In such an anxious time, he asked, what does American stand for? “What are the marks of America—and what do they mean to the world?” He gave a clear answer: Americans believed in the rule of law. That principle had won the admiration of so many millions of the world’s peoples. America was a land without “class or caste,” a country that did not judge a man by his “name or inheritance.” It was America’s mission to uphold the rule of law around the world. “There can be no second-class nations before the law of the world community.”
