A BEFITTING INTRODUCTION TO THE BOOK, “VETERANS BENEFITS FOR YOU,” BY PAUL R. LAWRENCE, PH.D., ON THIS INDEPENDENCE DAY, JULY 4, 2024

A REVIEW BY STEPHEN L. D’ANDRILLI*

On this July 4th Holiday Americans must give consideration to America’s First Patriots—those Americans who placed their lives on the line to engage a powerful foe in mortal combat.

Those first citizen-soldiers realized the probability of victory was slim, but they knew taking up arms against Tyranny was necessary.

Their cause was just, and their aim was pure—To Obtain for Themselves and for Those Americans who follow them—Freedom and Liberty from the throes of Tyranny.

The Good Lord Above clearly blessed our First Patriots.

Despite the odds that favored Tyrant George III and his Empire, a seemingly coarse collection of colonies prevailed against that powerful monarch and that vast British Empire. America’s victory was absolute and complete.

After securing victory from Tyranny, America’s First Patriots were not done by a long shot. They faced another equally formidable, gargantuan task:

To make the promise of “Freedom and Liberty” True and Secure For Americans For All Time.

Among America’s First Patriots were those tasked with framing a Constitution—the Supreme Law of the Land. The purpose of crafting a Constitution was Two-Fold:

To enable the fledgling Nation to effectively resist attempts by a foreign adversary, at some future time,  that seeks to destroy America from the outside and To guard against Tyranny raising its ugly head from inside the Country. As for the second purpose, we have the absolute right of the people to keep and bear arms.

The Framers of the Constitution and the States eventually agreed upon a blueprint for a centralized “Federal Government” that would include a standing armed Governmental force that could effectively repel invasion from without.

The Antifederalists among the Framers insisted on including a Bill of Rights to ensure that the American people could effectively restrain a rogue Federal Government from imposing its own Tyranny on the American people, from within.

The Preamble of the U.S. Constitution sets forth the purpose of the U.S. Constitution, but, more importantly, there is this, as made clear from the first words of the Preamble: Since it is the American People who created the Constitution, it follows by logical implication that it is the American People alone who may dissolve it as they wield sole sovereign authority over the Nation.

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

One of the core purposes of the Constitution as elaborated in the articles of it is to “provide for the common defense.”

“The Common Defense” is ascribed principally to the armed citizenry. As applied to the idea of a continuous need to protect the Country from dangerous threats emanating from the outside, this has, through time, come to fall principally within the purview of the armed forces of the United States.

Americans have, since the earliest decades of the Republic, fought to protect the security of the Nation from foreign adversaries. Many have died doing so or have survived with grievous, severe, permanent injuries.

The U.S. Government has recognized an extraordinary responsibility to its veterans, from the earliest days of the Republic. Through time, this duty has evolved into the creation of a formal Administrative structure: The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, colloquially referred to as the “VA.”

A major component of the VA is the Health Administration Agency (VHA).

The website sets forth, in part,

VHA operates one of the largest health care systems in the world and provides training for a majority of America’s medical, nursing and allied health professionals. Roughly 60 percent of all medical residents obtain a portion of their training at VA hospitals; and VA medical research programs benefit society at-large.

The VA health care system has grown from 54 hospitals in 1930 to 1,600 health care facilities today, including 144 VA Medical Centers and 1,232 outpatient sites of care of varying complexity.

Given the size and complexity of the VHA, America’s veterans have found it increasingly difficult to understand the full extent of health care and related benefits and services they and their families are entitled to. And, even if they do understand the basic nature of and extent of those benefits and services, they have found themselves faced with a difficult and, at time, impossible, task of navigating through this monolithic structure to obtain—and in a timely manner—the benefits and services to which they are entitled. All too often veterans and their families give up attempting to steer a course through this maze.

This is deeply concerning and problematic and begs for an efficacious resolution.

Paul R. Lawrence has sought to fill this need and succeeded admirably.

The author is well-positioned and well-versed in the topic he speaks about, as he makes plain in the Book’s “Introduction.”

He says,

I am an army veteran. I served for three years as a finance officer, fulfilling my Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) requirement. After completing my service, I became a management consultant. In each company, I worked with other veteran employees and leaders to champion veteran causes. In spring 2018, I had the opportunity to become a senior leader at the VA and make a real difference for veterans.

I was nominated by President Trump and unanimously confirmed by the Senate to serve as the VA’s under secretary for benefits in April 2018. I served as undersecretary for almost three years, until January 20, 2021 [when the Democrat Joe Biden improbably ascended to the Presidency]. . . .

To do my job effectively, I learned about the wide range of benefits available to veterans and their families. Each had its own set of rules and special features. It was easy to see how veterans could be overwhelmed and might not receive a benefit they had earned because they were unaware of it. . . . I found the overall process to be complicated, time consuming, and often frustrating.

Part of the reason for this is the way government works. . . .

While working at the VA, I provided information to veterans about the available benefits and reported regularly and publicly about how effectively these benefits were processed. Out of office, I thought more about the veterans’ benefit experience and hoped a book existed that provided needed information. Examining books about veterans’ benefits, I saw many were out of date, often incomplete because they addressed just a few of the many benefits or hard to decipher, providing limited practical help to veterans trying obtain their earned benefits.

I decided to write this book to provide needed information for veterans, answering many of the frequently asked questions that I heard as under secretary of benefits. I wanted to present this information in a straightforward manner so it could be used as a how-to manual for a veteran or family member trying to obtain benefits.

As a reviewer of this book, I wish to emphasize—as the author of “Veteran Benefits for You” pointedly asserts—this is a “how-to” information manual. It IS NOT an exposé on present and past travails of the VA, nor does it purport to be that. And THE BOOK ISN’T a polemic against those who have attacked the VA. And IT ISN’T a treatise on how the Legislative Branch of the Federal Government, i.e., Congress, and the Executive Branch of the Federal Government, can improve the VA.

THE BOOK IS, THEN, A STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTION MANUAL. And it is extremely useful to veterans and their families in that regard.

The author takes the VA as it is, and he confines himself to explain how a veteran or his or her family members can effectively and efficiently navigate the system's thorny complexities and nuances.

The book cuts through all the journalistic and political claptrap and garbage. It gets to the crux of the matter at hand: Informing a veteran and his family of, one, the benefits to which a veteran or his family is entitled, two, the services available, and three, the processes for accessing each of the services to which a veteran or family is entitled.

Lawrence’s book was published by Humanix Books in 2023.

If more recent information is available, since the publication of this book, “Veterans Benefits for You” points the veteran or family member in the right direction.

The salient aim of the book is to ensure that a veteran or family member is aware of and receives all the services and benefits he or she is entitled to without exerting unnecessary time, money, and energy to obtain access to those services and benefits.

Before the publication of this book, veterans and their families have had to endure frustration, distress, and emotional and physical exhaustion, but no longer, now that this book exists.

This bureaucratic nightmare was and is unnecessary and undeserved; reprehensible and incomprehensible.

All American citizens owe this group of citizens their undying gratitude and respect for having placed life and limb on the line to secure and preserve our Nation’s Freedoms and Liberty—such fundamental Rights and Liberty that no other Nation on Earth possesses or even envisions.

Notwithstanding that “Veterans Benefits for You” is written for veterans and their families, non-veterans may also wish to read this book.

Lawrence’s book will help non-veterans gain an appreciation for the hurdles veterans and their families routinely face and must overcome to obtain the benefits and services sorely needed, clearly earned, and richly deserved.

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*In a follow-up article, Roger Katz, Co-Founder of the Arbalest Quarrel, will provide the reader with a synopsis of each chapter.

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