Right Or Wrong

The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, "My country, right or wrong." In one sense I say so too.  My country; and my country is the great American Republic.  My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.

-- Carl Schurz (1829 - 1906), German revolutionist, American statesman and reformer, and Union Army general in the American Civil War, Remarks in the Senate (29 February 1872), here responding to the famous slogan derived from a statement of Stephen Decatur: "Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong."