This is probably a repetitive diary. I don't fucking care. Listen up.
As has been said in worse times than this, these are the times that try our souls. Gone are the days when victory was certain. Gone too are the days when we could sit contented, knowing that all would turn out well in the end, when we could enjoy the guaruntee of victory in our lifetimes. And gone are the days when it will be easy to be a patriot, or a progressive, or even a moderate. Yet we will fight on.
Some make the mistake of thinking that in the past it was easier. It wasn't. Doing what is right has never been easy.
When Galileo stood up for the enlightenment, he had no guaruntee that science would prevail. He started a revolution in the world, and he was held a prisoner and suppressed, but the candle that he lit touched off a roaring inferno that was the Enlightenment from which this country was forged.
When Jefferson wrote his declaration of independence, he had no guaruntee that liberty would prevail. Human rights were a new-fangled idea in a world dominated by the divine right of kings. The Revolution was no joke; many died; many more lost everything; and yet from his pen came forth the founding ideas of this nation.
When Abraham Lincoln took the oath of office, he had no guaruntee of victory, and when the South broke away, it looked like he was doomed to failure. How many Southern victories took place in the first two years of war? How many times was Lincoln chastised by the people he led? And yet, it was his vision which kept this nation held together.
When the Progressives and the labor unions fought in the late 1880 and 1890s, they had no guaruntee of victory. Workers were treated like trash; strikes were broken with impunity; the poor toiled and died like insects in the hive of the factories. And yet from those battles -- many lost, many more now forgotten -- came an end of child labor and an end to the worst excesses of modern capitalism.
When Martin Luther King Jr. took up his cross and went against Jim Crow, he had no guaruntee of victory. We today think he had to defeat a few Southern sherrifs and avoid getting shot, but he had much more to do, and it was never certain he could carry it. He fought on against long odds, standing on the backs of those who had fought and fallen before him. And eventually, he won.
Doing the right thing has seldom been easy, but those who fought in the past did so because they had no choice. They stood for things like Truth, and Freedom, and Justice, and in the long run -- the very long run, to be sure -- these things are the only things that matter. Fighting for them has never been simple, and their victory on any given day is never certain, but in the long run, these are what prevail.
And so, I say this to all my friends in this community: I am proud of you, even though today we did not win. I am proud of you because a year ago we had no chance of prevailing, and yet we fought on. I am proud of you because you stood up for what is right, and withstood the scorn of your enemies and the weak-willed cowards who would surrender rather than fight. I am proud of you because you stood well in a hard place and moved the world, and though it was not enough, the earth still moved.
There will be other battles, other fights, and other calls to arms. Now, today, in the aftermath, we can see our way forward, and that they keys to our victory are to keep pressing onwards relentlessly, arm-in-arm, together.
On your feet. Raise your faces to the light. Congratulate yourselves on how much progress has been made. Take a deep breath, and fight on, and let no one stop you.
That's all I have to say.