Politics & Power Quote by Steve Buyer

A politician praising veterans is never just praising veterans. Steve Buyer’s line is a classic piece of civic ventriloquism: it lets “America” speak through its soldiers, then uses that echo to stabilize whatever political moment is making the country feel less stable. The wording is doing quiet work. “Embody” turns veterans into living symbols, not merely people with complicated histories and uneven outcomes. Symbols don’t argue back; they certify.

The phrase “the ideals upon which America was founded” pulls the conversation away from policy and into sacred origin story. It’s an appeal to a shared myth of national beginning, where the messier parts of history can be bracketed off in favor of a cleaner, unifying narrative. The “more than 229 years ago” is the rhetorical timestamp that tries to make the sentiment feel factual, almost audited. Precision here signals seriousness, but it also sidesteps specifics: which ideals, exactly? Liberty, equality, property, dissent, empire? Leaving “ideals” undefined allows the listener to fill in whatever version of America they prefer.

The subtext is transactional, though not necessarily cynical: honoring veterans becomes a shortcut to honoring the nation itself, and by extension the speaker’s own patriotism. It also implicitly narrows the definition of civic virtue. If veterans “embody” founding ideals more than others, where does that leave teachers, organizers, immigrants, or skeptics - the people who test ideals by disputing them? The line flatters, sanctifies, and recruits, turning gratitude into a political credential and national identity into a uniform.