Veterans benefits a form of socialism?

I know I am breaking the rules of blogging by posting this but I saw this and had to get your thoughts. This is a Letter to the Editor from the New Mexico Daily Lobo. Here is a link to the article. Veterans benefits a form of socialism, should be ended


Editor,

Veterans benefits are a form of socialism. No other employer besides the government is either obligated or able to pay lifetime pensions, subsistence and health care benefits to all of its present and former employees, much less entitled to tax everyone else to pay whatever it costs.

A system of hospitals on the federal budget that offer free medical care only to a group of present or former employees of the government in certain capacities is a form of socialism. I’m not saying that as an indictment, but as a fact. The active socialists in America want something just like that — a system of hospitals exactly like the VA, but where any citizen can go. The loss of profit to our medical industry, pharmaceutical industry and insurance industry, and the lenders to whom their companies are mortgaged, would surely destroy our free-market economy.

So why should paying veterans benefits be tolerated? Why are veterans selected for what are, after all, socialist entitlements? What is there about being a veteran that should justify a person’s being placed for life in a certain category of beneficiary of federal funds?

Whether drafted or volunteered, this is presumably a reward for placing one’s life at risk for the flag, notwithstanding the fact that many veterans’ jobs did not place them at risk at all. Likewise, many in other state and private jobs must risk their lives every day, and they are not being given those benefits. What makes being a veteran so special? Is it merely a propaganda gesture, a show of “honor” so as to motivate the next generation of sacrifices?

You who would like to put an end to “socialism in America,” and an end to the socialist practice of exclusive medical entitlements given only to congressmen and certain other government ex-employees, should begin by demanding that the term “veteran” be discontinued, and that no federal funds or other benefits or advantages be given to a person merely because of that qualification.

Wearing any government uniform is a job, risky or not, armed or not, and as in the private sector, no employer should be obligated (much less entitled) to pay anything to its ex-employees. You should insist that the VA hospitals in America are a form of socialized medicine, which give exclusive favor to certain ex-employees of the government, at the expense of the private-sector businessman and taxpaying employee, and the program should immediately be discontinued, and the assets sold to the private sector for honest competition in the free market.

James N. Post
Daily Lobo reader