There have been many tributes to Congressman Adam Schiff’s stirring oratory this week... all of them well-deserved. Before the Impeachment moment passes, I’d like to enter the closing statement of Senator Chuck Schumer “into the record” here at DKos.
I think it’s another one for the history books.
After cataloging the President’s misdeeds, and castigating the GOP Senate’s perfidy, he concluded with these words of encouragement (which begin at 13:42 in the video):
“Our Nation was founded on the idea of truth, but this President is such a menace - so contemptuous of every virtue, so dishonorable, so dishonest - that you must ignore - indeed, sacrifice - the truth to maintain his favor.
The trial of this President - its failure - reflects the central challenge of this Presidency and, maybe, the central challenge of this time in our democracy. You cannot be on the side of this President and be on the side of truth, and if we are to survive as a nation, we must choose truth because, if the truth doesn’t matter, if the news you don’t like is fake, if cheating in an election is acceptable, if everyone is as wicked as the wickedest among us, then hope for the future is lost.
The eyes of the Nation are upon this Senate, and what they see will strike doubt in the heart of even the most ardent patriot. The House managers established that the President abused the great power of his office to try to cheat in an election, and the Senate majority is poised to look the other way.
So I direct my final message not to the House managers, not even to my fellow Senators, but to the American people. My message is simple: Don’t lose hope. There is justice in this world and truth and right. I believe that. I wouldn’t be in this government if I didn’t.
Somehow, in ways we can’t predict, with God’s mysterious hand guiding us, truth and right will prevail. There have been dark periods in our history, but we always overcome. The Senate’s opening prayer yesterday was Amos 5:24: ‘Let justice roll down like water, righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’.
The long arc of the moral universe, my fellow Americans, does bend toward justice. America does change for the better, but not on its own. It took millions of Americans hundreds of years to make this country what it is today. Americans of every age and color and creed who marched and protested, who stood up and sat in; Americans who died while defending this democracy, this beautiful democracy,in its darkest hours.
On Memorial Day in 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes told his war-weary audience: ‘Whether one accepts from Fortune her spade, and will look downward and dig, or from Aspiration her axe and cord,and will scale the ice, the one and only success which it is yours to command is to bring to your work a mighty heart.’
I have confidence that Americans of a different generation - our generation - will bring to our work a mighty heart to fight for what is right, to fight for the truth, and never, never lose faith.”
- Senator Charles E. Schumer, Minority Leader
Congressional Record PDF, January 5, 2020
(Emphasis added)
The complete Memorial Day address by Oliver Wendell Holmes is worth reading. But an excerpt, which puts the expression “a mighty heart” into greater context, can be found at The Atlantic.