Young Guns, by Rep. Paul Ryan, Rep. Eric Cantor & Rep. Kevin McCarthy: on Foreign Policy

Eric Cantor: FactCheck: Jihadists resent US occupation, not our beliefs

Bin Laden's "fatwa" of Aug. 1996 is entitled "Declaration of War against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places." That means Mecca and Jerusalem, or more generally, the Arabian Peninsula and Israel/ Palestine. Bin Laden's conclusion is: "...asking you to take part in fighting against the enemy--the Americans and the Israelis--...to expel the enemy, humiliated and defeated, out of the sanctities of Islam."

In bin Laden's 1998 fatwa, "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders", he writes, "for over seven years the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian Peninsula." He adds the expulsion of US forces from Iraq to the 1996 list of Mecca and Jerusalem.

Eric Cantor: American exceptionalism: we're not an ordinary nation

Yet today, America rests in the hands of a Democratic majority that views America differently. They love their country, but it seems to me that they tend to focus on its flaws rather than its greatness. They crave the approval of the very international elites whose nations have never offered the opportunity that America has. And above all, they think America is an ordinary nation, not an exceptional nation in the way that tens of millions who risked their lives to come to our shores legally in search of the American dream saw it. They think America is just one nation among many, with few unique virtues, responsibilities, enemies, or destiny.

Eric Cantor: Our enemies resent our beliefs; we are not imperialists

Paul Ryan: America is the most pro-human idea ever conceived

Americans today are being asked to subscribe to an ideology that is against the American idea. It's an ideology that says that government creates rights--and government takes them away. This ideology rejects the goal of government as securing equal opportunity; it demands that government create equal results. It is an ideology that treats citizens like children and politicians like divinities. It is not an ideology that need prevail in American life. Not on our watch.