggle sometimes he'd like he didn't want to turn people

00:17:04.560 down because they had a problem and okay they could help them but they weren't it wasn't the type of

00:17:09.820 project that he was hoping that a mission continues so can you talk a little about that tension that he

00:17:15.080 had to deal with with a mission continues yeah well the the really interesting thing that i found

00:17:20.740 over time uh you know doing doing dozens and dozens and hundreds of hours of interviews

00:17:29.640 was that post-traumatic stress um isn't just about isn't just about what they saw and did over there

00:17:40.560 it's also about what they what they lost when they came home and uh what they lost when they came home

00:17:48.980 was a was a sense of purpose and community uh you know every day in the military uh especially if

00:17:55.960 you're on you know in a war zone you have a job to do that that involves keeping your brothers

00:18:03.060 and sisters safe uh you're part of this intense community and then you come home and nothing is

00:18:10.680 required of you at all and so what eric was finding uh at the mission continues was that in many ways

00:18:19.520 the returning veterans wanted to just serve other veterans when they came home and to continue to be

00:18:26.880 part of that community and what he wanted them to do was to take their you know the the values that

00:18:34.360 they learned in the military the remarkable efficiency that you know someone like jake wood displayed in

00:18:40.260 haiti um uh they eric wanted to take that into the community and to let people see that these folks

00:18:48.500 were not basket cases but potential leaders and and a lot of people and and a lot of veterans uh

00:18:55.300 resist that uh because they want to be with they they want to continue to be part of their their

00:19:01.280 community and that again is another thing that distinguishes them from the rest of us you know

00:19:07.580 our sense of community is dwindling and you know i'm covering the presidential campaign for time magazine

00:19:14.340 and we're trying to do democracy without citizens and you're seeing some of the very weird results of

00:19:20.240 that right right um this i guess that's you know when you're talking about uh going back to team rubicon

00:19:26.520 and you mentioned like the euphoria these men felt when they were you know in the mess of the the

00:19:32.200 haiti earthquakes i guess they were just they were recapturing that sense of camaraderie and sense

00:19:36.080 of purpose they had once had uh during battle well yeah and uh you know and and uh it can be a

00:19:44.080 little bit dangerous too i mean i did the uh the oklahoma tornado um tornadoes with team rubicon

00:19:51.560 and um at the end of every day they would have a debrief uh not just here's what we accomplished

00:19:59.120 today and here's what we want to do tomorrow but also how did you feel about it and people would

00:20:06.300 talk about how amazing it felt to be part of a military unit where you weren't getting shot at and

00:20:13.060 you didn't have to shoot anybody and um what what uh will mcnulty who is jake's partner in this

00:20:21.140 was finding is was that people would go home again after a successful deployment and they would hit a

00:20:30.560 wall they would get tremendously depressed being alone again and so um this was something that they

00:20:37.620 did uh and my instigation uh would uh which was to bring on some people from another organization

00:20:47.640 called given hour which is an organization of 6 000 psychiatrists and therapists who donate an hour a

00:20:55.640 week to a returning veteran and uh and and uh so that for the people who got you know so euphoric on a

00:21:06.180 team rubicon mission and then crashed when they came home there would be someone to talk to

00:21:10.860 and 20 percent of uh the profits should there be any um although they've already gotten uh both

00:21:19.940 organizations have gotten a share of money from charlie mike but 20 percent of the profits from charlie

00:21:25.740 mike um goes to the mission continues and team rubicon in order to um pay for their alliance

00:21:36.020 with uh uh with given hour and to make sure that there are therapeutic staff on board uh for you

00:21:43.700 know for the veterans they're dealing with that's awesome and i guess eric also noticed or he saw the

00:21:50.660 the need of bringing people together because i first at a mission continues was very it was the

00:21:54.980 fellowship program was there but it was very dispersed um decentralized um but then he decided i guess

00:22:00.800 the behest of some of the people that worked at a mission continues like we need to bring these

00:22:04.280 people together so they can have that sense of camaraderie uh that happens face to face you can't

00:22:09.940 get just talking on the internet or that's right that's that's right and um and it's taken another

00:22:15.700 step since the book uh and it's a really remarkable step uh they they now have uh serve uh service

00:22:23.060 platoons um you know dozens and dozens of them uh which are actually being funded by the wounded

00:22:29.320 warrior project in which you know if you don't want to be a mission continues fellow for six months

00:22:34.920 or if the folks there don't think you're ready for it or if you've already been a fellow for six

00:22:39.720 months but you want to continue to serve you could join one of these service platoons and

00:22:44.500 the really remarkable thing about both the mission continues and team rubicon is that they're

00:22:51.640 expanding beyond uh iraq and afghanistan veterans to include iraq veteran uh to include vietnam veterans

00:23:00.600 and uh the widows of veterans and the families of veterans and even civilians and so there's a uh team

00:23:10.760 uh the mission continues um uh come uh you know service platoon operating in the south bronx

00:23:17.080 and uh doing huge murals there and my wife and daughter-in-law who were both you know uh designers

00:23:25.880 are helping them out you know this is something that anybody can do any civilian can go and be part of

00:23:34.440 these organizations and um and and i gotta say from experience it's a really wonderful experience

00:23:42.000 yeah and it's it's bringing back that idea of making citizens active making citizenship an active

00:23:47.520 process not a passive process yeah you know at one point i was on a uh um a service project a mission

00:23:54.080 continued service project in brooklyn we were cleaning up a uh a school and i was inside painting and uh

00:24:02.160 went outside to take a break and there's john stewart with his two kids uh raking the playground

00:24:09.840 and he said what are you doing here and i said painting and uh and he lifts up his rake and he

00:24:16.800 says breaking and uh you know it's but he's the kind of guy john stewart is um who doesn't go around

00:24:25.520 bragging about it who doesn't bring a publicist with him or a photographer um he just goes out and

00:24:31.040 does it because it it feels good right i think this is this is actually good to getting the civilians

00:24:36.720 involved because it's a way to bridge the gap between uh civilians and veterans one thing i've

00:24:42.800 we've had veterans on the podcast before and we've written about veterans issues and one issue that

00:24:47.920 pops up is that civilians don't really understand what they went through and they're right civilians

00:24:52.640 are very they don't they don't want to talk about it they just they just kind of like pretend

00:24:56.160 it didn't happen they'll say thank you for your service and that's it but i guess this is an

00:24:59.360 opportunity for civilians to understand veterans what they went through and it's really important i think

00:25:05.840 that that that one of the reasons why i wrote this book why why i wrote charlie mike was uh that the

00:25:13.680 general impression that civilians have of veterans is that they're basket cases is that there's something

00:25:19.680 wrong with them anybody who you know who's gone over there is obviously you know damaged in some way

00:25:25.760 um and that is really unfair i mean it there are certainly those problems exist but you know these

00:25:38.240 people are bringing solutions home with them not just problems and uh and i think that they you're

00:25:45.120 going to see these people the this generation of veterans begin to emerge as uh national leaders eric

00:25:53.040 reitens is running for governor of uh governor of missouri you know as we speak yeah i mean this do

00:25:59.920 you think he has presidential ambitions i think eric has presidential ambitions i think there are

00:26:05.280 several veterans who are running for office who are prayer presidential ambitions i mean it's a great story

00:26:12.720 um up in massachusetts uh seth moulton congressman there um was you know uh graduated from harvard

00:26:22.160 in uh 2001 before 9 11 and he was a physics and um and philosophy major uh uh and uh he gave one of

00:26:33.360 the commencement addresses at harvard that year and announced that he was joining the marines

00:26:38.880 and he did four tours in the marines and then came home and people asked him to run for for um for

00:26:47.200 congress and uh he he was running in a district north of boston and i don't know whether you've

00:26:54.880 seen the movie spotlight um but the investigative reporter at the heart of that movie a guy by the

00:27:01.280 name of walter robinson went around um has gone around for the last 30 40 years checking the service

00:27:10.080 records of veterans who run for office because almost always they're you know they exaggerate

00:27:15.600 what they they've done they lie about it and so with two weeks before the election you know we found

00:27:22.000 out that walter robinson was investigating seth moulton and what he came out what he came up with

00:27:28.240 was that seth had received two bronze stars a navy commendation one with valor and he had never told

00:27:35.520 anybody about it he hadn't even told his parents about it and um and robinson asked him why and

00:27:42.960 seth said look i joined the military because i felt it was my civic duty i joined before the war in iraq

00:27:51.760 i disagreed with the war in iraq and i felt that my job was to take care there uh to take care of the

00:27:58.960 men under my command and i didn't succeed and so there was nothing to brag about and that gives

00:28:06.240 you a sense of the of the core set of values that this generation of veterans are bringing home with

00:28:14.240 them um you know i think seth won and he is a remarkable story and there are others uh out there

00:28:21.680 who are running and winning uh some are liberals some are conservatives most are pretty independent

00:28:27.440 um but it's one of the reasons to be optimistic about our country right and speaking of uh you

00:28:33.200 know eric i think it's interesting um i've been following his campaign he's kind of infusing his

00:28:39.360 campaign with this ethos that he started at uh mission continues um by he's at campaign stops they

00:28:45.360 do service projects yeah yeah no i think that um that's the that's the core of who he is and how he

00:28:53.280 will serve in government i mean he believes that you know part of the job of a governor is to activate

00:29:02.880 you know your citizens and get them involved in making their communities better uh you know he asks

00:29:10.560 something of them in return you know you hear politicians talking about people's rights you know

00:29:18.400 you hear about all the time time i was just out hearing bernie sanders talk about health care

00:29:23.280 being a right not a privilege um and you know and and he he's right that uh people have certain rights

00:29:31.920 but they also have responsibilities and you never hear politicians talk about our responsibilities in

00:29:39.920 a democracy and if we don't fulfill those responsibilities which involves

00:29:44.480 you know serving in our communities and uh being an active part of our government

00:29:51.200 um then we're not doing our jobs and i think that one of the things that eric

00:29:56.480 greitens is is selling uh and i hope he succeeds um is the notion that for missouri to succeed it needs

00:30:06.160 to have an active citizenry right and i mean it's interesting that people don't really ask much from

00:30:11.920 us anymore our politicians or do our leaders don't they don't ask anything right and it seems like

00:30:16.960 but it seems like people are hungry for it not not just veterans but even um citizens like they want to

00:30:21.840 feel like they want they're needed or useful mm-hmm well i think that you know human beings are social

00:30:28.080 animals um and uh doing things together is you know is is baked in uh you know there was this great

00:30:36.560 military historian william mcneil who wrote a book about uh who wrote a book about close order drill

00:30:43.440 and uh and how it came about and his theory was that it came about at the very beginning of history

00:30:48.960 when you know we were hunters and gatherers on the african savannah and if you want to go out and get

00:30:54.880 dinner by yourself you and your spear um the chances were that you would wind up being the lions dinner

00:31:02.240 but if you got together in your you know with with other people and did the kill the lion dance

00:31:08.080 um and practiced it there was a good chance that you were going to come back with me

00:31:13.920 uh and that was selected for in the evolutionary process it's part of who we are there's a certain

00:31:20.320 real satisfaction that comes a physical satisfaction and uh and a mental satisfaction that comes from

00:31:27.600 um bonding together with other people in physical actions like marching or um or cleaning up neighborhoods

00:31:35.440 after a after a tornado right so i mean uh what can civilians learn from this i mean can they do you

00:31:42.400 think that we should like have like mandatory service or should we just you know kind of follow the

00:31:46.800 air grinds plan just by lead by example and encourage citizens to get involved in these types of organizations

00:31:52.000 well you know um this is not a country where mandates work very well right and uh and i and i and i think

00:32:00.080 it's kind of hard um to um you know to ask a struggling um kid who is learning you know learning a trade

00:32:10.640 like a welder or something like that um to uh to spend a couple of years serving his country or her country

00:32:18.480 although it's wonderful when they do i do think that for the elites and the middle class for anybody

00:32:27.280 who is you know bernie sanders has an idea of giving a 40 free four-year uh college tuition uh to

00:32:34.400 anybody who wants it and uh once again he doesn't he doesn't ask us for anything in return and i think

00:32:41.200 that it it would probably be not a bad idea if part of the deal was that you had to serve for a couple

00:32:47.520 of years as something you know maybe not in the military maybe as a teacher or or working in a

00:32:53.280 government um and uh you know that that could be that could be mandatory if you you know get the

00:33:00.240 benefit of a four-year college education on our dime but the other thing is this general uh stanley

00:33:06.800 mccrystal has said that he'd like to see a country where 10 years from now um if you go in for a job

00:33:14.640 interview to be a lawyer or uh or or anything in any sort of exec executive position the first

00:33:22.720 question you get asked is where did you serve we have to make this become part of what being an

00:33:33.840 american means uh we have to make it an active active part of it um because it is it's always been

00:33:42.720 part of being what uh a human being means it it's always serving others and working together with

00:33:51.040 others going out and killing the lion together um is who we are and we're trying to get away uh in this

00:33:58.880 country right now because of our incredible affluence we're trying to get away with not requiring that of

00:34:05.120 our citizens anymore and i think it's we're heading into dangerous territory right yeah after i read the

00:34:12.480 book i was like i need to do something i need to get involved in something like this um i mean what's

00:34:16.960 the status of team rubicon and a mission continues today still out there doing missions yeah they're

00:34:23.280 they're they're growing by leaps and downs um and uh you know as i said uh mission continues has these

00:34:33.520 service platoons operating in every major city in the country sometimes there are like four or five

00:34:40.400 service platoons uh in in new york city uh and others you know multiple platoons in many in many other

00:34:48.080 cities and it's open to civilians you don't have to be just a veteran to do it um and team rubicon

00:34:55.440 has expanded um across the globe and it is now uh will mcnulty is now organizing the military

00:35:06.320 veterans in other countries to start their own team rubicons um you know you talk about a face of

00:35:12.960 america that uh really people in the rest of the world love it's when u.s veterans come to pakistan

00:35:21.840 after you know and help clean up during the flooding or go to nepal for the earthquake in that recent

00:35:29.280 earthquake in nepal it wasn't only team rubicon america that went it was also team rubicon united

00:35:35.920 kingdom that went um so these things are expanding and there are opportunities for people

00:35:41.840 who who who are not veterans to be part of something really good right well can you okay

00:35:48.800 i i had i had to look this up after i read the book what does charlie mike mean because i think it's i

00:35:53.280 didn't know why oh well we should we should that right at the beginning right exactly i mean yeah

00:35:58.080 what does charlie mike mean in uh in uh military radio code uh charlie mike means continue mission

00:36:05.680 and uh that's that's what these guys are doing they've continued their mission of helping others

00:36:13.280 and serving their country even after they've come home great well joe this has been a great

00:36:19.040 conversation where can people learn more about the book and these two organizations you talk about in

00:36:23.280 the book well they can buy the book that would be a cool thing oh yeah uh you know it's uh it's it's

00:36:30.080 online at amazon and uh and in bookstores near you um uh but uh but also uh mission continues

00:36:39.040 team rubicon there are other great veterans organizations like purple heart homes which uh builds um

00:36:46.080 you know uh uh uh houses for wounded veterans um and uh team red red white and blue which you know

00:36:55.040 goes out on runs um you know they have veterans and civilians going together and exercising together

00:37:00.880 which is a cool thing too um but uh there there are other organizations that do this kind of work

00:37:09.200 uh but team rubicon and the mission continues are generally considered to be the gold standard

00:37:18.640 uh really spectacular organizations that continue to grow and bring more and more people

00:37:24.880 into the act of serving others that's great well joe klein thank you so much for your time it's been

00:37:29.280 a pleasure okay thank you my guest today was joe klein he's the author of the book charlie mike

00:37:34.800 and you can find that on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere and if you want to find more information

00:37:38.640 about mission continues and team rubicon or even volunteer for them you can go to mission

00:37:43.200 continues.org or teamrubiconusa.org well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness

00:37:52.640 podcast for more manly tips and advice make sure to check out the art of manliness website at

00:37:55.920 artofmanliness.com and if you enjoy this show and have gotten something out of it i'd really

00:37:59.680 appreciate it if you go give us a review on itunes or stitcher help spread the word about the show

00:38:04.080 as always i can appreciate your continued support and until next time this is brett mckay telling you to

00:38:08.000 stay manly

00:38:20.320 you

The Art of Manliness - March 13, 2016

#182： Continuing the Mission of Service and Brotherhood

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