Anne Applebaum: “If we are no longer a country that aims to make the world better, but rather a country whose foreign policy is designed to build the wealth of the president or promote the ruling party’s foreign friends, then we have fewer reasons to work together at home. If we promote cynicism abroad, we will become more cynical at home.”“Perhaps expecting Americans to live up to the extraordinary ideals that they proclaimed in the 18th century was always unreasonable, but that language nevertheless shaped the way we thought about ourselves. Now we live in a world where America is led by people who have abandoned those ideals altogether. That will change all of us, in ways we might not yet be able to see.”