Speaking of “our personal pledge to duty, honor, country,” President Thomas S. Monson told some 19,000 people at a patriotic service here June 28 that those words were “our watchwords, whether in war or peace.”….Quoting Gen. Robert E. Lee of Civil War fame, President Monson said, ” ‘Duty is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more; you should never wish to do less.’” He also quoted Harry Emerson Fosdick, a renowned Protestant minister and speaker, saying, “‘ Duty is never worthily performed until it is done by one who would gladly do more if he could.’”

Speaking of honor, President Monson explained, “Honor is akin to duty. It is an expression of our inner selves, a commitment to do that which is right. We remember the adage: ‘You can’t be right by doing wrong, and you can’t be wrong by doing right.’”

As he began his address, President Monson spoke of his love for the flag. He recalled returning from a recent assignment in England, Holland and Denmark and seeing beautiful flags at each house in his neighborhood in commemoration of Flag Day. “Gazing at the sight of Old Glory,” President Monson said, “took me back many years to those boyhood days of long ago.”

He then reminisced about boyhood experiences of being a member of the Junior Red Cross and of the Drum and Bugle Corps of his elementary school. While he could not play the bugle, he said he simply “loved marching and hearing the sound of those who could play while carrying the precious flag to the proper spot and lifting it to the top of the flagpole in reverent silence.”

While he was in junior high school, Pearl Harbor day changed his world and that of Americans everywhere, said President Monson. Toward the end of World War II, he served in the U.S. Navy and said he often waited “for the clear sound of the bugle playing Reveille as morning dawned, and the mournful sound of Taps in the evening indicating lights out. I confess that at such moments I felt a lump in my throat and the beginning of tears in my eyes.”

President Monson praised the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge for its work in teaching people about America’s history and instilling patriotism and pride in their hearts. “When we build, let us think that we build forever,” he said, quoting English essayist John Ruskin and referring to the foundation’s great work. “Let it not be for present use nor for present delight alone, but let it be such work that our descendants will thank us for it and will be led in their hearts to say, ‘This our fathers did for us.”

“When we safeguard (the heavenly virtue of freedom), when we honor it, when we protect it, we will walk with Washington, we will pray with patriots, and we shall have peace on earth, good will to men,” President Monson concluded.

We should pay no attention to the recommendations of men who call the Constitution an eighteenth-century agrarian document — who apologize for capitalism and free enterprise. We should refuse to follow their siren song of concentrating, increasingly, the powers of government in the Chief Executive, of delegating American sovereign authority to non-American institutions in the United Nations, and pretending that it will bring peace to the world by turning our armed forces over to a U.N. world-wide police force.

It is our duty to pray for good men and wise men, and to hold up their hands in their attempts to perpetuate peace and law and order among the nations of the earth.

I feel that, as long as the people of this land obey, or strive to keep the commandments of God, this liberty will continue to flow unto us. . . . I say to you that our only hope, and the hope of the sons and daughters that God may bless us with, to enjoy peace and liberty in this land, is in standing by the Constitution that God has inspired to direct this government. . . . Let us stand by the law-makers, and encourage them in the making of just laws, and stand by the executive departments, and the judiciary in the administration of those laws.

We are told . . . that no man need break the laws of the land who will keep the laws of God. . . . The law of the land, which all have no need to break, is that law which is the Constitutional law of the land, and that is as God himself has defined it. And whatsoever is more or less than this cometh of evil. Now it seems to me that this makes this matter so clear that it is not possible for any man who professes to be a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to make any mistake, or to be in doubt as to the course he should pursue under the command of God in relation to the observance of the laws of the land. I maintain that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has ever been faithful to the constitutional laws of our country. . . .

I ask myself, What law have you broken? What constitutional law have you not observed? I am bound not only by allegiance to the government of the United States, but by the actual command of God Almighty, to observe and obey every constitutional law of the land, and without hesitancy I declare to this congregation that I have never violated, nor transgressed any law, I am not amenable to any penalties of the law, because I have endeavored from my youth up to be a law-abiding citizen, and not only so, but to be a peacemaker, a preacher of righteousness, and not only to preach righteousness by word, but by example. . . . If lawmakers have a mind to violate their oath, break their covenants and their faith with the people, and depart from the provisions of the Constitution where is the law human or divine, which binds me, as an individual, to outwardly and openly proclaim my acceptance of their acts?

Be wise; let prudence dictate all your counsels; preserve peace with all men, if possible; stand by the Constitution of your country; observe its principles; and above all, show yourselves men of God, worthy citizens.