Obama Makes Impassioned Plea For Calm After Paris Attacks

"America is strengthened by people of every faith and every background."
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WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Americans to "uphold our highest ideals," including the freedom of religion, in the aftermath of the recent terrorist attacks on Paris by the Islamic State group.

"Part of being vigilant, another part of defeating terrorists like ISIL, is upholding the rights and freedoms that define our two great republics," Obama said during a joint press conference with French president Francois Hollande.

"There have been times in our history, in moments of fear, when we have failed to uphold our highest ideals and it has been to our lasting regret," he said. "We must uphold our ideals now. Each of us, all of us, must show that America is strengthened by people of every faith and every background."

Obama's remarks come as GOP presidential candidates are using harsh anti-Muslim rhetoric on the campaign trail, and after House lawmakers voted last week to make it far more difficult for Syrian refugees to gain entry into the United States, for fear that terrorists may try to sneak in with them. The president has vowed to veto any such legislation, saying refugee screening procedures are already extremely rigorous and to turn away people in times of desperation goes against American values.

He pushed that message again on Tuesday, noting that France, even after the Paris attacks, has pledged to accept 30,000 Syrian refugees fleeing terrorist violence.

"On the Statue of Liberty, a gift from the people of France, there are words we know so well: Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free," Obama said. "That's the spirit that makes us America. That's the spirit that binds us to France. That's the spirit we need today."

The president added that he knows people are worried about similar attacks taking place in America, but said that the nation's counterterrorism, homeland security and law enforcement professionals are "tireless" about keeping the country safe.

"They are working every hour, every day, for our security," he said. "They did so before Paris, they do so now, and they will not stop. They are the best in the world."

Images Show How Syrian Refugees Live And Why They Left
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A man is helping out a baby as refugees from Afghanistan and Syria disembark from in a life boat on the shores of Lesbos near Skala Sikaminias, Greece on Nov. 10, 2015. Lesbos, the Greek vacation island in the Aegean Sea between Turkey and Greece, faces massive refugee flows from the Middle East countries. (credit:Etienne De Malglaive via Getty Images)
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A general view of a make-shift camp set up by mainly Syrian refugees at the Porte de Saint-Ouen in Paris, early on Oct. 2, 2015. (credit:JOEL SAGET via Getty Images)
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Lebanese forces walk at a burnt unofficial Syrian refugee camp in the Al-Marj area of Lebanon's eastern Bekaa Valley, after a fire ripped through it on June 1, 2015, killing a baby and injuring several others. (credit:STR via Getty Images)
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A sick refugee is pulled while walking and waiting for a chance to cross the Serbian-Croatian border at the refugee camp of Bapska. (credit:Pacific Press via Getty Images)
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A man rests as he waits with other migrants and refugees at a registration camp after crossing the Greece-Macedonia border near Gevgelija on Nov. 14, 2015. (credit:DIMITAR DILKOFF via Getty Images)
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Doctors Without Borders staff assist a young girl in a wheelchair as she enters, along with other migrants and refugees, a registration camp after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija on Nov. 12, 2015. (credit:ROBERT ATANASOVSKI via Getty Images)
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A Syrian woman changes her child's diaper as migrants and refugees queue at a camp to register after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border near Gevgelija on Sept. 22, 2015. (credit:NIKOLAY DOYCHINOV via Getty Images)
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Residents sit in a French class at the "Jungle," a migrant and refugee camp in Calais, on Oct. 30, 2015. (credit:PHILIPPE HUGUEN via Getty Images)
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Syrian migrants and refugees march along the highway toward the Turkish-Greek border at Edirne on Sept. 18, 2015. (credit:BULENT KILIC via Getty Images)
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A photo taken on Nov. 5, 2015 shows the "Jungle" migrants camp in Calais. (credit:PHILIPPE HUGUEN via Getty Images)
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A woman stands at the entrance of a tent in a makeshift camp in Grande-Synthe, France, on Oct. 20, 2015. (credit:PHILIPPE HUGUEN via Getty Images)
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Syrian refugee kids, fled from their homes due to civil war in their homeland, play in Yayladagi YIBO camp in Hatay province of Turkey, on Oct. 25, 2015. (credit:Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
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A photo taken on Nov. 12, 2015, shows a view of part of the "New Jungle" migrant camp in Calais. (credit:DENIS CHARLET via Getty Images)
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Migrants walk through a mud path of the "New Jungle" migrant camp in Calais, where thousands of refugees live with the hope of crossing the Channel to the U.K., on Oct. 21, 2015. (credit:PHILIPPE HUGUEN via Getty Images)
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An explosion rocks Syrian city of Kobani during a reported suicide car bomb attack by the militants of Islamic State group on a People's Protection Unit position in the city center of Kobani, as seen from the outskirts of Suruc, on the Turkey-Syria border, Oct. 20, 2014 in Sanliurfa province, Turkey. (credit:Gokhan Sahin via Getty Images)
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A Syrian man walks amid destruction in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on April 10, 2013. (credit:DIMITAR DILKOFF via Getty Images)
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A man carries a young girl who was injured in a reported barrel-bomb attack by government forces on June 3, 2014, in Kallaseh district in the northern city of Aleppo. (credit:BARAA AL-HALABI via Getty Images)
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A displaced Syrian child in a makeshift camp for Syrian refugees only miles from the on Nov. 12, 2013, in Majdal Anjar, Lebanon, only miles from the Syrian border. (credit:Spencer Platt via Getty Images)
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Syrian government troops sit atop a tank as they drive past a damaged building in Mleiha on the outskirts of the capital Damascus on Aug. 15, 2014. (credit:LOUAI BESHARA via Getty Images)
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Syrian children search for their belongings at a school following airstrikes by Syrian government forces on Dec. 22, 2013, in the northern Syrian city of Marea on the outskirts of Aleppo. (credit:AFP via Getty Images)
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A Syrian man holds a crying girl as he gestures following an air strike by government forces on the Sahour neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on March 6, 2014. (credit:AFP via Getty Images)
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A boy rides his cycles in the streets of the destroyed Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, Syria, on June 20, 2015. (credit:Ahmet Sik via Getty Images)
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A picture taken on Oct.14, 2014, shows a large explosion allegedly hitting a Syrian army military outpost in the southern part of the city of Maarat al-Numan in the Idlib province. (credit:GHAITH OMRAN via Getty Images)
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Syrian girls, carrying school bags provided by UNICEF, walk past the rubble of destroyed buildings on their way home from school on March 7, 2015, in al-Shaar neighborhood, in the rebel-held side of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. (credit:ZEIN AL-RIFAI via Getty Images)
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Syrian schoolchildren stand next to a pile of classroom desks as they attend school in the Syrian Kurdish town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on March 25, 2015. (credit:YASIN AKGUL via Getty Images)
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Men search for their relatives among the bodies of Syrian civilians executed and dumped in the Quweiq river, in the grounds of the courtyard of the Yarmouk School, in the Bustan al-Qasr district of Aleppo on Jan. 30, 2013. (credit:AFP via Getty Images)
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A Syrian Kurdish boy sits on a destroyed tank in the Syrian town of Kobane, also known as Ain al-Arab, on March 27, 2015. (credit:YASIN AKGUL via Getty Images)

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