But human rights have always been woven into the fabric of U.S. foreign policy. In his inaugural address in 1977, Jimmy Carter declared: “Our commitment to human rights must be absolute.” In reality, Carter ignored human rights violations by the Shah of Iran, a key U.S. ally, who was subsequently overthrown in the 1979 revolution. But Carter pressured right-wing dictatorships to reform, and negotiated the return of the Panama Canal to Panama because it was the right thing to do. (To the chagrin of one Republican senator, who said: “It’s ours. We stole it fair and square.”)

Later presidents wrestled with the promotion of American ideals in an imperfect world. Ronald Reagan castigated the Soviet Union for its failure to protect individual rights. His successor, George H. W. Bush, was a foreign-policy realist, but still promised a “new world order” based on “peace and security, freedom, and the rule of law.” Despite his wariness about wading into military quagmires, Bill Clinton used force, at least in part, to protect human rights in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. In 1999, he declared: “Where our values and our interests are at stake, and where we can make a difference, we must be prepared to do so.” George W. Bush initially outlined a humble foreign policy, but following 9/11, sought to transform Iraq into a beacon of freedom in the Middle East.

When Barack Obama collected the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, he maintained his commitment to American ideals: “We have a moral and strategic interest in binding ourselves to certain rules of conduct.” But he was also responsible for protecting the American people from evil. “I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people,” he said.

Obama seemed to echo the words of political scientist Samuel Huntington, who argued that American identity is based, to a significant degree, on the “creed” of “liberal, democratic, individualistic, and egalitarian values.” Americans are not bound together by an ancient shared heritage. Instead, to be American is to sign on to the founding principles of individual rights. “Being human, Americans have never been able to live up to their ideals; being Americans, they have also been unable to abandon them,” Huntington said.

And then along came Trump—the creed-less president. During a speech in Poland in 2017, Trump spoke vaguely about “the bonds of culture, faith and tradition that make us who we are.” He has also assailed tyranny in North Korea. But human rights are largely irrelevant to the emerging Trump doctrine. For one thing, Trump backed policies that ride roughshod over individual rights: water-boarding and “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” for suspected terrorists, targeting the families of the Islamic State, and banning all Muslims from entering the United States.