Since the 1960s, we have operated under President Kennedy's mandate of moral obligation:
"The answer is that there is no escaping our obligations: our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of free nations - our economic obligations as the wealthiest people in a world of largely poor people, as a nation no longer dependent upon the loans from abroad that once helped us develop our own economy - and our political obligations as the single largest counter to the adversaries of freedom."
