Today, in 1805, the British won a famous naval victory against Napoleon. It ended any ambitions Napoleon had to extend his tyranny beyond the European continent. It is Britain’s Fourth of July. God speed to them.

“Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!”  Those words first voiced in 1815 by Captain Stephen Decatur Jr., America’s first post-revolution hero and, to this day, the youngest Captain ever commissioned by the US Navy, should be on the mind of every American President and every American Secretary of State every waking hour.

Though condensed and trivialized over time to the over simplified, “My country right or wrong,” and ridiculed by those who are embarrassed by patriotism, Decatur’s words, we believe, revealed a prescient understanding that future leaders of the then still very young republic would be called upon to make difficult decisions if the unique quality of American Liberty was to be preserved…decisions that could drastically impact the lives of many Americans.  Decatur also understood that while mistakes might be made from time to time, as long as the mission was the preservation of liberty and freedom, the republic deserved the support of the people.

We don’t believe Decatur was being cavalier and we don’t wish to be either.  He had seen war up close and personal, having commanded an incredibly heroic raid at Tripoli harbor that the legendary British Admiral Horatio Nelson, later called “the most bold and daring act of the age.”  Decatur had been dispatched, along with the newly established First Marines, by Thomas Jefferson to the shores of Tripoli on the Barbary Coast in support of what may have been the most important and long enduring foreign policy decision since the birth of the new American nation.  America would protect its interests, any place, any time and at any cost.  Defending liberty has always required determination and a clear sense of purpose.  Often its cost would be high.  Thirty-five American servicemen were lost on the Barbary Coast as the young nation first asserted its right to sail the high seas anywhere in the world.

A century and a half later John F. Kennedy made the same point when he pronounced, “we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” Nothing ambiguous about Jefferson’s policies, or those of James Monroe, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy or those of most any other American Administration up until the Iran hostage crisis in 1979 when Jimmy Carter’s vacillation and lack of resolve caused foreign leaders to doubt America’s willingness to defend its interests even in the face of an act of war against it.

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Happy Trafalgar Day!