S3 - Ep11 - Honored that 14 year veteran Jay Jackson joins us to discuss how he side hustled a book on "Decent Discourse" between military service and his career as an attorney

Retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Jay Jackson joins us to discuss his side hustle. Jay struggled with finding purpose while in law school and decided to join the military. Now as an attorney, who works on affordable housing issues, he continues to see opportunities to help this country by writing a book that tackles social and political issues that tear us apart as Americans. The book will launch soon but in the meantime, you can sign up for his newsletter and follow his blog.

In his own words:
One Saturday morning in March 2020 I sat down to write.  I’ve continued that writing a lot of mornings, nights, and weekends since that day.  And now (oops)—it kind of adds up to a whole book.  It’s called Decent Discourse, and we’ll launch it this Spring. 

Decent Discourse comes in response to the toxic political rhetoric we see around us.  Our political conversation has turned war-like. Families and friendships are being torn apart.  More Americans than ever feel violence is justified to advance their political goals.  And the media is turbocharging this toxic, hyperpartisan political rhetoric.

But can I tell you something?  We can fix it.  You can fix it.  

One conversation at a time.  

One relationship at a time. 

One community at a time. 

I think we can fix it because our country has overcome immense challenges before – slavery, wars, McCarthyism, Jim Crow, xenophobic hysteria, economic depressions, and more. Decent discourse is the common thread running through the solutions to these past tragedies: truth, humility, compassion, and open-mindedness. In other words, loving your neighbor (even if they might be wrong). 

Using historical case studies to provide a hope-filled perspective, Decent Discourse explores how we can save our country from the negative discourse taking place at our dinner tables, in our communities, and on social media. In October 1940, with Hitler on the march in Europe and Japan’s empire spreading throughout the Pacific, Franklin D. Roosevelt observed that “Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough.” 

If you believe that kindness and toughness are not mutually exclusive and you want to put those principles to work for our nation and “the fiber of a free people,” you’re really going to like this book.

Listen on: Apple Podcasts  

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