Funny how certain kinds of quotes

catch one's eye when the timing is right. Most recently, I latched onto these statements made at Oberlin's commencement ceremonies by Dr. William F. Shulz, Executive Director of Amnesty International U.S.A. (excerpts below):

But though truth takes a myriad of forms, there is one truth that remains beyond dispute--a truth this institution has also sought to elucidate--and that is that all blood flows red, that more profound than all our differences is our common suffering and that what will save us and save our planet is a recognition of the frailty we share. That truth is under threat today from the enemies of democracy and the champions of it; from the purveyors of morality and the disdainers of it. But it is still true.

To see beyond appearances, beyond pretense and stereotype, beyond bombast and bravado, right into the authentic heart of misery, into the common bonds of suffering--the remarkable capacity that we human beings occasionally display to identify with another's pain, despite all of our brutality, to exercise a moral imagination, despite all of our pettiness--it is that upon which human rights are based and the salvation of the world depends.

And then there is a final article of faith this College has always sought to propagate and that is the conviction that history is not finished; that the future is not fated; and that with our privilege, with our degrees, comes our responsibility to build a more benevolent nation, a more hospitable people, a more welcoming world.

Somewhere in one of the great art museums in Europe hangs a large painting of Faust and the Devil sitting at a chess table. Faust has made his pact with the Devil and now his face is contorted in anguish because he retains on the chessboard but a knight and a King and the King is in check.

One day a great chess master happened into the museum and naturally this painting eye caught his eye and he sat down in front of it and stared. Fifteen minutes passed. Then twenty. And still the master stared. And then suddenly, leaping to his feet: "It's a lie!" he shouted at the top of his lungs for all to hear. "It's a lie, I tell you. The King and the knight--they have another move. They have another move."

And that, my friends, is the final message this school would have its graduates deliver to a bruised and battered world--that, no matter what orthodoxy may claim or ideology may bluster, history is not finished, the future is not fated, what comes next is in our hands, so that in the face of hardship and injustice, of suffering and of death, we say, "The story is not over. The end is not here yet. For it is not just the King but the knight, not just the Queen but the rook, not just the Bishop but pawn, not just the wealthy but the pauper, not just the powerful but every starving, lonely, frightened person in the world, every single person, every single one of us, who has another move. We all have another move.

Pat Buchanan once famously said that America was engaged in a "culture war." For once, he was right. We are engaged today in an enormous struggle for the soul of this country. It is a struggle between those who would close down culture and those who would keep it open. Between those who welcome the preeminence of one nation and those who give their fealty to the common interests of the globe. It is, in short, a struggle between those with a parched vision and those with a generous heart. This institution has always pledged itself to one side of that equation and, to you who graduate today I leave you with one very simple message: "Wear the mantle of these values proudly; then give no quarter; fear no shadows; and make the mountains tremble."

His last statement brings tears to my eyes. If only I could . . .