In 2013 we had never faced a crisis like the Syrian refugee crisis now. Up until that point, a refugee meant someone fleeing oppression, fleeing Communism like it is in my community.

Bashar Assad has been so brutal toward the Sunni within Syria that he created the space that led to the people of Syria themselves to stand up and try to overthrow him. That led to the chaos which allowed ISIS to come in and take advantage of that situation and grow more powerful.

Conservatism means believing in a strong national defense. Not because we want war, but because we love peace. Because history has taught us a painful lesson, that weakness is the enemy of peace. That weakness invites violence, that weakness invites war.

I promise you, the next time there is attack on - an attack on this country, the first thing people are going to want to know is, why didn't we know about it and why didn't we stop it? And the answer better not be because we didn't have access to records or information that would have allowed us to identify these killers before they attacked.

Our government does not exist to decide the rights, nor to grant them. Our government exists to protect them. And that is why we have a constitution that limits the power of the federal government to a few specific, but important things and we have abandoned that. We have abandoned it in both political parties.

It's not in our nature. Americans have never been a people that drive through a nice neighborhood and say, 'Oh, I hate the people who live in these nice houses.'

I don't want there to be millions of people that are permanently barred from every becoming Americans.