How we should conduct ourselves

Buried in a footnote in an intriguing essay by Willam Pfaff in the current NY Review of Books is this from George Kennan:

while always bearing in mind that its first duty is to the national interest, it (the United States) w(sh)ould never lose sight of the principle that the greatest service this country could render to the rest of the world would be to put its own house in order and to make of American civilization an example of decency, humanity and societal success from which others could derive whatever they might find useful to their own purposes.

There are more nuggets to be gleaned from this essay.