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Teacher’s Guide

Author’s Note

The full Teacher’s Guide is available without a cost for educators. If you are interested in receiving a copy, please write to With Honor Communications Director Jen Montee at montee@withhonor.org and share with her the course you teach, school, and how you are considering using Courage Can Save US in your classroom.

Overview

Courage Can Save US is a book about political courage, which it brings to life through deeply researched profiles of ten elected officials: nine military veterans and a former FBI agent. These ten public servants—five Republicans and five Democrats—strive to serve with courage, at times even choosing to risk their political futures to advance the common good.

The book offers a look at the forces that have shaped, and continue to shape, American politics: the “forever wars” in Afghanistan and Iraq, the rise of populism and political violence, a hyperpolarized media landscape, staggering advancements in technology, and—in increasingly rare moments—the passage of landmark legislation that touches millions of American lives.

In 2026, at a time of strain and uncertainty in the country, the United States turned 250. That is an achievement worthy of celebration, but also a time for solemn consideration. One historian has even estimated the average lifespan of a great power at 250 years, and that the American democratic experiment is running up against that mark.

George Washington’s historic Farewell Address is read aloud on the Senate floor each year around the date of his birthday, by a senator chosen in turn from each party. In it, Washington warned of several main threats to the American experiment: political partisanship, the erosion of checks and balances, public debt, and foreign wars. Today we have reason to worry about each of these. The world’s oldest written national constitution now governs a nation straining against the very dangers its first president named.

Courage Can Save US asks what kind of leadership is needed to meet this moment, and what role courage has to play in it and in our own lives.

The author, Rye Barcott, a veteran and social entrepreneur, has been fascinated by courage since boyhood, when he learned how close his father had come to death while serving as a Marine in Vietnam, where he was shot in the face on a reconnaissance patrol. Alongside his late mentor, David Gergen, a Navy veteran and bipartisan adviser to four U.S. presidents, Barcott spent nearly a decade building With Honor, a cross-partisan nonprofit dedicated to electing to Congress principled veterans who pledge to serve with integrity, civility, and courage. (Cross-partisan efforts bring people together across party lines—Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike—to work toward shared goals without asking anyone to abandon their convictions, a contrast with seeking the political middle or splitting the difference between parties.)


Over three years, Barcott interviewed the ten elected officials profiled in the book, along with their families and others who have known and served with them in uniform and in office. The result is ten tautly written, compelling stories: of broken childhood homes and heroic parents and mentors; of bloody battlefields and steady service in peacetime; of bitter electoral campaigns and long-shot victories; and, finally, in each chapter’s culminating arc, of political courage at a time when many Americans long for more of it.


When people think about the qualifications they want in elected officials, military service may not immediately come to mind. Inspired by Gergen, Barcott proposes that veterans can come into office having learned both how to build trust with their fellow Americans across demographics and party, and how to facilitate compromise. They may have also seen what it means to show courage when called to do so.


Taken together, these profiles reveal what courage is, how it is formed, what it can cost, and why it may save us as a nation and as individuals.

Whether they’re studying political science, American studies, civics, leadership, ethics, journalism, or contemporary history, Courage Can Save US gives high school and college students the opportunity to learn about:

Drawing on Stoic philosophy and the Greek distinction between physical and moral courage, the book argues that bravery and courage are not the same. Bravery is action in the moment, instinctive and sometimes self-serving. Courage is more considered; a choice, a decision to advance the common good despite the risk of serious cost to oneself. Each chapter explores this distinction in the context of decisions made in military service and in public office, in which the cost—whether personal or political—is often visible and steep.
Courage is a virtue developed over time, often shaped by parents and mentors who model character early. Some of the subjects of this book grew up in tight-knit households in which service was family tradition; others grew up amid instability, addiction, or the early loss of a parent. In Courage Can Save US, Barcott shows that courage is not a matter of where you begin. It is a matter of what you choose to do next.

Today, a smaller share of Congress has served in uniform than at almost any time since World War II. The book argues this is a loss for American governance—not because veterans agree on policy (the ten profiled often don’t), but because military service can build qualities our politics badly needs: trust forged across lines of background and belief, a sense of duty larger than self, and a willingness to work with the other side.

The evidence here is genuinely mixed. A 2018 political science analysis of congressional voting records linked here found “only modest evidence that increasing veteran representation would lead to more bipartisanship when controlling for generational differences.” Barcott’s case rests less on voting tallies than on what these ten lives reveal up close: how service shaped the way they lead, and the moments it gave them the courage to act when it cost them. Nine of the ten leaders profiled served, with experience across four service branches in roles ranging from Marine infantry “grunt” to Air Force general. Students will see what it meant for a generation shaped by 9/11 to volunteer in the years that followed—oaths taken young, deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, friends lost in combat and to suicide—and how the “forever wars” still inform the decisions these veterans have made in public office. For younger readers, the book offers a remarkable and personal view into a generation of leaders just ahead of them who will shape the country’s direction for much of their lifetimes.

Runs for office today bear little resemblance to the idea that many people have in their heads. The book takes readers inside modern campaigns, including long-shot races in which first-time candidates have beaten the odds. Students see primary challenges from within the candidate’s own party, swing-district races decided by a few thousand votes, the relentless demands of fundraising, and the personal toll politics can take on candidates and their families. A campaign is part organization, part argument, part data, and part instinct. Students follow candidates as they assemble a team, sharpen a message, manage attacks and unforeseen events, and read a congressional district to know which arguments will resonate. These decisions that candidates make, often under intense pressure, can determine who ends up writing the laws and even the course the country takes.

Most civics texts describe how Congress is supposed to work. This book illustrates how it works in practice. Students see how a rank-and-file member can force a vote over the objections of party leaders, how a House Speaker is chosen—and unmade—and how a presidential impeachment unfolds from a shared Google Doc to a vote on the chamber floor. They watch members navigate committee assignments, procedural rules, and pressure from their own party. They experience the institution coming alive through the eyes of those serving in it.

For students who arrive to it as committed Democrats or Republicans themselves, the book offers a rare chance to spend time with five people who don’t share their politics, and to find character and conviction in the encounter. Each of the people profiled has flaws, as we all do. But each has, at moments, chosen principle over party at real cost to themselves. Students see what working across the aisle can mean today, amid an information environment that often rewards confrontation over collaboration: backlash from one’s own party, lost friendships, threats of violence.


The book explores polarization, one of the challenges Washington warned of in his Farewell Address and one of the defining problems America faces today. “The only thing that can kill America is America,” Barcott writes in the Epilogue. Whether American democracy renews itself or fractures further will depend on whether enough good citizens, and enough leaders, are willing to choose the harder path of resisting polarization and working across differences.

Above all, Courage Can Save US is a call to service. Many Americans have grown exhausted—worn down by the animosity between the parties and by a creeping sense that government no longer works for them. This is affective polarization: not a widening gap over policy, but a deepening dislike and distrust of the other side. Some have checked out, losing faith in our institutions and concluding that participation is hopeless. They may still vote, but they have stopped imagining any larger role for themselves. This book invites them to reconsider.


The ten leaders profiled here answered that call by serving: in the military, in the FBI, in Congress, in the statehouse. But service in America has never been confined to the uniform or to public office. It also lives in the work of teachers, doctors, first responders, and those caring for a community. Only about 2 percent of young Americans aged eighteen to twenty-five serve in the military, AmeriCorps, or the Peace Corps. There is enormous room to expand who serves in America.


Barcott’s central claim is that courage can save us: as a nation, from the corrosion of our mutual contempt, and as individuals, from a life without purpose. Courage, he argues, is built through service. It exposes us to perspectives beyond our own, widens our circle of concern, and gives our lives meaning. For students, the book is an invitation to imagine a life of service, and to recognize that citizenship in a democracy is not a status one inherits but a practice one chooses.

Guide Structure

This guide is meant to be flexible. Teachers can use it in full or in part to discuss courage, civics, and contemporary American politics, assigning chapters in order or selecting among them to fit a syllabus. Book clubs can lean on it as a starting point for discussion. The questions do assume that readers have read the Prologue, which establishes the book’s framework for thinking about courage.

The guide is organized into the following sections:

Table of Contents: A navigational reference listing each section of the guide and each of the ten chapter modules. Hyperlinked so readers can skip directly to any chapter or section.

Pre-Reading Activities: Three activities to ground students in the book’s central concerns before they read it.

Prologue Discussion Questions: Questions to accompany the Prologue, in which the author introduces the distinction between courage and bravery, the physical and moral dimensions of courage, and the influence of Stoic philosophy and servant-leadership on his thinking. Teachers, students and book clubs can use these questions to guide their reading or prepare for the chapters that follow.

Ten Chapter Modules: The heart of the guide. Each of the ten profiles in the book has its own module, structured the same way for ease of use:

  • Summary. A brief overview of the leader’s life and career, useful for review or forstudents who have read selectively.
  • Discussion Questions, organized into three sections:
    • Upbringing (formative experiences and influences)
    • Military Service (or, in one case, federal law enforcement service)
    • Elected Office (the leader’s record, choices, and what the author sees as their key moments of political courage)
  • This Chapter and You. A personal-reflection question inviting students to connect the leader’s experience with their own lives.
  • Activities. Several suggested classroom or book-club activities — debates, simulations, writing exercises, or research projects — that build on the chapter’s themes.
  • Further Study. Several additional primary or secondary sources for each chapter (op-eds, speeches, court documents, books, news articles), each paired with its own set of discussion questions. These additional sources supplement the material in the chapter and offer ready-made paths for deeper study.

Epilogue Discussion Questions: Questions about the book’s epilogue, which draws together the three recurring values the author identifies across his ten profiles—integrity, humility, and commitment—and returns to the central question of whether courage can save American democracy.

Final Discussion and Final Projects: A set of synthesizing questions to revisit after students or book-club readers finish the book, along with two suggested capstone projects.

The chapters in the book, and the modules in this guide, alternate between Democratic and Republican leaders. Teachers may find it useful to assign chapters in bipartisan pairs—for example, Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ) and Todd Young (R-IN), both Naval Academy graduates who began their service prior to the 9/11 attacks—to surface comparisons across party lines.

Expanded Bibliography: Educators can also direct students to the Expanded Bibliography here for a more detailed chronological compilation of sources with hyperlinks to secondary material.

A Note for Students and Teachers: This is a book about courage in public life, and in particular about the courage to hold a conviction and defend it even when doing so may be unpopular or even costly. In that spirit, students should feel free to disagree with the book’s arguments and themes. Test the book’s ideas. Argue with them. The questions throughout this guide are meant to open debate, not to settle it. Thoughtful disagreement, honestly defended, is exactly the kind of engagement the book hopes to inspire.

pre-reading activities: defining courage

Ask students to write a brief response to the question, “What is courage?” Some further questions they can explore in or use to inspire their response:

  • What is a courageous act in history that inspires you, and why?
  • What is a courageous act that has impacted your life positively, and why?
  • Was there a time when you acted courageously, or could have acted courageously and chose not to? What happened?
  • What is political courage?
  • Does political courage require opposing the priorities of one’s own party?
  • Should elected officials represent the views of their constituents as closely as possible, or should they sometimes act against public opinion if they believe it is right?
  • Does social media make courage easier or harder? Explain your thinking.
  • Does courage matter in American politics and in everyday life? Why or why not?

Revisit these questions after reading the book.

pre-reading activities: understanding congress and polarization

Have students define political polarization, then research the structure of Congress and the current levels of political polarization in the United States. Two sets of questions follow.

  • What are the three branches of the U.S. federal government?
  • What does the system of checks and balances mean?
  • How many members are in the House and the Senate?
  • What is the average number of citizens represented by a member of the House of Representatives?
  • What is a “safe” seat in Congress, and roughly how many House seats are considered safe or non-competitive?
  • Who is your representative in the House? Who are your senators?
  • When were your representative and senators first elected to office? By how many points did they win their first primary and general election races?
  • By how many points did they win their most recent primary and general election races?

  • What is political polarization?
  • What factors can contribute to political polarization?
  • Is disagreement between the parties always a bad thing? Could a sharper clash of ideas ever produce better debate, stronger arguments, or new solutions? When might it, and when might it not?
  • Some scholars distinguish between ideological polarization (parties holding genuinely different views) and affective polarization (members of each party viewing the other side as immoral, dishonest, or even evil). What is the difference, and which do you think poses the greater challenge in America today? Explain your reasoning.
  • What is gerrymandering, and why does it happen? How might it contribute to polarization?
  • What is partisan sorting?
  • How does polarization affect decision-making in Congress?
  • What risks might leaders face when working across party lines?
  • If polarization has costs, what might be done to address them, in Congress and in the country more broadly? Are there costs to reducing it that we should weigh as well?
pre-reading activities: american oaths

Members of Congress, U.S. military officers, and new American citizens each take an oath that commits them to abide by the Constitution.

The congressional oath, established by statute in 1884 and unchanged since, reads:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

The oath taken by commissioned officers of the United States military reads:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

The Naturalization Oath of Allegiance, recited by every new American citizen at the conclusion of the naturalization process, reads:
“I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. So help me God.”

Discussion Questions:

  • What responsibilities come with these oaths, and how might they guide decision-making in difficult moments?
  • All three oaths commit a person to the Constitution, not to a party, a president, or a particular policy. Why might that distinction matter?
  • How do these three oaths differ, and why might those differences matter?
  • What are your responsibilities as an American citizen?
  • Would you take any of these oaths? Why or why not? What would you find easiest and hardest about upholding each of them?
prologue

Courage and Bravery

  • How does the author differentiate between courage and bravery? Why does he argue that bravery alone is not a virtue?
  • What is the difference between physical courage and moral courage?
  • Which historical figure does the author identify as embodying both physical and moral courage? Why? Identify another historical figure whose actions you believe fused both forms of courage, and explain your reasoning.

Courage and the Common Good

  • The author defines courage as a choice that serves the common good. He argues that two people can disagree about what the common good is and both still act with courage, giving the example of a soldier who volunteers for war and a conscientious objector who refuses to serve because he views the same war as unjust. What does this suggest about courage? Do you agree that two people on opposite sides of a moral question can both be courageous?
  • Can courage be measured? What does the author say about this? What do you think?

Stoicism and Servant-Leadership

  • What is Stoicism, and why does the author find it relevant to leadership today?
  • What is servant-leadership? How does the author argue that Marcus Aurelius embodied it?
  • Identify a contemporary or historical American leader whom you believe embodies servant-leadership, and describe a specific action by this individual that reflected this ideal.

This Prologue and You

  • Drawing on the author’s distinction between courage and bravery, identify an act of courage you have observed or read about — physical, moral, or both. Why does it qualify as courage rather than bravery? What did you learn from it?

The Book Itself

  • How did the author select the ten leaders in this book? What criteria did he use? Do you believe he could have made better choices? Is there another contemporary elected official he could have chosen—and if so, why?