“Republican lawmakers and conservative activists are expressing outrage after the Obama administration announced its objection to adding President Franklin Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer to the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.” In a politically incorrect time, Roosevelt asked the nation to join him in prayer as U.S. and allied troops launched the invasion that led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. He asked God to give the allied troops courage and faith, saying, “With thy blessing we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy.” Roosevelt’s dog is in the memorial, but not his prayer. You can read the entire prayer here. There are certainly enough panels to put an excerpt of the prayer. Check out the Lincoln and MLK memorials.

Memorials dot the landscape in Washington, D.C. Almost all the memorials are inscribed with some memorable quotation that is particular to the subject of the memorial. Religious statements are everywhere. For example, on the panel of the southwest interior wall of the Jefferson Memorial are excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, written in 1776:

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these rights governments are instituted among men. We . . . solemnly publish and declare, that these colonies are and of right ought to be free and independent states . . . And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour.

On the panel of the northwest interior wall is an excerpt from “A Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom, 1777,” except for the last sentence, which is taken from a letter of August 28, 1789, to James Madison:

Almighty God hath created the mind free…All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens [burdens] . . . are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion…No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.

D-Day was a turning point for our nation and the rest of the world. As secular as Roosevelt may have been in other areas, when it came to a war against a regime hell-bent on transforming Europe, he had no other place to turn. It’s too bad that he didn’t recognize the atheistic threat of the Soviet Union and sought compromise over confrontation. Not to include just a part to it is an affront to our nation’s history.

J. Robert Smith, writing for The American Thinker, nails the anti-religious collusion of the Obama administration on this issue:

The D-Day invasion offered great hope, in that if successful — and no one then was sure — it would be the beginning of the end of the European war. Americans knew upon hearing the news of the invasion that there would be an awful price paid in American and allied lives. FDR offered his prayer not to rally the nation – the nation was rallied – but to give succor through the call for Providence’s blessings.

Roosevelt’s prayer was no namby-pamby “bless everyone, even those poor, misguided, Jew-killing, hell-loosing Nazis.” No, Roosevelt said this:

They [American and allied troops] will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph. [Emphasis added] [Read the entire prayer here.]

No moral relativism in World War II. No moronic pleas for the Axis and the allies to — gosh darn it — just find some way to split differences and get along. Roosevelt’s prayer was a prayer of steely resolve, a prayer for an undisputed allied victory.

The secularist left, which Mr. Obama belongs, finds any prayer repugnant, but Roosevelt’s D-Day prayer must be particularly galling. A public prayer by the nation’s chief executive that so clearly calls for a military victory over an enemy… that just doesn’t fit with the left’s indoctrination of today’s Americans, who need to jettison primitive faith. And heaven knows – Opps! – no one can possibly label bad guys the enemy (look at the distortions that Mr. Obama and the left go through to avoid calling jihadists the nation’s enemies). Why, that’s just positively politically incorrect.

Can we get an “Amen”?