This is a excerpt from a post on the Protect Veteran’s Benefits Facebook page. The complete post is a good read, however, the below portion summarizes their perspective. Enjoy!
SERVICE – Military members volunteered because if they didn’t, being in the military would be mandatory and required. Equal rights dictates that every man and woman is under Constitutional requirement to be able to be called for service. The Uncle Sam sign was created to encourage volunteers because with rights comes responsibility. The USA is ENTITLED to your service.
The fact that people have access to federal benefits but they haven’t been required to serve is ONLY because someone volunteered for them. The only reason people are ALLOWED to go directly from high school to college is because someone volunteered so they didn’t have to go into the military. Without an all volunteer military, we would have an all mandatory military.
SACRIFICE – This is the one that usually shatters brains. The sacrifice of every military member is the protection of their rights. Everyone is born with rights and then given the Bill of Rights to protect them. A military member hands that over when they join and they NEVER get it back. We like to refer to the amendments when we talk about the collective rights that it protects. When military members use it to describe their protections, it’s just slang because otherwise most people would never know what they were talking about.
The Bill of Rights is only a shield to protect rights and not the actual rights themselves. Military members, past and present, have a different shield and it’s defined under Titles 10 and 38 of the federal laws. You can’t be in the military without making this sacrifice. The Bill of Rights was written to protect the people from the government AND the military. Because this one is so hard for people to grasp, I made a whole series of images to explain different rights.
When soldiers come home after serving and they are injured and lose their abilities, they can qualify for benefits under the entitlement system specifically for veteran benefits. Just as a pregnant woman has additional nutritional needs and may qualify for programs like WIC to handle her specific needs by demographic, veterans have special demographic needs too.
When a civilian is involved in a car accident and becomes injured, that it typically the extent of their injury. When a soldier is in an accident it is more likely to be from an IED and that means they are not suffering from just being in an accident but multiple injuries like also having shrapnel or exacerbated earlier small injuries. I know of very few disabled veterans who have a single injury. Each injury is rated separately and then a “combined rating” is given. The individual ratings are not added together just combined to consider how they impact each other. A person with 5 injuries, all under 30% each might receive a combined rating of 30, 40 or at most a 50% rating. This is a unique system separate from others because of the nature of our demographic.
Editor’s Note: 5 injuries between 10% and 30% each, equals between 40% and 80% according to my calculations, but that is another story….
When people complain with nasty statements of disabled veterans, it is of extreme nastiness and contempt for the country. Military members volunteered to serve for civilians and they sacrifice their Bill of Rights regardless of IF they become injured and end up on benefits. For a person who has not fulfilled their responsibility of serving this country to verbally abuse a person who has is stupid. But to do it because they volunteered so that person doesn’t have to is beyond pathetic, I’m not even sure the word stupid is sufficient to describe them.
