Cloture Motion

Floor Speech

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Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, today is a solemn day in the memory of our Nation. May we pause at the beginning of my remarks to remember those who passed into the light on September 11.

(Moment of silence.)

Amen. Political Violence

Mr. President, I rise tonight in deep sadness for a nation that is increasingly beset by political violence.

Yesterday, political activist Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking to students on a college campus--a place that is set up for the exchange of ideas.

He was just 31 years old, a husband, a father of young children. I pray for his wife Erika and for his children who must now make their way without him.

And his death comes on the heels of the devastating assassination of Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman of Minnesota, victims of premeditated political violence. This should shock the conscience of every American, and it should cause all of us to rise up and say: Enough.

Let me be clear. I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on just about everything, but I rise tonight not in spite of those differences but, in a real sense, because of those differences. I rise to say that he had a right to speak, to think, to change his mind or not, to engage with others, to participate in the free exchange of ideas, to argue it out.

That is what it means to live in a democracy. That is who we are. We Americans engage in loud, heated, and sometimes rambunctious debates, not as a precursor to violence but to avoid violence. And we must learn to disagree without becoming violently disagreeable.

Let me be clear. There is nothing more anti-democratic than political violence. Democracy is about creating space for competing voices and countervailing visions about who we are as one people, and that debate in the public square is what has made us better over time.

So while pushing back--sometimes hard--against those with whom we vigorously disagree, we must, with the same voice and vigor, defend their right to be--their right to be heard, to be free.

Our American family is held together by these democratic ideals, but I am afraid that what we are seeing increasingly around us is the tearing of those threads that bind us together--``e pluribus unum''; out of many, one--the ability to see past our political differences and see in the humanity of the other a glimpse of our own.

So we must condemn what happened to Charlie Kirk, whether we are on the right or on the left, because condemning that heinous crime is not about the difference between right and left; it is the difference between right and wrong. And what happened yesterday was wrong. Whatever the motivation, this we know: It was wrong. And we have to say that clearly and without hesitation.

I serve as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home of Martin Luther King, Jr. We all know that Dr. King was a victim of gun violence. What fewer people remember or know is that in 1974, his precious mother Alberta Williams King, the wife of the pastor of the church, Martin Luther King, Sr., was shot and killed in our church one Sunday morning while playing ``The Lord's Prayer'' on the organ.

Martin Luther King, Sr., was asked what he thought about all of this, and I am struck and inspired by his words. Having lost his precious wife on a Sunday morning, having witnessed his son struck down, Martin Luther King, Sr., said:

I will never let any man pull me down so low as to hate him.

He said:

Hate is too heavy a burden to bear.

He is right, and that is why in this moment, we must condemn political violence. But we must also condemn hate and hate speech. You cannot condemn one without condemning the other.

Hate is itself a kind of violence that kills the spirit and corrupts the soul of a person and of a nation. That vicious cycle of violence and hate, of hate and violence can only lead to the demise of our country and the destruction of our humanity.

So in this defining moment, may we resist the seductive sirens of those who are trying to convince us that we are at war with one another. Amidst our fierce debates, I submit that at the end of the day, we are all we have got--we the people. All we really have is one another. And a democracy is the imperfect institutionalization of that moral insight. All we have is one another. You either have a democracy, or you have political violence. You cannot have a democracy awash in political violence.

So every single day, let us choose democracy, choose what the Apostle Paul called the more excellent way--the way of love.

Love comes alive in the complicated story of a diverse people who refuse to give up on one another. It takes strength to love. It takes courage to love. It takes patience and persistence to love.

God grant us strength and courage. God grant us patience and persistence for the facing of this hour and for the living of these days.

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