{"id":76787,"date":"2017-12-28T10:26:50","date_gmt":"2017-12-28T15:26:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=76787"},"modified":"2017-12-28T12:17:24","modified_gmt":"2017-12-28T17:17:24","slug":"alex-nichols-the-absurd-conservative-obsession-with-stolen-valor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=76787","title":{"rendered":"Alex Nichols: The absurd conservative obsession with \u201cstolen valor\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some doofus named Alex Nichols<\/a> decided to take on the stolen valor community and the entire notion of stolen valor in his column last week entitled “The absurd conservative obsession with \u201cstolen valor\u201d<\/a>“. <\/p>\n

Somehow, he claims that the Stolen Valor community is strictly a conservative construct. You know, despite the fact that Doug Sterner and his wife, Pamela, who wrote the Stolen Valor Act, Colorado Congressman John Salazar, who introduced the Act in Congress and President Barack Obama, who signed the Stolen Valor Act of 2013 into law, are not Conservatives or Republicans.<\/p>\n

Nichols also makes the absurd contention that “The Wedding Crashers” influenced the Stolen Valor Act passage – Ms. Sterner had been working on the subject long before the movie came out – ten years after BG Burkett’s book was published.<\/p>\n

For some reason, Nichols doesn’t bother to look at the true giant of stolen valor websites, that being TAH<\/strong> with 240 new valor thieves listed in 2017, instead he wants to talk about the YouTube videos of bullies confronting homeless people wearing thrift-store clothing and Guardian of Valor which has had only a handful of stolen valor busts this year – although they sell their own brand of coffee and have their logo on a NASCAR vehicle. <\/p>\n

This Ain’t Hell<\/strong> has prided itself on busting valor thieves irrespective of their political persuasions. Most of our thieves this year display pro-Trump memes on their Facebook pages. We stopped one valor stealing speaker from addressing the RNC a year ago last summer. The Washington Post and New York Times loved our exposures of the phonies at the Malheur Stolen Valor Convention. <\/p>\n

Although we are conservative, mostly, when we discuss political issues, that has never leaked into the stolen valor aspect of our news. Maybe that’s why Nichols didn’t bother to name us or talk to us before he posted his stupid, uneducated opinion. Our stolen valor creds go back eleven years, longer than any other existing website today. But we don’t sell coffee, and that’s my failing.<\/p>\n

The internet provided a perfect medium for the public shaming of valor thieves. 2011 saw the transformation of Stolenvalor.com, originally a single-page advertisement for Burkett\u2019s book, into a hub for self-appointed private investigators. The revamped website featured an \u201cinvestigative team\u201d of pissed-off-looking retired soldiers and a section for \u201csecured targets\u201d \u2014 meaning valor thieves (by now, several dozen) caught in the act. Through crowdsourced tips and military records requests, stolen valor detectives engage in a rather heavy-handed simulation of military life.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yeah, TAH<\/strong> features over a thousand “secured targets” – many of whom are currently occupying a jail cell for their fraud, and many more are awaiting their moment of justice. Their crimes separated well-intentioned Americans (and others) from their hard-earned money. One is doing 20 years in a Florida prison for raping an underage girl using his military lies to meet her, there’s another perv occupying a New Jersey cell for the same crime. If that’s the kind of people who are targeted by us “vigilantes”, do you really want to shit on us, Al?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some doofus named Alex Nichols decided to take on the stolen valor community and the entire … Alex Nichols: The absurd conservative obsession with \u201cstolen valor\u201d<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[183],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stolen-valor-act"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76787","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76787"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76787\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76787"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76787"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76787"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}