Obama Delivers Remarks About Patriotism

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Obama Tries to Answer Questions of Patriotism

Barack Obama is on a weeklong patriotism tour, trying to reassure voters about his commitment to the country. Obama says his own patriotism has been questioned for the first time during this campaign.

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... and Attorney General Jay Nixon.

(APPLAUSE)

You know, on a spring morning in April of 1775, a simple band of colonists -- farmers, and merchants, and blacksmiths, and printers, men and boys -- they left their home and their families in Lexington and Concord to take up arms against the tyranny of an empire.

And the odds against them were long, and the risks were enormous, for even if they survived that particular battle, any ultimate failure would bring charges of treason and death by hanging. And yet they took that chance.

They did so not on behalf of a particular tribe or lineage, but on behalf of a larger idea: the idea of liberty, the idea of God- given, inalienable rights.

And when the first shot of that fateful day, a shot heard 'round the world, was fired, the American Revolution and America's experiment with democracy began.