I'd like to talk about America's military patriotism.

Now I'm sure you've seen the bumper stickers which say, "I support the troops!" or the countless Facebook posts and tweets this Veterans day thanking military personnel for their service. Look, all of this is wonderful, and honoring those who serve our country in the military is incredibly important.

I ask you, however, and every single American, to consider what it actually means to be patriotic. Does lighting fireworks on the fourth of July seem patriotic enough? How about taking a picture in front of an American flag, does that make one patriotic? Does tweeting that you support the troops make you an American patriot?

The simple answer to this question -- absolutely not. But if chugging mass amounts of alcohol while screaming "'Merica!" does not make one automatically make one patriotic, what does?

Let's start evaluating our patriotism focused on the central theme of Veterans Day. Veterans themselves. Now don't get me wrong, there are so many people out there who genuinely care about our veterans, and countless non-profits who offer opportunities to vets from jobs, to help with PTSD, etc. However, even with these selfless organizations, veterans can still be cast aside once they come back to the United States by the general public, especially if mental issues are involved.

Currently on any given night, there are roughly 49,933 homeless veterans in the United States. This is absolutely unacceptable. Even more tragic, 40.7 percent of all homeless veterans are black or Hispanic, even though the two groups combined only account for 13.8 percent of the US veteran population.

While homeless veterans represent an enormous failure on the part of our government to provide for those who have served this country, another issue might plague the system even more -- the broken VA.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has been under fire recently (over the past few years) about so called "wait lists." These wait lists meant that veterans simply could not get the medical care they needed at their local VA. At the Phoenix VA, there was a wait list of nearly 1,700 veterans. 84 percent had to wait at least two weeks to be seen by a medical professional. While there has been a major public backlash to the failures of the VA, the fact that it was failing in the first place is also unacceptable.

So what does this mean for the average American citizen? It's totally cool to say you support the troops, and post pictures on Instagram of an American flag, but let's start acting patriotic with our treatment of our veterans.

Simply put, if we can't take care of Americans who we send to war when they return, we shouldn't send them into war in the first place.