A Call for Healing

by Tom Barnes, Editor in Chief 

We are trying very hard to reinvent ourselves here at VT. It isn’t easy. The past election cycle pushed us all to the very limits of our tolerance for each other. We have centrists, leftists, rightists, and every other conceivable "..ist" as a staff writer that you can imagine on the site. What we all try very hard to do is bring out into the open issues of importance to an audience of veterans who would otherwise not be able to read about such views in the mainstream media.

To be frank, veterans organizations tend to get into bed with the Department of Veterans Affairs and the "government’ rather easily. We try very hard here not to do that. We love our country very much. It is the government many of us do not trust on this site. Many of us have experience enough with "the government" to cast a jaundiced eye on anyone from that group promisng to help us. The promise often rings hollow.

We are asking our readers to be patient with us until we find a sort of levelling off point where the ‘water level’ of reasonable discourse can once again ‘settle in’ on this website. You cannot imagine the hours of conversation, debate and discussion that go into even a single article and its related comments from all of us. We care enough about you and your interests to really put our hearts into this.

Its cathartic for us and hopefully, it is meaningful and useful for you to have this information. We argue over content, tone of the content, ‘hidden agendas" among writers, ultimate usefulness of the information posted and all sorts of things that you would expect a staff to argue about when working on a web site that wants to be taken seriously. We want you to be able to use this web site to be informed about crucial issues involving veterans and topics related to veterans’ world views. We really do not take any of these issues lightly. We want to do this right.

The nation is presently polarized in the political realm. We have a population of roughly 24 million veterans in the country who represent every conceivable point of view possible within American culture. The culture wars that started in the 1960’s are still raging hot and will do so for many years to come. We do not so much want to take sides as we want to be able to use the social tension inherent in this never ending battle for cultural ascendancy among various regional and political interest groups to inform us and guide us toward reasonable actions and group values.

Veterans have served their country under extreme conditions that only another veteran could understand. We will not allow that service to country and the insights that it gives to an individual to be squandered on sophomoric infighting among people who care deeply about this nation. We cannot.

The strength that service to country has given us, the insights that it provides must be used by all of us to bring the nation forward into a healing time. And as veterans, we all know the value of healing. I am asking our readers to help us forge ahead with a new vision of a veterans’ community that puts service to country ahead of all political and regional concerns.

We are the only group in the country who can actually lay claim to having done this over long periods in our lives. Lets take a look at where we are headed as a nation and then recommit ourselves to taking the lead in healing our communities from the cancer of political and social polarization that seems so prevelant today.