In a superficial world where pro athletes and Hollywood actors are sometimes considered heroes, Veterans Day exists to remind us that real heroes wore combat uniforms and kept the USA free.

Veterans are rightly praised for their service as they are the ones who literally put their lives on the line for this nation. Among them are combat veterans who said goodbye to their families for deployments — sometimes numerous deployments — and who fought against barbaric fascists in World II, were often overlooked for holding the ground in Korean, crawled under live fire in Vietnam jungles while dodging Viet Cong attacks, and lived and breathed in the intensely dangerous environment of IEDs and suicide bombers in Afghanistan and Iraq.

They came home yet still paid a price that civilians complaining about the minutia of everyday life cannot comprehend.

Veterans who did not see combat are heroes as well because they were willing to don the uniform and undergo the basic and specialty training in order to be able to serve in combat if called to do so.

If you take time to sit down with a veteran and talk about his service, you will find that whether he was in the brown water navy taking machine gun fire in Vietnam or sitting on a large ship in blue water, far from the dangers of a Viet Cong attack, his heart still breaks over the fact that bureaucrats in Washington, DC, prevented the U.S. military from winning the war.

If you were ever fortunate enough to speak to a POW who was held by fascists in WWII and treated with an inhumanity that eludes words, you no doubt remember them brushing aside any praise to say, “I was just doing my duty.” Perhaps you recall seeing their eyes lock onto something in the distance, or perhaps something playing out in their minds as if it were right now, and they talk nostalgically about what it means to form and defend a band of brothers.

I am convinced that these are things civilians cannot fully understand, myself included. However, I also believe that these are things over which we should be proud and grateful — things that cause us to make time to walk up to a veteran and say, “thank you.”

Freedom isn’t free folks, and it never has been.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio, a member of Gun Owners of America, a Pulsar Night Vision pro-staffer, and the director of global marketing for Lone Star Hunts. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal in 2010 and has a Ph.D. in Military History. Follow him on Instagram: @awr_hawkins. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange. Reach him directly: awrhawkins@breitbart.com.