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fallen brethren as they come home for the last time.

You can’t even pull your pants up past the stains in your nasty underwear.

Veterans have taken and returned fire to ensure your ability to pass high school with a fifth grade reading level because emoticons are faster than spelling.

What have you done to feel you’ve earned the right to judge their high standards?

They are not your standards, clearly. However, veterans have just as much right to live by their own expectations as you do.

Veterans say what they mean, and mean what they say. Veterans rarely “accidently” ruffled someone’s feathers. If your feathers are ruffled, it’s because they ruffled them. Purposely.

I see now that they have been fighting for your freedom to be a wart on the face of our nation. They were fighting to provide you the freedom to be a slacker… inadvertently culpable for your contentment at being some of the dumbest, laziest people of any generation since they started keeping records. Socially, most of you are inept at even the most basic customs and courtesies.

What happened to you people?

How did you get so stupid and self-centered? How did you go from being the next generation of mathematicians, scientists and world leaders to being the laughing stock of the planet?

You open your country to criminals while you let the men and women who protected you starve in silence, afraid to say something for fear of being labeled “another crazy veteran.”

I realize that you are a product of the “No Child Left Behind” mentality, but before you assume that veterans are just bitter old soldiers who look for opportunities to be antisocial, consider this:

Veterans are a product of the “No one gets left behind” mentality. So maybe this Veteran’s Day, instead of walking up to a stranger and thanking him or her for their service, you should try a new approach.

In the immortal words of Tom Hanks’ Capt. John H. Miller in the World War II film Saving Private Ryan: “Earn this.”