Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning

by Liz Cheney

It didn’t seem right to me for a member of Congress to agree to have their vote bound by anything other than their obligations to their constituents and to the Constitution.

I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there can be any kindness I can show or any good thing I can do my fellow being; let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.

a free society that abandons the truth—that abandons the rule of law—cannot remain free.

“I don’t know if I agree with you on any policy issues,” she told me, “but I want to be part of fighting for our Constitution with you.”

In 1983 Reagan had warned: It is up to us in our time to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom, and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day.

Margaret Thatcher, said this: “Let it never be said that the dedication of those who love freedom is less than the determination of those who would destroy it.”

It has been said that the long arc of history bends toward justice and freedom. That is true—but only if we make it bend.

The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way.