I don't think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do. I don't think I have to tell you that there are. … [audience respons… - John McCain

"What packages we were allowed to receive from our families often contained handkerchiefs, scarves, and other clothing items. For some time, Mike had been taking little scraps of red and white cloth, and with a needle he had fashioned from a piece of bamboo he laboriously sewed an American flag onto the inside of his blue prisoner's shirt. Every afternoon, before we ate our soup, we would hang Mike's flag on the wall of our cell and together recite the Pledge of Allegiance. No other event of the day had as much meaning to us.
"The guards discovered Mike's flag one afternoon during a routine inspection and confiscated it. They returned that evening and took Mike outside. For our benefit as much as Mike's they beat him severely, just outside our cell, puncturing his eardrum and breaking several of his ribs. When they had finished, they dragged him bleeding and nearly senseless back into our cell, and we helped him crawl to his place on the sleeping platform. After things quieted down, we all lay down to go to sleep. Before drifting off, I happened to look toward a corner of the room, where one of the four naked lightbulbs that were always illuminated in our cell cast a dim light on Mike Christian. He had crawled there quietly when he thought the rest of us were sleeping. With his eyes nearly swollen shut from the beating, he had quietly picked up his needle and begun sewing a new flag.

This is not just a human smuggling issue. This is a drug issue. Our borders are unsecured, and the flow of drugs across the border is staggering. Last year in the Tucson sector alone, there were over 1.3 million pounds of marijuana apprehended, 1.3 million pounds on the Arizona border. The numbers of methamphetamine, cocaine, and other drugs crossing the border by the drug cartels is staggering. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that over 22,000 Mexican citizens have been killed in drug wars against the cartels. Have no doubt, this is an existential government between the Government of Mexico, the drug cartels, and the human smugglers who work together, and the security of the United States.

We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do.