These voices blame the Middle East's only democracy for the region's extremism. They offer the false promise that abandoning a stalwart ally is someh… - Barack Obama

[W]hat I want to focus on tonight [is the] state of our democracy. Understand, democracy does not require uniformity. Our founders argued. They quarreled. Eventually they compromised. They expected us to do the same. But they knew that democracy does require a basic sense of solidarity - the idea that for all our outward differences, we're all in this together; that we rise or fall as one.

And we call upon others to join us on the right side of history -- for while small gains can be won at the barrel of a gun, they will ultimately be turned back if enough voices support the freedom of nations and peoples to make their own decisions.

I hope you guys are up for a fight. I hope you guys are game because I haven’t been putting up with 19 months of airplanes and hotel food and missing my babies and my wife — I didn’t put up for that stuff just to come in second.