Leadership Quote by Steve Buyer

“Twenty-five million” is doing heavy lifting here: the statistic turns an abstract category into a population the size of a major nation-state, then pulls it back home with “living among us today.” It’s a classic political move, less about arithmetic than proximity. Veterans aren’t “over there” or safely archived in ceremony; they’re coworkers, neighbors, voters. The line quietly insists that policy can’t treat them as a once-a-year ritual.

Buyer’s phrasing borrows the moral vocabulary of sacrifice without naming a specific war, party, or controversy. “Selflessly set aside their civilian lives” frames service as an interruption of normalcy, a deliberate suspension of personal ambition. That construction flatters veterans, but it also offers civilians a flattering role: we are the beneficiaries. The pronoun “us” is the tell. It creates a single, grateful public and smooths over messier truths: not every service experience is honored, not every veteran feels served by institutions afterward, not every deployment maps neatly onto public good.

There’s subtext in what’s omitted. No mention of injuries, PTSD, unemployment, or bureaucratic neglect; the emotional register is tribute, not accountability. That makes it versatile in a legislative setting: you can use it to introduce a benefits bill, defend defense spending, or shame opponents for voting the “wrong” way. It’s a soft power opener, designed to make dissent feel morally risky.

Contextually, Buyer (a veteran himself and former VA secretary) speaks from an era when “support the troops” became a bipartisan lingua franca. The quote leans into that consensus, turning gratitude into a civic baseline that policy is expected to follow.