Eric Greitens
My parents were both Democrats and I grew up as a Democrat. Basically I was told that the Democrats were the party that cared about people. I liked people and I cared about them, so I was a Democrat.
If you care about people, then you're willing to act not just with compassion, but you're also willing to act with courage.
I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class.
I am a conservative Republican, but I didn't start out that way. I was raised as a Democrat.
After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA - the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country - fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only 'solution' I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.
When vets come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity. Then the VA, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled.
As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.
Success means eliminating Al Qaeda's ability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.
Defeating a terrorist organization is like fighting a forest fire; there's never a clear moment of victory, and even after you've won, you have to watch carefully.
Since Bin Laden's death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.
I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.
It's only in the act of pushing yourself, challenging yourself to make a contribution to your community, to your family, to your country, that you actually realize your full self, you know?
It's really important to have role models, and a lot of the ancients always talked about this. Seneca talked about this, Aristotle talked about this, and in fact, this was my boxing coach's philosophy in college, was that you have to have role models.
In any leadership, whenever you're facing a tough challenge, find ways to bring people together and get them to serve together.
I did a lot of humanitarian work before I joined the military.
I believe that you have to live a life that involves both courage and compassion.
I'd finished a dissertation, writing about how international humanitarian organizations worked with kids in war zones and then I made this transition from the academic world to officer candidate school and to the SEAL teams. It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
I had a great time at Oxford, got a wonderful, wonderful education there.
The more successful Navy SEALs there are, the more glory it reflects on the community and the better it is for our country.
The people who believe in voter intimidation believe that the minute you make a political donation, that you immediately need to turn all your information over to the government.
We've already seen other candidates set up these secretive super PACs where they don't take any responsibility for what they're funding... because that's how the game has always been played. I've been very proud to tell people, 'I'm stepping forward, and you can see every single one of our donors.'
I'm not after anything, I don't want to be part of politics, I don't want to be a part of anything.
Whenever we love or care for anything in our lives we're willing to respond with care and with compassion, but if something that we love or someone we love is threatened, we're also willing to respond with courage.
It's oftentimes the case that relief workers, people who've been involved in development projects and foreign assistance, have a real understanding of foreign cultures that the military desperately needs if we're going to be able to work effectively.
I was at this dinner for Rhodes Scholars. And we were in the Rhodes mansion, which is this fancy mansion on the Oxford campus. And I remember I looked up in the rotunda, and I saw that etched into the marble were the names of Rhodes Scholars who had left Oxford, and had fought and died in World War II.
Part of the attraction of the SEAL teams was the incredible tests that it offered.
What happens for a lot of veterans when they come home, especially when they get back to their community is that they can go to a very tough and hard place and they start to wonder, 'What's next for me?' and they ask themselves, 'Why did this happen to me?'
I think there are a couple of key lessons that come from Judaism that shaped my life. One of them is the idea we have a duty to repair the world, and all of us should play a role in our lives in trying to repair the world and to make the world better for the next generation.
Every generation of Americans who has fought, every generation of Americans who has served, has suffered.
When we make these decisions that we're going to commit ourselves to making a difference in the life of one person every single day, what happens is we actually build a whole generation of citizen leaders.
People understand the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made - and they instinctively want to do something for them. And that sometimes leads people to give veterans an excuse: Oh, you didn't show up for work on time. It must be that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. Oh, you're disabled. Don't even try.
I actually think it's very important that the Navy SEAL community stay out of politics.
It's very important for us as a group of Navy SEALs, to make sure that the message that we send to the country is that we're ready to serve any commander in chief, the elected head of the armed forces, that the people of the United States elect. That is our mission, that's our duty, as Navy SEALs.
The more I thought about myself, the weaker I got. The more I recognized that I was serving a purpose larger than myself, the stronger I got.
I don't think many people want to say to themselves that they've quit. At the same time, we've all failed in our lives, we've all failed at different things in different ways and I think there's a lot to be said about facing that failure squarely.
I'm proud that many of Missouri's lawmakers stood strong to protect the lives of the innocent unborn and women's health.
I'm proud to be Jewish.
There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party, and the leaders need to show that.
It certainly could be that there are prejudices around. I can only speak to what I have lived, and I have experienced that people have been incredibly welcoming to me as a Jewish Republican.
Young men often seek tests and trials, and to me, BUD/S training - basic underwater demolition/SEAL - seemed like the ultimate test.
Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.
One of the great things about the SEAL teams in particular, and the American military in general, is the tremendous diversity of backgrounds and experience that people bring to their service.
Yet the basic fact remains: we live in a world marked by violence, and if we want to protect others, we sometimes have to be willing to fight.Collection: Fighting
There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit.Collection: Numbers
I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin, and that every warrior, every humanitarian, every citizen is built to live with both. In fact, to win a war, to create peace, to save a life, or just to live a good life requires of us - of every one of us - that we be both good and strong.Collection: Strong
A good peace, a solid peace, a peace in which communities can flourish, can only be built when we ask ourselves and each other to be more than just good, and better than just strong. And a good life, a meaningful life, a life in which we can enjoy the world and live with purpose, can only be built if we do more than live for ourselves.Collection: Meaningful
As warriors, as humanitarians, they've taught me that without courage, compassion falters, and that without compassion, courage has no direction.Collection: Warrior