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.’”
—Schurz, “The Policy of Imperialism,” Speeches, Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, vol. 6, pp. 119–20

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.

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.