Enough with the ‘Stolen Valor’ whining already
By Thomas L. Knapp
Ah, the tempest teapot of vice-presidential campaigns: Republican veep nominee JD Vance,
Senator from Ohio, accuses Democratic veep nominee apparent Tim Walz, governor of
Minnesota, of engaging in "stolen valor garbage."
Vance's allegations seem to involve three components:
First, that Walz retired from the National Guard after 24 years in infantry and artillery jobs,
instead of adding another hitch so as to deploy with his unit to Iraq (the unit received its orders
two months after he submitted his retirement paperwork).
Second, that while Minnesota's official government web site described Walz's rank at retirement
as Command Sergeant Major, he actually retired as a Master Sergeant because he hadn't
completed the Sergeants Major Academy while holding the job of (envelope, please) Command
Sergeant Major.
And third, that Walz referred in passing to "weapons of war, that I carried in war" in an anti-gun-
rights rant. Walz never carried a weapon in war, if for no other reason than that the hasn't been
— legally/constitutionally speaking — at war since 1945, two decades before his birth. He almost
certainly carried, at least, a side arm, during periods when the US military was engaged in
combat, even though he didn't see any himself.
Vance, on the other hand, served one enlistment in the US Marine Corps, deploying to Iraq as a
"combat correspondent" who, by his own admission, saw no "combat." I suspect he carried a
weapon in that (pseudo-)war. So valor! Much rifle!
I seldom speak "as a veteran," but "as a veteran" (and, by the way, a Marine who ran for vice-
president 16 years before Vance, appearing on the ballot in Tennessee for the Boston Tea
Party), I find this line of gotcha name-calling, and the whole concept of "stolen valor," boring and
silly.
A veteran is just a former government employee who may have held, but didn't necessarily hold,
a job with "kill people" in its description of usual duties. There's nothing inherently more
"valorous" about that than there is to any other government jobs/workfare program; "valor" is a
rare individual occurrence, not an automatic attribute of "service."
As for false or embellished claims as to the character of a veteran's work, who cares?
Family-friendly version of an old saying: The difference between a fairy tale and a sea story is
that a fairy tale begins "once upon a time …" while a sea story begins "no kidding, you're not
gonna believe this …"

Neither of these two politicians seems to have embellished his record to any wild degree — if I
had a dollar for every "former US Navy SEAL" I've met, I'd have more dollars than the number
of SEALs who've ever existed — and given Vance's need to nitpick at this level of triviality, I
doubt any new bombshells are wired for later detonation.
And if the idea of "stolen valor" bothers you, you've got too much time on your hands and
probably a tendency toward unjustified grievance. Some idiot wearing an "unearned" Medal of
Honor neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg. Get over it.
Knapp is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian
Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org).