We Are United T-Shirt

It’s easy to lose faith. Congress has become craven and grossly out of touch with the populace. Whether they act or, more often, don’t act, the military and its veterans tend to be the ones that get the shaft. When we leave the military, we return to a populace that doesn’t understand us because so few have served or even know someone who has served and a government who seems increasingly reticent to take care of us when we need it upon our return from duty.

It all sounds very bad, doesn’t it?

I’d like you all to cast your minds back to 1775. There is a reason why George Washington is revered above all of the other founding fathers, and it is not because he was our first President. He had no professional troops and he was facing the greatest military the world had ever seen. At times he had so little gunpowder that not all of his men had rifles and those that did had no more than nine shots. Even before any reasonable person thought we could win the war against England, congressmen were attempting to hurt Washington’s reputation in an attempt to seize the potential Presidency from him IF victory fell to the colonists.

We’ve all seen the famous picture of Washington crossing the Delaware. By the time he got to that fateful Christmas night, almost all of his New Jersey and New York troops had abandoned him, those that hadn’t barely had shoes and were leaving trails of blood everywhere they walked. There is no way on Earth he should have prevailed, but he did, partly because he refused to admit to defeat, but more importantly, because he trained, trusted, and gave responsibility to the best men he could find, regardless of station, and they refused to fail him. Washington and his men were the original Band of Brothers.

When we started Ranger Up, we always said that this was about a whole lot more than making t-shirts. But even we have been awed by what it has become and what you and our team have been able to accomplish together. When a soldier needs medical help, we reach out to the RU community, and within five minutes we have a dozen leads on how to get the problem solved. When we’ve needed video help, access to officials, training for our fighters, hell ANYTHING, you guys have volunteered, donated your time and effort to help us make it happen. For our part, we’ve done everything from talk guys down from suicide in the middle of the night, to provide legal help to a few troops that have been wronged, to handling marketing support for a number of non-profits, to some of the most random things that you’d ever see a company do in order to help out the Team.

But the bigger mission is still ahead. We need to train OEF/OIF vets how to get jobs after their service. We need to teach vets how to succeed as entrepreneurs. We need to knock down the walls that are keeping vets from getting proper healthcare. And I honestly believe that this country is going to be turned around, if and only if, WE, the only people in our country that truly know how bad the alternative to our Republic looks, get aggressively involved.

We are United. We have to be. We are united by sacrifice, shared suffering, and service. We believe in our country enough to have signed up to place our lives on the line for it. In that moment, regardless of the MOS we served in, we earned our citizenship. And through all of it, whether intended or unintended, we learned how to push, how to succeed regardless of circumstance, how to place others ahead of ourselves, how to do what is right. We learned to fight for the man or woman to our left and right.

We need to keep pushing. We need to solve the problems everyone else only whines about.

We can do it. We will do it. But there is only one way.

United.