We all presumably know what stolen valor means.

It's a common enough occurrence for some Firestone security guard with 15 credits toward a criminal justice major from Pomona City College

to ask for a military discounted the Fudruckers in Ontario, only to have an army vet that

did two years active duty as a fueler during the Panama

invasion call him out for wearing an Air Force command chief master sergeant chevron

sewn upside down on a marching band jacket with nine rows of service ribbons including

ones for the Berlin Airlift and the Victoria Cross. These sad cosplayers

enrage people by histing some of that precious valor.

God damn it, man!

How dare you disgrace the sacred ground of 50% off of Fudrucker's curly fries?

Did my son-in-law spend three years in the typing pool in Camp Pendleton before being given an other

than honorable discharge for smelling like weed in formation just so you can board first on a

southwest flight to Farming to New Mexico under the false pretense of having a tactical

flag patch on your THE pack. That honor must be earned, sir. You never used to hear about stolen valor because that's not how people used to be.

I don't mean that there weren't fakers.

There were always guys parading around their neighborhood taverns claiming to have been with Napoleon

in Moscow or to have landed in Normandy with general discharge or whatever, but everyone knew they were harmless cranks.

No, the difference is that people weren't quite so liberal with the use of the word valor back in the day,

so it wasn't quite so easy to steal.

Valor was a word waited with meaning.

It still is, in fact, but like so many words in our modern world, it's changed

a bunch just recently and now, rather than meaning great courage in battle, it means

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