Tulsi Gabbard

My siblings and I grew up studying from both the Bhagavad-Gita and the Bible, going to Mass, and then coming home to a yoga kirtan.

Growing up here in Hawaii, I loved swimming, surfing, and having fun in this paradise we are lucky to call home. But I gradually realized that I was actually happiest when I was doing things for other people, doing things to protect our water, oceans, and beaches.

We need to stop judging individuals based on their race, profession, gender, religion, or anything other than their own individual behavior and character.

The divisiveness that threatens the fabric of our nation - whether due to race, religion, political ideology, gender, sexual orientation, or other - must end.

When a person thinks, I am a Christian, this other person is a Muslim, therefore he is my enemy, or I am a Muslim, this other person is a Hindu, therefore she is my enemy, they reveal their own lack of spiritual depth. No religion teaches this, and any understanding of any religion that adopts this divisive attitude proves itself false by doing so.

Hopefully the presence in Congress of an American who happens to be Hindu will increase America's understanding of India as well as India's understanding of America.

The Taliban didn't attack us on 9/11 - Al-Qaeda did. That's why I and other people joined the military - to go after Al Qaeda. Not the Taliban.

I am a military police officer and I have served on two deployments; my first was to Iraq, in a medical unit, and my second deployment was to Kuwait, as a military police platoon leader.

In the military, I learned that 'leadership' means raising your hand and volunteering for the tough, important assignments.

Looking at someone in a deployed setting, it's not in their best interest to get pregnant overseas, but if it happens, it happens.

To maintain order after Assad's fall would require at least 500,000 troops in a never-ending occupation.

This commitment to equality and justice for all are the ideals that our country was founded upon and what we continue to aspire to as people. We cannot be complacent, and must vigilantly affirm this again and again, as bigotry and hatred have an insidious way of seeping into our society.