Finding Your Next Band of Brothers, with Stephen Mansfield

Chris Albert 00:00:00 (link to this point)

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. Now that's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

We need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

You know, throughout my life, I've found myself in situations where I felt alone, where I felt like there was nobody else out there who understood my situation. I felt isolated from the world, and I felt like I was in a pit, and that there was nobody in this world who could see me, nobody else who could understand what I was going through. And so I would sit there, alone in a room, staring at the cracks in the paint, studying the seams in the walls, as if some sort of answer was just going to pop into my head. And I'm describing myself here, but I know that there's so many of you out there who are probably currently doing the same exact thing. And I think one of the things that I found when I put myself into those situations and I say put myself into those situations because it was me who put myself there. One of the things I found was that there were answers out there. There were people who were willing to help. In fact, there were people with an extended hand.

But in my own stubbornness and my own stupidity, I ignored them. One of the habits that I've been trying to keep up with in my adult life, and one that I think I've failed on keeping up with too many times, and every time I've failed at keeping up with it, I've ended up in one of these situations, is reading. And reading is important. And it's important because I believe that all men, all human beings, in fact, need mentors. We need people who have the experience to teach us how to deal with what we're facing in this life.

And the fact of the matter is this, a lot of us aren't going to be able to find good mentors in our geographic situation. It's just not possible for a lot of us. A lot of us are located in places that are far away from the type of people we'd like to become. We're far away from, you know, the the types of people we'd want to have as mentors. A lot of us might be surrounded by people who we don't find to be contributing positively to our lives, and and if you're in one of those situations, you feel trapped.

So the solution for those of us who don't have those positive influences and direct contact with ourselves is is to pick up a book. To pick up a book that was written by somebody who who's been in those situations, who knows what you're going through, who can give you some advice. Right? And and and just to give you an example here, you know, you might not be able to have Tony Robbins as your personal mentor, but you can read a lot about what Tony Robbins has to say about a lot of different subjects. Right?

You you can't have Chesty Puller as your personal mentor or your commanding officer. Long gone. But you could read about Chesty Puller's life, and you could read about how he handled different types of situations and different difficulties that he faced, and so on and so forth, with so many great people who've existed on this Earth Winston Churchill, so many others. And so, for those of you who are out there, you know, this little note to you, this little preamble, is for those of you who are feeling alone. Understand that there is there are ways of getting the thoughts of wiser people into your life, and applying those thoughts to your life. And that's what brings me to today's guest. You know, the past couple of months, I've I've been dealing with a little bit of darkness in my life. You know, a little bit of feeling of isolation. And a lot of that comes from being an entrepreneur.

You know, I don't have a job where I get up every morning, I get out of the house, and I go and I hang around with people from the office or anything like that. You know, as solo entrepreneur, I'm waking up, I'm heading into my office, and I'm putting work in, and I'm putting work in by myself. And in a lot of ways, that feeling of isolation, like I said, is my fault. It's my own stubbornness. I need to hire people, I need to bring people onto my team, I need be consulting and networking with others, and I haven't done a good enough job at that.

But, the most simple solution was for me to pick up a book. And so the book I picked up this time around was a book called Mansfield's Book of Manly Men. And I really, really enjoyed reading it. And what I've been doing for the past couple of months is I read a little bit of it it every morning when I first wake up, and a little bit of it before I go to bed. It's by a book it's by a gentleman named Stephen Mansfield.

Stephen Mansfield is a conservative thought leader. He studied a lot to do with faith. Right? So faith is a is a a constant theme in his writings, and he studied the faith of of great leaders, you know, ranging from Winston Churchill to to president George W Bush to to president Barack Obama. And in his book, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men, he goes through maxims of manliness.

And these are different types of attributes that all men should strive to have in their lives. And the maxims themselves are worth it, but also in reading about the hard lives that many great men have endured in order to make an impact on our world. You know? And and and when you read about Winston Churchill, for example, and the fact that his father absolutely hated him, and that he he experienced so much darkness and and so much so such a great feeling of isolation. You know, you start to have a new respect for what Churchill was able to accomplish along with the other men that that Mansfield writes about in this book.

So I reached out to Stephen Mansfield, and my reason for doing so was because I wanted to get his perspective on what veterans are going through these days, and his perspective on the issues that veterans face as they go into the civilian world. What types of things should we be doing? What what types of self talk should we be trying to instill in our own heads as we move on to new lives and new adventures? And I think you'll find this conversation extremely rewarding. Before we get into the conversation, I just want to give you a couple of different announcements.

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I suggest you go over to www.dropanfbomb.com. Use the code warrior soul at checkout, and you'll get 20% off of your first order. The next and final announcement is that we are currently running the Warrior Soul Fitness Challenge. And what this is is a way for all of us to get together and push each other to become better. And what we've done is we've got our private Facebook group up and running, it's called the Warrior Soul Fitness Academy.

And when you join up, basically what you're gonna do is you're gonna be posting your workouts every single day. Now this challenge isn't something you don't have to buy any supplements, don't have to buy any programs or anything like that. You can simply join the group and you can take part in the challenge, and all you gotta do is you gotta just post your workout each day and a picture of you doing one of the exercises. And the reason why I wanna do this is to motivate others, to show people what we're doing to stay in shape, to show people what we're doing in the gym, to keep up. And if you're interested in in getting more out of it, if you want a free program that we've developed for the group, what you can do is you can head over to menshealth.warriorsoulagoge.com and you can sign up from there and you'll get a free testosterone optimization checklist, a free fourteen day testosterone optimization workout, and you'll get a whole bunch of resources to set you right on your way as far as getting in shape and becoming the person you want to be.

And that's what we're about here at Warrior Soul, is delivering tools, tactics, ideas, talking about issues, and introducing you to people who can help you to live your best life. And I think that one of the best ways of doing that is making sure that you're keeping up with your fitness and your health. So with that guys, I hope to see you in the group, and let's get into this interview today with Stephen Mansfield, the author of Mansfield's Book of Manly Men and a whole lot of other books. And like I said, this is a great conversation. I think you'll find it really rewarding.

Stephen, I wanna welcome you to the show today.

Stephen Mansfield 00:11:14 (link to this point)

Hey. It's great to be with you, man.

Chris Albert 00:11:15 (link to this point)

Thank you.

Couple of different things. So I've recently been going through your book, one of your many books, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men. Really awesome read. I read a little bit of it every morning and every evening before I go to sleep, and it's kind of like my current study. One of the things you said in the book, and and this is kinda gonna be like diving into everything.

A man's gotta do everything for the glory of God. Right? Yeah. And that's important because life is hard. Things are hard.

Accomplishing things are hard. And sometimes we have to have something that we're reaching beyond ourselves. We came on today and we're talking to the veteran community out there. And in the veteran community, we like to make up a lot of stories about ourselves. And one of the common stories we make up is that we've lived out our purpose, that we are now done, and that we're never gonna be good at anything else, and so God doesn't have a place for us here on this earth.

What's your feelings on that?

Stephen Mansfield 00:12:20 (link to this point)

Well, I believe in a God, obviously, and I believe that God sets a purpose for our lives. And so every stage of our life is just preparation for an accumulation that happens throughout our days. So in my case, for example, there was a time at which I was a high school student and a football player, but that wasn't the ultimate, you know, the apex of my life. And then I went to college and I had a great experience, but that wasn't the apex of my life. And guys may not know that I pastored for twenty years, and that was the apex of my life.

I got a doctorate, that wasn't the apex of my life. And in the last ten or fifteen years, I've done a lot of television and read the books you talk about and done a lot of things worldwide. I don't think that's the apex of my life. I think it's all accumulating to something more. I hate And by the way, there's some construction in my area, so if hear some background noise, forgive us.

But I hate the idea that anyone would think in one stage of your life is all there is. You know, I helped chap with the Washington Redskins just a little bit. And one of the big mistakes NFL players make is the thinking that, exactly what you just said, that their years on the gridiron, their years in the NFL are at the top of their life. And this is like a sad story. These guys leave the NFL.

They're a little physically broken sometimes. They haven't prepared for the next stage of their lives, and so many times there are years of failure and poverty and sickness and problems and divorces and financial problems, because they assumed either that would continue forever or that was the ultimate of their lives. So they'd be with a lot of depression and addiction and things like that. So my point is that when you're living your life for the glory of God, when you're living your life in a framework that understands that there's a purpose for your life, it's unfolding, then no one stage of your life is ultimate purpose. And one of the reasons I'm so excited about vets is of course that they bring a whole lot into the future.

Mean, you've been a vet and you've served and you've that training, that discipline, that awesome community and all that's going on there, I'm a military grad so I at least understand it a little bit, then there's an even greater purpose and destiny that all that's going to be rolled into. So the idea that any one phase would be the end of it is just a lie that I think brings the stark destruction to our lives.

Chris Albert 00:14:36 (link to this point)

I think it's that feeling of you go through something and it's supposed to be the greatest thing you're ever going to do. And you train for it, you prepare yourself for it, your whole personality gets centered around it. And then that thing happens. And then when it comes to an end, you're trying to find something else. But in that period of time, there's so much uncertainty, so much pain, so much, you know, at times questioning of of your own existence.

You know, it gets to be confusing. So having studied so many great men, I mean, you've studied George W. Bush, you've wrote about the faith of Barack Obama. You've studied Churchill. What have you found about great men that helps them to get through those transitions that they make?

Stephen Mansfield 00:15:30 (link to this point)

Well, I'll have to say that the number one factor that gets them through tough times is an overwhelming sense of destiny. An overwhelming sense that, like we've been saying, there's a purpose to it all. Churchill said, I love Churchill, I've written a book on him, so I'll quote him the most because I know more about him. He would say things like, Over me beat unseen wings. You know, he said when he became prime minister, I felt like I was walking with destiny, and every day from the beginning of my life to this was preparation for this moment.

That's how he thought, and what a life he lived. But no one stage was the ultimate purpose, and so there's no one stage that's the ultimate purpose. And by the way, people really deform themselves when they think that way. And so most of the great leaders that I've studied, including George W. Bush, Churchill, Lincoln, you know, all of these people, they had a basic belief system that God had a purpose for their life, that that life was unfolding, and no one stage or one thing was the ultimate purpose. Listen, I'm wild about my kids, but me being a father is not the only or the ultimate of my life. If my kids were sitting in this room, I would say that. They wouldn't be bothered by that.

My wife is down the hall right now at her desk, and I'd say with her sitting in the room, being a husband is not the ultimate and only purpose of my life. And that's not to put her down, I'm crazy about her. But we have a life that is, well, let's call it a matrix. Let's call it a It's put together like God does a lot of different things with you. And so what's awesome is that all of your past experiences accumulate.

So the great leaders that I've studied had failures. Churchill was the most hated man in his country during a certain period. His father hated him, despised him. Churchill had dreams about his father haunting him till the day he died. Churchill suffered from such depressions that he didn't wanna stay in a room with a balcony on it, even when he was prime minister, because he was afraid the depression would hit and he'd kill himself off.

So the men I've studied, the women I've studied, believed in an overriding sense of destiny, and that's what gave every phase, good, bad, or ugly, meaning, and no one phase, no one experience, no one role they played was the ultimate definition of their life.

Chris Albert 00:17:44 (link to this point)

You know, in in finding the next stage, I think, is is something that a lot of people are questioning themselves about. You know, where do I go next? What how do I find that next bout of purpose? And, you know, you talk quite a bit about the role of a father and a father figure in a man's life. And, you know, I'm somebody I didn't have a father, but your words in your book kind of kind of hit me where they said, you know, stop searching for somebody to be your father.

Go out there and do. Go out there and experience. And that's a big one for me. But they also say that men have multiple fathers or two fathers at different points in their lives. And so they have their first father, that's one you're born with who gives you love, who gives gives you then you have one that you choose as a mentor. I think we're in a time in history where it's getting harder for people to find that second father. Where it's getting harder to find that second relationship. And you've been speaking quite a bit about the current state of politics and and, you know, where we're at with things right now. But, you know, before we get into that, what is going on right now out there that makes it so difficult to find those mentors, those people who we could put our faith into and maybe learn for the next stage of our lives?

Stephen Mansfield 00:19:08 (link to this point)

Well, we could list them all. We all know what they are. First of all, there's the decline of the family and the decline of manhood. Manhood's in a downward spiral right now. No question about it.

And by the way, want to say quickly, that doesn't make me anti woman. I want women to exceed to achieve everything. We're not fighting over a pie that's a certain size, we're growing the pie ever bigger. And I want my wife, my daughter to be the pope, the CEO, the president, the queen, all at the same time, so everything she achieves great. But manhood's in a downward spiral, there's no question about that, And the family's busted up, and so all of that is just creating a challenge.

But I think a lot of the problem, if I can cut to the chase on this, a lot of the problem has to do with how men are looking for fathers. I don't mean to mock this, because I've had the same situation. But what we all want, to put it kind of humorously, is a guy in a white beard, you know, smoking a pipe, sitting here like in my office, you see in my office over my shoulder, and saying, Stephen, let me verily teach you, even so what God must knoweth. You know, that kind of image, like a movie image, like the father knows best thing. And if you have that, awesome.

I know some guys who have that, and I didn't have that. I had a father who was a If you've seen the movie The Great Santini, then you've seen my father, a good man, war hero, but not the most intimate father on the planet. So I gotta say that for most of us, the conclusion is that we stop looking for fathers necessarily to be older men, not if we can find them, that's great, or men who father us completely, and that we instead, to use my phrase, build a band of brothers. You know, I'm probably a little older than you are, but you can father me a bit. If we've got a team of guys who hang out together and help each other become better men, great men, then we can father each other a bit.

The men who have fathered me are very close to my age. I've never really had an older man, other than coaches and professors and so on, an older man really kind of take me under their wing and take responsibility for developing me. And this was done by older brothers. So I really think we walk way too much alone in this generation. And one of the things that for you guys who have been in the military that was possibly a high was that you were teamed with people.

When I talked to guys who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan, I mean, they almost feel guilty about the fact they want to go back there because they were so connected to the men they served with. Well, obviously we don't want it to be a perpetual war to have to find buddies, you know what I'm saying? So we got to learn the art of building a band of brothers when we're not in war. But that I think is one of the keys. I'm certainly not criticizing anybody who's going around looking for a father.

I've done it. But I'm saying the likelihood you're gonna get the guy in the white beard wearing a toga to come sit at your house and tell you all things you need to know is not very great. Likelihood is that you and I, you know, we lived at the same community, buddy up, work out together, father each other a bit, big brother each other a little bit, chastise each other, talk smack, help each other, think things through with each other, pray with each other, whatever it takes, and make each other better it is. So there'd be an element of following, And one guy can't do it, you gotta have a bunch of them. So I'd urge those watching your podcasts to just say, Look, thank God for older men, thank God for father figures, but the likelihood is it's gonna be a band of brothers who are really form in you what you need and keep you from that debilitating loneliness, and not a single father figure, you know, who kind of is there all your days.

Chris Albert 00:22:35 (link to this point)

Yeah, I definitely hear you on that, and you know, I've described to people the idea that I was more free or free feeling in the military than I'd ever been in my life. And people are like, what? You were free in the Marine Corps? And what I tell them is that, you know, I was 18 to 22 years old. I had little responsibility outside of my purpose for being there.

I didn't have to care about what I was putting on every day, and I was surrounded by my friends at all times. I think one of the problems though is that we go through that a lot earlier than other people do in the military because we separate from the military at younger ages. And so it's kind of like what you described in your book there. You know, when you're ten to fifteen years later, you've moved away from your hometown. You you haven't talked you don't have a friend who who who doesn't live, you know, in several 100 miles away.

And, you know, you're dealing with your wife most of the time, your children, but you don't have a band of brothers anymore. And I think what we're seeing here is guys are getting out, and they go into a foreign setting, which is the American college campus in today's world, and they're missing that band that they had. And or or they're going out into the civilian world, and they they don't feel like they can trust anybody there. But they're missing that that that Yeah. Brothers that they have.

Stephen Mansfield 00:24:02 (link to this point)

Sure. Absolutely.

Well, and I understand that. I feel a lot of compassion for that. And the fact is, the guys who come out of the military are a little bit more mature, got a little bit more experience, got a little bit more depth in their life. So they may not find that the average college student's going to be their best buddy, even though they're close in age. They may have to go slightly different.

My friends have always tended to be older. That's not because I think I'm, you know, sophisticated or, you know, somehow beyond everybody. My friends just tended to be older. And so they got to look at it. But the main thing I got to tell you is that, you know, hanging out in military circles a lot like I do, my observation you tell me if you think this is right, is that we tend to think this is gonna happen automatically.

We'll just go to college and a band will form around us. We go to the gym and a band will form around us. We'll have buddies. Well, you know, the early days of our life, friendships were easy. High school, college, the military, you know, they were pretty easy.

They were built in. I went to a college dorm, boom, there's, you know, 100 guys ready to go get a pizza or hang out or work out or, you know, get rowdy. Military is a more sophisticated version of that, more meaningful version of that. But ultimately, all men have to learn that a band of brothers is not gonna form around them, just automatically, you gotta be intentional about it. You gotta go to some guys and say, Hey, I'm reading this book.

What do you think? Why don't you read it? Let's talk about it. Or, Come get a burger. Then I noticed that you really got your stuff together when it comes to how you study.

Can you teach me a little bit about that? And you just start to move into a relationship that's more than just about, you know, fun and roundiness, which is I'm all for that, but I think that somehow you can get guys to be more meaningful in your life. And ultimately what you want to get to, by the way, is what I call a free fire zone. Now you guys in the military, that means a little something different for you. But if you and I are buddies and we're hanging out, I want to have a free fire zone with you, which is defined as, You can say to me anything you need to say to make me a better man, and I could say anything I need to say to you to help you be a better man.

That we're not all caught up in You know, like I come from a Southern background, so my relatives would say, Well, I would never hold his feelings kind of thing, and bring up anything that would cross off. Well, I don't want to abuse you, but man, if I can help you be better by something I see in your life that could coach you through, I'm gonna do it if you've invited that for my life. And so anyway, there's an art that we've lost as men in how to make relationships, because years ago, centuries ago, male relationships were built in really until earlier last century. They were kind of built in. You were born in a large family, or you were born in an ethnic community, or you're born in a village.

But now, I'm telling you, things are atomized, things get busted up. My guys get spit out of the military. Right? They can walk alone if they allow it. That's dangerous.

You gotta not do that. But then don't assume that that that band of brothers is gonna be automatic either.

Chris Albert 00:26:48 (link to this point)

Yeah. That danger element, I mean, we forget how dangerous that is. And I think a lot of us we go down that path and, you know, a lot of us when we joined the military was because we're trying to get out of our hometown in the first place, you know, and we weren't weren't surrounding ourselves with the best people beforehand. I know in my case, a lot of my friends didn't go down paths that I would have wanted to go down. So, you know, finding myself thousands of miles away from them in a different, better life than I probably would have been had I been there.

But, you know, still searching, still kind of going after that ideal of of trying to find the band of brothers. And I gotta say that getting hobbies like jiu-jitsu and and martial arts has helped me greatly and and and and those types of things.

Stephen Mansfield 00:27:32 (link to this point)

Yeah, and I'll say too that it's a compliment to you guys who have been in the military because you have a capacity for bonding that others might not have, you know? I mean, if you could step out of the military, let's say 21, 22, and you go to the average college university setting, well, the average kid there may not really have much capacity for bonding, but you guys, you know, so to speak, have been in foxholes. You guys have, you know, especially if you've been at war, you've really bonded in a way that most males back here don't know how to do. So you're coming out with a higher capacity and maybe a higher need that the average guy has here. So I'm just saying this as a way of complimenting you, but also saying, Beware.

You need high test fuel. You need jet fuel, and Diet Coke will do it. You know what I mean? So you're gonna have to function at a higher level and seek out a higher level. And that may be doing what you're talking about, get involved in some clubs, get some place for serious people doing serious things, you know.

Find sharper folks than the average college freshman. I'm not being insulting, I love university students, but you guys are just functioning at a higher level. You can be propelled forward a decade, even if your age is pretty much the same, you know?

Chris Albert 00:28:41 (link to this point)

You know, one of the things and this is kind of a little bit of a segue into some of the other stuff you know, more related to what's going on in the world today, but you know, when we look at college campuses today and academia in general, I spent some time in academia, studied for my PhD in social science and left mainly because I was finding that the more I studied social science and the way that they wanted me to study social science, the questions of right and wrong, good and bad, good and evil were getting blurred in my mind. And I think that more and more we're seeing on college campuses across the country the idea that good and evil does not exist. And that's kind of, what's the word, contradictory to having a code, to having your own standards. What do you think about what's going on out there today, and what are your words of advice for those trying to cut their way through college right now in that environment?

Stephen Mansfield 00:29:40 (link to this point)

Yeah, it's unfair to say to military guys who are bad, guys who are out of the military, but the fact is you have learned some things that our society does not know. You have seen evil, and you have learned what discipline can mean. You have learned that there is right and wrong, and you have learned that there is a value to an ethical code. And most of our university campuses are fairly relativistic. They remove any distinctions between good and evil.

They reinterpret history in terms of removing that grit, that moral understanding. And so I think for most vets to be really happy when they graduate, they're going to have to see themselves, I don't want to use the word missionary, but somehow as having experience others haven't had and trying to bring that to the society. I mean, I love that, love what the military can bring to us positively as a culture. You know as well as I do that a generation or two ago, the average person had either been in the military or had somebody in their family who had been in the military. Now it's very possible not to have anybody in the military around you.

And that grieves me, quite frankly, as a military brat, a man who speaks a lot in the military and loves military guys and women, because I think there's a lot to add. So my point is, what's gonna have to happen is, if you go to university, you can't just like you did, you didn't just sit there with your mouth open, letting them put in whatever they wanted. You had to say, Hey, some of this stuff doesn't wash. Now, not everybody has to leave. You chose to leave.

That's cool. I think that was your good moral choice for you. But at least guys and women who go to the university campuses have got to realize that the prevailing philosophies are very moralistic. So even the idea that you would shoot a bad guy, even the idea that you would attack an enemy, even the idea, in some cases, that you would say Hitler was evil, the concept of evil is passed out of fashion. So we don't have to go on there angry, we don't have to go on there raging, we don't have to go on there and get a bad record, know, and get a bad reputation, but we are Men and women from the military who go on to university campuses do need to understand that in a sense, same way they might stand out if they're wearing a uniform on campus, that they can stand out by their value system, but we need that.

We need that to be heard. We need that to be genetically and intelligently articulated in our society. So, you know, be there, be involved, But again, don't just like with relationships, recognize that you're functioning arguably at a higher level than the rest of society when it comes to morality and ethics, and we need to hear from you.

Chris Albert 00:32:09 (link to this point)

Just a quick announcement here, guys. Wanted to let you know about the Clever Talks Made in America conference. It's occurring in San Diego on October eleventh and twelfth. And it's gonna be at the Marriott Marquis, and the list of speakers they've got going to this thing are absolutely awesome. Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy, Marcus Luttrell, and a whole bunch of others.

And I'm gonna head down there just to listen to the speeches. I think it's gonna be a great, great gathering, and, I'm looking forward to it. Like I said, it's on October eleventh and twelfth, and the tickets are actually not that expensive. And if you're interested in heading down there, you can head over to www.clevertalks.com. Look forward to seeing you there.

Now back to the show. Yeah. I I I think it's so important for the younger guys, you know, to to to kind of hold their values as, you know, sacred to themselves while they're going through something like that and to Yes. To really find clubs, to find groups that that do stand for those values because they do exist as much as it seems like a sea of of or or just a cacophony of chaos out there on the college campuses today. They do exist and there are good people out there and and

Stephen Mansfield 00:33:21 (link to this point)

Yes. There are. Certainly. Certainly. But as you know, a generation or two ago, most of your professors would have been ex military. They would have understood you. A lot of your fellow students would have been ex military. They would have understood you. Well, we moved away from that.

We moved away from the ethical systems that produced the value of military, and so, you know, it's gonna be challenging. It's gonna be challenging. But again, you gotta have a band of brothers, a band of sisters around you who understand who you are, most of whom might be ex military, not to encourage the negative side of things, but to encourage the positive and to think things through. Those are the people I know who are the happiest, to have that band of brothers, that band of sisters, to help them get through the challenges of being ex military in a society like this.

Chris Albert 00:34:05 (link to this point)

One one thing I wanted to ask you about here is that that you are a conservative voice, and and you've you've gone out there, and you've basically always talked about right and wrong. Right? Good good versus evil. And I I hear your words in some instances, and and you talk about the conservative movement as being separate from what's going on in American politics today as far as the president. And, you know, I've heard I've heard in interviews of you in the past where, you know, when you put your book out about Barack Obama, you were getting attacked from the right and and on those things because you had written about him in a light that said that he had faith.

In your mind, what's going on today and why are things going so crazy as far as the conservative movement goes?

Stephen Mansfield 00:35:02 (link to this point)

Yeah. Well, what's happened is, and let me just say it, and then I'll defend it, so to speak. What's happened is that politics have really been shifted by Donald Trump. Now that's both a positive and a negative statement. But right now, I'm a conservative, I'm right of center.

I'm not hard right, but I'm right of center, and I love being right there. In fact, I probably am very much like John McCain in my values. I'm not claiming his greatness, but I'm saying in terms of my politics, he was just right of center, I'm just right of center. Libertarian on some things, you know, little bit further left on some other things. And the fact is that Donald Trump, the great disruptor, has made, and by his strength and his success, made American politics a referendum on him.

So we're no longer talking about like maybe we were a generation ago with National Review and other conservative media. We were talking about ideas. We were talking about a conservative approach to certain policies. That's what we're talking about. Now it's almost all about personalities all day, every day.

You watch the news tonight, almost all the political rewarding is going to be about Cohen or Trump or Kelly or somebody, and it's really gonna be about ideas. So I'm a conservative because I'm a Christian, for one, and also, number two, I'm a guy who believes in certain policies, certain positions. Donald Trump reflects some of those. He doesn't reflect all of those. Barack Obama reflected a few of those, but not all of those.

And so what's happened mainly on the political landscape today is that we have descended into personality cults, both on the left and on the right. Hillary Clinton, I feel sorry for her because she was the personality cult of the left, and they're so disappointed in her, she takes a beating every day for having let them down. Donald Trump has left the right down a little bit less, but he's also creating his own mess, you know, so to speak. The executive branch is in a bit of chaos these days, and it's largely because of his personality. So what's happened is that even in this conversation, I feel the need to identify myself in relation to Donald Trump rather than in relation to certain policy positions, which is what makes me a conservative.

Hold a certain view of abortion, a certain view of defense, a certain view of rule of law, a certain view of, you know So that's where we've lost it, and I'm concerned that our millennials are not able to explain themselves in terms of personality positions, rather, I'm sorry, political positions and policy positions. Instead, they've been schooled in a kind of politics that's all about personalities, and so until that abates, until we get back to where the personalities are less important, but the policy positions are important, we're gonna continue to have this politic that basically is a big vote on who you like the most or or who's bashing you. You know, if Donald Trump's bashing the person you don't like, then he must be your hero, that kind of thing. It's not good politics, whatever virtues there may be to Donald Trump.

Chris Albert 00:38:03 (link to this point)

Yeah. The reason why I bring that up is because I think that in so many ways, when we're talking about, you know, veterans going home to to come on to a college campus, you know, in a lot of different ways these days, if you identify yourself as a conservative, you're immediately associated with that personality variance there. And then in a lot of ways, if you don't toe the line on a college campus with something that's associated with the radical left, If you're even center left, you get considered a Nazi and and and somebody who's a right wing fascist. And it's it's it's insane to me at this moment because I consider myself a conservative too and and identify with those conservative values. I enjoy a lot or I appreciate a lot of the policy that's being implemented since Donald Trump came into office, but the rhetoric is absolutely insane, and I think it's driving us all crazy.

Stephen Mansfield 00:39:02 (link to this point)

Yeah, it is. And I would encourage those who are conservatives to find your common ground. For example, you go college on campus, you're a conservative, maybe you're a vet, but you gotta find the common ground with the millennials. I spent a lot of time with millennials, and I love them. And yeah, they're drifting leftward, but they're drifting leftward because nobody's explained policy positions to them.

And so for example, when I go on there, they're very oriented towards community. You know, virtually created Starbucks, you know, in terms of the place to hang and sit and all that kind of thing. They're very, very relational. My daughter sometimes almost accidentally says, when I say, What do you think? She'll go, Let me check with my friends.

Know, she's kind of mocking me a little bit because she knows that's what I think. But my point is that, we go on the campus, we don't have to start with our hardcore views of defense, or our hardcore hate of Obama, or love of Trump, or the reverse. Start with the common ground. And I think I've got to tell you that as a longtime observer of American politics, and as a guy who's constantly having to make a case for being a Christian and being a conservative, the number one thing that is off putting and that does the most damage is to be angry. You see, may be, I hope, that during the course of this interview, you notice that whatever you ask me, even if you're asking me something controversial, I'm not angry.

Humor is all right there at my right hand. A laugh is always present. I'm just not angry. I'm not a massive fan of Trump, but I like you. I'm happy for a lot of what he's accomplishing on a conservative score.

I'm glad for Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court. I'm glad for the moving of the embassy in Israel. Spent a lot of time in The Middle East. That's something for presidents of promise, so I'm thrilled that it's happened. But I'm not mad at anybody.

I don't want to shoot anybody. I don't want to beat anybody up. And so it's the anger, it's the rage that really comes from insecurity and hurt poured into our politics that causes us to be less effective. So when I'm on the university campus, I speak a lot at universities and other places, get Of course I've got more left leaning students coming in and asking me questions in public, but I think what they find is I'm just not mad. If you want to talk about a state run health care system, as some people call it, great, let's talk about it.

I was raised in Europe. I think there's some admirable qualities to that. They're shocked to find that out. I tell people all the time, my approach to Donald Trump is exactly the same as my approach to Barack Obama, where I agree with him, I'll help him and speak well of him. Where I disagree with him, I'll try to bring change and oppose if I have to.

And people are shocked to hear that. That's more open minded than I think most conservatives are. A lot of people on the left leaning university campus, they think that to be a conservative is to have a brain bypass. So they are concerned that you can't feel and can't think anymore. So anyway, my point is that for a lot of people who have to present themselves on the campus, build common ground, don't be angry, listen to other ideas.

You know, this was the virtue of John McCain that we're celebrating now. He could work with Teddy Kennedy. He could work with people he didn't agree with and come to compromises, which what you have to have in politics to get anything done. But he but but as a result, he just couldn't be angry. He couldn't be raging at everybody.

And that may be the difference between John McCain and Donald Trump. Donald Trump's an angry man, and John McCain, you know, had his anger issues, but they weren't they weren't, you know, focused on his political enemies.

Chris Albert 00:42:24 (link to this point)

Absolutely. I I think that it goes back to those those values that we were talking about just a little bit earlier. It's that when those values start to get blurred, people start to get more territorial over different things.

Stephen Mansfield 00:42:38 (link to this point)

Yes.

Chris Albert 00:42:38 (link to this point)

I read a news article the other day that was kind of exemplary of this. And this is not to pass judgment on anybody involved in this news article, but there was a lesbian march in San Francisco. And during the march, the lesbian the lesbian group was attacked by another group of male lesbians who said that the definition of lesbian should not just be based around a woman, and then they were violently had their signs ripped apart from them and things like that. And I think we're just in a place and time where I got confused reading the article. I think most people who are outside of the community would, and it left me with more questions than concerns.

But I think we're in a place and time where a lot of us don't know what to do, and things seem kind of uncertain everywhere.

Stephen Mansfield 00:43:26 (link to this point)

Yeah, I certainly understand that, and I think the key is, first of all, it's not likely that we're gonna fully understand everything that's going on, so we should relax about that, number one. Number two, the key is to know who we are, be comfortable in our own skin, be comfortable in our own values, but be able to express them. I frequently will end up at a university campus surrounded by a lot of LGBT students, and I'll say, Well, let's eat some pizza. I'm starving, you know? And so some of the Christians will look at me and go, How did you end up with 10 LGBT guys sitting around you?

But see, love the dialogue. I love the discussion. What they feel for me, again, is I'm not angry. I accept them. I love them.

I don't agree with their lifestyle, but then I'm not the king of the world, they're not about to get their head chopped off either, so they know that me disagreeing with them is fine. They're not going lose their minds over that. So why do I believe what I believe, and what do I think about then? Would I have them to my house for dinner? These are the kinds of things that are of concern.

And I think if you're calm, if you're comfortable in what you believe, if you're comfortable in your own skin, and you don't presume to know more than you know, that we're in better shape. I mean, the fact is that cable news and the splits on the Hill have radicalized a lot of people, and so we have a lot of anger. But I gotta tell you, let me say one more thing about this. You know, as you probably know, I'm on The Hannity Show a lot, a lot of these other, you know, CNN, Fox, and all that, and I can't tell you how many times people yell and scream and beat each other up on the air, and as soon as the camera goes off, and I can't tell you how many times this has happened, they all go, let's go eat. Where are going?

And people who have just been basically consigning each other to the pit of hell, you know, will say, well, let's go to Frisco's, man. Need a steak. And we'll sit for three or four hours over whiskey and a steak. And later on I find out, I can remember back when Colmes was alive, and it was the Hannity and Colmes show. Don't know if you remember that.

Hannity and Colmes beat the tar out of each other, but Hannity is the godfather to Colmes' kids, you know, and they attend to their weddings and their friends, but of course what happens is those cable news shows radicalize the street, as we'd say on DC. In other words, mom, pop, Walmart, people on the street in America. They get radicalized by watching that show and thinking Hannity and Colmes hate each other, and the fact was they were friends even though they disagree politically. So what I'm saying is a lot of the style of media these days beats everybody up, makes everybody angry, and makes them feel like the other side's going to die, when in fact, that's not really what's going on when the cameras are turned off, and many of these people are buddies to hang out together. So I think that's the model we ought to Some of what's going on with the cameras are off ought to be happening in front of the cameras to help heal the country a little bit.

Chris Albert 00:46:14 (link to this point)

Yeah. Pay everybody a little bit more respect.

Wow.

Everybody to speak. Not de platform anybody. Not not not try to skewer anybody, but but listen to the arguments and and hear them out. And I think that that's that's good words to live by. We're coming up to the end here, Stephen.

And and I wanna just ask you, as far as our audience out there, which is mostly combat veterans of the US Marine Corps and US Army, what any last bits of advice to them? Any any any notes that you would say for them to move forward from from this day on?

Stephen Mansfield 00:46:53 (link to this point)

Yeah, I do. I think a lot of what troubles vets when they leave the military is that they have been set up for a higher level of life. As I said earlier, they've been set up for a deeper level of belonging with other people. They've been set up to live with purpose. They've been set up and trained to live by a code.

And so when you step out in civilian society and you find none of those things, you're made to feel like the oddball. You're made to feel like some weird troglodyte, some damaged goods or something. The fact is we need you, and you have things to teach us, and I'm thrilled for the people who are helping vets bridge, but I don't want them to bridge in a way where they lose the stuff that I need, that the culture needs. So what's happened is there's been a glorious positive deposit in you, and we gotta figure out how to manage jobs, and how to manage expectations, how to manage post traumatic stress, and what have you, but we need you. And that's the thing I want from here.

We desperately need what they've got. So build a band of brothers and sisters, don't walk alone, realize that you've been set up for high test fuel, and grape juice won't begin to live a life at a more meaningful and more connected level because that's what you've been set up for.

Chris Albert 00:48:21 (link to this point)

Awesome, awesome. And I've often said that the veteran community in this country is the sleeping giant. Yes. And when it wakes, it will have a huge impact on who we are, what we do, and on our character as a country.

Stephen Mansfield 00:48:34 (link to this point)

No question about it. We desperately need them to be teachers and active and training us and addressing issues that we need to hear in our society. Look at what the vets in Congress are doing. They're some of the best people there. Look at what vets in society are doing, some of the best people there.

Why was John McCain able to bring so much to the country? Now, I'm not just mentioning it because we're talking about him so much these days. Well, he was able to do that because he'd been tempered by all those years of service and suffering and living by a code. And where does he want be buried? At the Naval Academy, right? Which was where that code was birthed in him. So anyway, I think that's a statement of how we need to see vets as guys, women who have got great things inside of them, but that means they've got to live a more exceptional, more connected, more high octane fuel kind of life.

Chris Albert 00:49:19 (link to this point)

Absolutely. Stephen, I wanna thank you so much for coming on, and I just wanna let the audience know about a couple of different things that you have going on. Number one, you've got stephenmansfield.tv, and then you've got what was the other one?

Stephen Mansfield 00:49:35 (link to this point)

Man Website for men's called greatman.tv.

Chris Albert 00:49:40 (link to this point)

Greatman.tv.

Stephen Mansfield 00:49:41 (link to this point)

Greatman.tv. It's a site for helping men and helping them get to a new level.

Chris Albert 00:49:46 (link to this point)

Awesome, awesome, and I'll be sure to get those links out there on the show notes, along with links to all of Stephen's books. And I highly, highly recommend Mansfield's Book of Manly Men. Like I said, I'm studying from it every morning and every night before I go to bed. And I've gotten so many lessons from it. So to everybody out there, I just want to thank you for listening and take these lessons to heart and get out there and live your best lives while you can.

Hey guys, so I hope you enjoyed that episode with Stephen Mansfield, and I highly recommend that you get his book, Mansfield's Book of Manly Men. Like I said, I've been reading it every morning and every night, and it's been a great study for me, and it's helped me a lot in my day to day life. Before we go, I just have a quick ask of you, and I'm not asking you for money. I'm not asking you to sign up for anything at this point. What I am asking you for is to share these episodes with people who can use them.

Share them with people who can find value in what we have to say. And the big reason for this is that we try to provide you with tools, tactics, ideas, and to get you interesting guests who can advise you on living your best life. And that's what we really want. I truly believe that the veteran community is the sleeping giant in this country. And we need to take charge of our own lives so that we can have an impact on the future of this country, on our children's futures.

And this is what gets me up every morning and this is what keeps me doing this show. So if you can share it, awesome. If you can leave us a review on iTunes, that's even better. You know, I can't tell you how much that helps the show. Whenever somebody writes a review for us and lets other people know what they've gotten out of the podcast, how it's helped them, and the impact that it's had on their own lives.

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