White... is not a mere absence of colour it is a shining and affirmative thing as fierce as red as definite as black... God paints in many colours but He never paints so gorgeously I had almost said so gaudily as when He paints in white.
When the United States was founded the very idea of a nation premised on democratic principles of freedom and tolerance was viewed by the vast majority of the world as an experiment doomed to fail. Dictatorships monarchies and theocracies had for many centuries ruled the world.
