Toward the end of the speech, Nixon starts getting all sappy and sentimental. He wants Americans to believe in America again, so he starts laying on the America love-song stuff.

Laying it on real thick:

Two hundred years ago this Nation was weak and poor. But even then, America was the hope of millions in the world. Today we have become the strongest and richest nation in the world. And the wheel of destiny has turned so that any hope the world has for the survival of peace and freedom will be determined by whether the American people have the moral stamina and the courage to meet the challenge of free world leadership

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism. (129.1-130.1)

This stuff is dripping with lovey-dovey language. Now, granted the United States is a pretty sweet place, but this is a little too sweet. Nixon himself probably didn't believe those words 100 percent. He uses them for a reason, though.

First, he really wants to talk to those great, patriotic Americans that eat up this kind of national imagery. He's appealing to the total fanboys and fangirls of the United States.

Second, Nixon is basically trying to say that the United States has no choice but to continue fighting in Vietnam. It is the country's destiny. Kind of like how Luke Skywalker in Star Wars was destined to fight the dark side of the force—only with less Jedi magic and more trench foot.

Nixon wants Americans to feel like they were on the light side of the force and that they had to fight the dark side. The dark side, of course, was the Soviet Union and Vietnamese communism.