Our country, Wrong or Right – Honor Whether We Agree Or Not
Memorial Day, 2007
Memorial Day always seems so much more poignant when we have our soldiers in harm’s way as we have these last several years in Afghanistan, Iraq and around the world. As we set our minds to remember the sacrifices of past American soldiers we must also think of those who now serve in this perilous time.
The one thing that ties them all together, living and passed, is the righteousness of their service. One of our most famous Naval Heroes was Stephen Decatur, hero of the War of 1812 and a man who defeated the Barbary Pirates. It was Decatur who raised his glass to his country with the toast, “Our country right or wrong”. Decatur’s words have echoed from his time to ours among our soldiers, those words making a clarion call to the duty and the honor with which our soldiers view their service.
We have also had other days when the reasons our soldiers face a dangerous foe are controversial among the citizens of this great country. Every war has its detractors at home and the conflicts in which we are involved today are no different in that respect.
Fully one third of the American colonists didn’t agree with separation from England and the internecine fighting between North and South was only one aspect of the civil war as thousands of Southerners never supported the Confederacy and thousands of Northerners disagreed with Lincoln’s decision to fight to keep the Union whole. During WWI some of our most famous Americans, such as carmaker Henry Ford, opposed the American entrance in the Great War and WWII was no different with the internal fight over our participation against the Nazis. And we don’t even have to mention Vietnam as our media today so constantly wishes to remind us as we try to defeat Islamist terror across the world.
But, all that internal strife, all the doubts that contemporary citizens exhibit amongst themselves as our government moves toward conflict has never had any bearing on the loyalty and sacrifice our soldiers willingly give to our great nation. And, no matter if you agree with the direction of any particular measure of war, it is that sacrifice we honor with the Memorial Day observance.
On this day of remembrance, we must not allow our thoughts about policy obscure the honor we pay our troops. This day is theirs and we should solemnly regard their service for the selfless effort it truly is.
Today, we have young soldiers (and some not so young) helping build schools so children of another culture might find an education for the first time in their lives. We have medical personnel healing the sick, poor and indigent. We have troops bringing food to the hungry and clothes to those made destitute by war. And we have soldiers to often, but inevitably giving that last full measure in pursuit of those noble goals.
That is right now, today. Memorial Day is not just a day to have a cook out and to otherwise go about your business and we must take, even if just for a moment, some time from our day to honor their service.
But not just for the living should we take this time but for those long passed from our earth. Those who gave their last breath to fight the British for our independence, those who fought to free a people, and those who fought to stamp out tyranny, all who have fallen with the colors of our country going before them.
They fell for their country wrong or right. We must honor them for it, assuring that their sacrifice was neither in vain nor forgotten.
Thank you to our armed forces personnel from today and yesterday, may God bless your duty honorably met.
| More from Warner Todd Huston
Stumble It!
May 28th, 2007 at 12:37 am
As an olde soldier, I applaude the sentiment of support and always honour brave men. My varied lot of brave men – and yours. Two things though:
It is men we are talking about. I am glad that you didn’t heap praise on men and women as is becoming so politically correct these days, as though the contribution of women were somehow equal. And perhaps that needs to be stated as often as the current mendacity. Where are the ‘equal’ women? Where are their Companies, their Battalions, their Regiments?
Second, Decatur may well have raised his glass quite a few times before he said such a stupid thing. Maybe he was pissed. There are countries, generally the ‘good’ ones, which fight the good fight, and there are countries which fight for evil. The evildoers also say ‘my country, right or wrong’. Its a nonsense phrase which neglects assessment of rightness or wrongness.
A soldier needs to think. He (she, when she gets around to it) needs a moral cause and a moral sense. Just being a killer-drone no longer holds water.
I raise my glass to the men who have fought for good.
May 28th, 2007 at 1:50 pm
Decatur was talking about the USA, not any other nation. He was not saying “Our country” in general, but the USA specifically.
May 29th, 2007 at 7:44 am
I don’t understand how anyone can say, “Our country right or wrong.” Shouldn’t that be, “That which is right, our country or not”? The fight for independence from Britain was right, in spite of the terrible odds. The idea of liberty- true liberty, not the version currently being sold by the two socialist parties- is worth fighting for. I can admire that. I can also admire true courage in the face of overwhelming odds. This can come in the form of a soldier dying in the field, as well as a peaceful, non-violent protester going to prison for his belief in what is true.
At the same time that we recognize the terrible sacrifice of human life in wartime, we should also remember that much of this sacrifice in modern times has come about by socialist means, the idea that a “benevolent” centralized power can “do good” all over the world through force of arms. The country was lied into World War II and Vietnam, to just name two modern wars. Both of these wars saw fathers conscripted (in direct violation of the 13th Amendment), denied their rights as men, and removed from power in their families. According to David Blankenhorn, the forced removal of fathers from their homes to fight in war began with FDR under vehement protest from the American public, after his administration did everything they could to provoke Japan into an attack:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/645642/posts
(And this is from a pro-Iraq War website.) You must understand that this is the type of thing that is excused with “Our country right or wrong.” America is only a great place if it continues to strive for the ideas that made it great in the first place. I don’t think there’s much of it left in modern times.
May 29th, 2007 at 2:58 pm
For shame, for shame, for shame. We have a president who has never sacrificed anything save others, candidates who are ready to sacrifice anything save their scant sacred honor, talking heads who are willing to sacrifice little, and educators who are willing to sacrifice teaching anyone of the uniqueness and beauty of the United States of America. They would not know valuable principle if it bit them on their worthless bottoms. But they can open the borders, deplete the treasury, and condescend to tell us that they know better when they know nothing.
Memorial Day (first known as Decoration Day) was begun by a General Order in 1868 as the day that flowers were to be strewn on the graves of Union Soldiers who died in battle during the War Between the States. And like the degradation of presidential birthdays, Labor Day, and Armistice (later Veterans Day) it has been diluted and made almost meaningless by ignorant and unappreciative nits who not only do not believe there is anything worth dying for, but do not understand why anyone else would believe that there is anything worth working for.
But they will hit the malls for Memorial Day sales, July 4th sales, Labor Day sales, and Veterans Day sales without a single thought of the genesis of any of them.
You are ready to borrow old quotations out of context and not examine the history (and the later modifications):
Senator Carl Schurz of Wisconsin (later a member of the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior) expanded Stephen Decatur’s original comment by saying (in a speech before an ISOLATIONIST audience, “They will not fail to recognize that our dignity, our free institutions and the peace and welfare of this and coming generations of Americans will be secure only as we cling to the watchword of true patriotism: ‘Our country—when right to be kept right; when wrong to be put right.’â€
—Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,†Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20