I also like

“Implicit in the term ‘national defense’ is the notion of defending those values and ideas which set this nation apart.”

i'm not quite sure, as an englishman, they set America apart but I do believe that certain values and liberties are fundamental and define western civilisation
if western or even American hegemony has any value then it is that at its root there are certain core liberties
we are defending real people, real lives, thinking, feeling, hoping, loving but also, inexorably, a political philosophy where the emphasis is on freedom, where we "may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands"
your founders tried to enshrine and define these liberties in the core documents of the US state and I believe globally we need to participate in an ongoing discourse about what those liberties are, what they mean and how we enact them globally not as American political, military or economic dominance but as a philosophical and politial consensus to best enable humanity

for myself I love "we hold these truths to be self evident"

alas so often even in "the home of the brave" they are not

RE: Federal Judge Orders End to Warrantless Wiretapping - New York Times