On this Memorial Day, I thought I’d share a recent conversation I had with Neal Rickner after our mutual friend Ken Harbaugh connected us. Ken produced my film For Our Daughters and hosts The Ken Harbaugh Show on MeidasTouch. A former Navy pilot, Ken advocates for veterans and works with veteran communities to promote civic engagement. Ken recently launched a new project, VALOR Media Network. Its mission: to empower voices that resonate with men, fostering a culture of authenticity, strength, and civic responsibility. In other words, he’s taking on the manosphere.

One of his partners in this endeavor is Neal Rickner. Neal is a CEO working in the clean energy sector who served 12 years on active duty in the US Marine Corps as an F/A-18 pilot and forward air controller. Having served three tours in Iraq, he is the recipient of the Bronze Star and 13 Air Medals. A member of the Council of Foreign Relations, Neal also serves on the board of American Values Coalition and International Refugee Assistance Project.

A couple days ago, I had a chance to talk with Neal about patriotism, masculinity, and honor. Having written a book critiquing the toxic combination of militarism, patriarchy, and American Christianity, I wanted to hear Neal’s perspective.

At a time when fake valor and performative machismo too often substitute for genuine courage, strength, and honor, I think many of you will appreciate Neal’s words:

KDM: What drew you to a career in the military to begin with?

NR: From a very early age, I was interested in airplanes. My parents put me on an airplane when I was 5, and every toy I played with was an airplane, you know. And then fast forward a few years, I was in a junior high program where kids make a trip to DC and I found myself in a museum. I don't even remember which one. And I remember just feeling the weight of this quote: “The only thing necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing.” And that just woke me up. I just decided at that point that I wanted to be part of the national defense. And then, within a very short period of time, somebody introduced me to the idea that I could both fly and serve in the military, and so I was like 13 or 14 years old, and I just decided that's what I was going to do.

I joined a cadet program, Civil Air Patrol, which is Air Force Auxiliary, and then somewhere along the line I was living near a marine base, and a marine got a hold of me and I decided then that I had to be a marine.

I grew up very much interested in flying and definitely patriotic, and I was just motivated to do something.

KDM: Tell us more about American Values Coalition and how you got involved in that group.

NR: It really grew out of a an effort to help people who felt a little homeless in our current political climate, people who had always been Republican, who had always thought of themselves as conservative, but for one reason or another, just couldn't get on board the Trump train and just couldn't go to the left side of the spectrum either. They were stuck somewhere in the middle, and what AVC was originally meant to do was just give people a sense of community, that you're not alone, that there are others that feel the same way, and that you can still be conservative and not be Trumpy.

What it's grown into is a set of tools for people who, when they sit down at the Thanksgiving table, how do you navigate a conversation where you're basing reality in one set of facts and information, and they're basing their reality in a whole other set of facts and information? We got this question a lot, because if you're conservative and unwilling to go on the Trump train, you're put in these really awkward situations where people are trying to debate you. And how do you push back on certain ideas?

What we tried to do is give people what we call the “Truth Advocates Handbook, a set of tools for how to approach tough conversations. That grew into what's called the Mending Division Academy, which is a series of courses. We envisioned it as a small group course: How should you understand the current moment? What is a propaganda campaign, and why might a church member be targeted by a propaganda campaign? Who stands to benefit from that? What are the real national security threats? How do you identify misinformation? How should you read the news as a Christian. These are all things that we thought were important for Christians to consider as they engaged in the current political climate.

KDM: And the j29 Coalition?

NR: One of our missions was to organize pastor conferences. Pastors want to be talking about the gospel, and they're being asked a bunch of other questions that they really don't want to be dealing with, but but are sort of forced to deal with. And so the j29 Coalition is specifically for pastors to say: Here are some tools you can use to navigate this. How do you deal with conflict? How do you try to approach people who are being destructive? How do you build on positive change? It’s a cohort-based program where we bring pastors in for in-person and virtual sessions, a community of pastors who help each other.

[Note: The j29 Coalition is designed for conservative pastors and they are currently recruiting their next cohort; learn more here.)

KDM: A lot of conservative Christians tend to be very pro-military and consider themselves very patriotic: 4th of July church services, flags next to the pulpit, to be pro-military equals patriotic equals a faithful Christian. How do you understand the relationship between Christianity, patriotism and support for the military?

NR: I don't think they're that related except in as much as being a patriot means that we advocate for freedom and pluralism and American values, which aren't Christian values, necessarily. There is some overlap for sure, but they're not the same.

And I think that’s one of the things in American Values Coalition that we’ve really come to understand. That’s why we developed a separate group, j29, focused on Christian values. So those are those are differentiated now, even within our organization.

I think what the Christians that I work with at AVC are very worried about is if we promote Christianity to the top of the heap today in the American government, that necessarily puts Christianity at risk of not being at the top of the heap tomorrow. And so we really advocate for pluralism—that, as it says in the Constitution, we're not going to pick a religion. Being a patriot to me means protecting all religions.

I understand where people are coming from, but I think if people really think about it, being an American, being a patriot, does not put Christianity in the lead, because by definition we haven't put any religion in the lead.

If you care about Christianity, you should care about protecting that freedom because it protects Christianity.

KDM: We're seeing a lot of coverage these days about the appeal of the manosphere, of these right-wing podcasts attracting young men. We have data that we've seen an uptick in church attendance by young men, while young women seem to be staying away from churches, which is, historically speaking, a very unusual trend. What do you think the appeal is for young men in some of these reactionary spaces, particularly with respect to the models of masculinity that are being offered them?

NR: To be totally transparent, I'm in the middle of trying to figure this out for myself. I don't know. I don't have a very well articulated position here. Maybe some obvious things like the voices that dominate right now are—it sounds trite to say—they're awful. Maybe I can put it in this way: I was trained to be a quiet warrior. I did some bad things. I did a lot of things that I don't want to talk about ever again, in combat. The folks who do the most, talk the least. And so, what you have out there in the world today is a bunch of folks who talking a lot, and I see right through it.

But somehow it's appealing to folks who are trying to navigate the current moment. So I acknowledge that something's going on there. This is where I'm trying to figure out how to be impactful, how to how to do better. How to model.

You know, I was raised to be a protector. That's part of why, at that museum when I was 12 years old, it just resonated with me. There is nothing more invigorating to me than to be a protector, to be somebody who looks out for somebody who is weaker in whatever way that means: disadvantaged, fewer resources, or vulnerable in some way. That's why I went into the military. That's my version of masculinity.

I can be a voice, and I certainly try to model it for my sons.

KDM: It seems to me that when we look at popular kind of right-wing discourses of masculinity these days, what is missing, which has historically almost always been present in ideals of masculinity, is the concept of honor. Can you talk a little bit about what honor means to you?

NR: Let me start with this. The concept of honor crystallized for me when I was in Iraq. I was a pilot, but one of the tours in Iraq I did was on the ground with the infantry, and there was a moment where I came really close to dying. There were a couple of moments, actually, but one in particular where I thought it was over, and I hit the ground. And I remember, in that moment when I hit the ground and thought to myself that I'd be perfectly justified in just staying down. But also, shockingly in that moment, I thought, “Look, I have a choice to make.” I had a conscious conversation in my mind: “I can stay here, and nobody would blame me, or I can get up and do my job.”

And I remember thinking very clearly that I'd rather go home with honor.

Meaning, I'd rather die and go home with honor than stay on the ground and not have it. So my lesson from that is, we're all going to look back in our lives. And at some point, we're going to be on our deathbeds, and we're going to think about what we did with our lives. Did we treat people well? Did we do what we could to make the world a better place? Did we treat people with respect?

To me, that's honor. Have you lived a life that is worthy and have you contributed to making the world a better place, and to treating people with respect and to protecting the vulnerable? To me, there's nothing more. At the end of the day we're all going to be on our deathbeds, and all other stuff is going to melt away and be unimportant.

**Note: To those curious about the origins of the quote that inspired Neal, he likely saw a quote from a John F. Kennedy speech where JFK misattributed the words to Edmund Burke. Burke did say something similar in his “Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents” (1770): “When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

John Stuart Mill said something similar at the University of St Andrews in 1867: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

Watch VALOR Media Network’s Memorial Day tribute video here:

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