There is enormous continuity beneath the day-to-day news that makes America that indispensable nation when it comes to maintaining order and promoting prosperity around the world.

Let's make two things clear: Isil is not "Islamic." No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of Isil's victims have been Muslim. And Isil is certainly not a state.

We cannot have a society, in which some dictator some place can start imposing censorship here in the United States.

We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend. And we honor those ideals by upholding them not when it's easy, but when it is hard.

If war explodes in Sudan, it could have a destabilizing effect that creates more space for terrorist activity that could eventually be directed at our homeland.

We are not a nation that says, 'Don’t ask, don’t tell.' We are a nation that says, 'Out of many, we are one.' We are a nation that welcomes the service of every patriot. We are a nation that believes that all men and women are created equal. Those are the ideals that generations have fought for. Those are the ideals that we upheld today.

I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people.