Winning The Cultural War

Harvard Speech | Feb 1999 | Charlton Heston

[cd jones]

Charlton Heston

"Winning The Cultural War"
Harvard Law School Forum
February 16, 1999

I remember my son when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten
class what his father did for a living. "My Daddy," he said,
"pretends to be people."

There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and New
Testaments, a couple of Christian saints, generals of various
nationalities and different centuries, several kings, three American
presidents, a French cardinal and two geniuses, including
Michelangelo. If you want the ceiling re-painted I'll do my best.
There always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I'm
never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I guess I'm
the guy.

As I pondered our visit tonight it struck me: If my Creator gave me
the gift to connect you with the hearts and minds of those great men,
then I want to use that same gift now to re-connect you with your own
sense of liberty ... your own freedom of thought ... your own compass
for what is right.

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of
America, "We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing whether
that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long
endure." Those words are true again. I believe that we are again
engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that's about to hijack
your birthright to think and say what lives in your heart. I fear
you no longer trust the pulsing lifeblood of liberty inside you ...
the stuff that made this country rise from wilderness into the
miracle that it is.

Let me back up a little. About a year ago I became president of the
National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear
arms of American citizens. I ran for office, I was elected, and now
I serve ... I serve as a moving target for the media who've called me
everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile,
crazy old man." I know ... I'm pretty old ... but I sure Lord ain't
senile.

As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second
Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only
issue. No…no… it's much, much bigger than that.

I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging across our
land, in which, with Orwellian fervor, certain affected thoughts and
speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 – long
before Hollywood found it fashionable I might say. But when I told
an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black
pride or red pride or anyone else's pride, they called me a racist.

I've worked with brilliantly talented homosexuals all my life
throughout my whole career. But when I told an audience that gay
rights should extend no further than your rights or my rights, I was
called a homophobe.

I served in World War II against the Axis powers. But during a
speech, when I drew an analogy between singling out innocent Jews and
singling out innocent gun owners, I was called an anti-Semite.

Everyone I know knows I would never raise a closed fist against my
country. But when I asked an audience to oppose this cultural
persecution I am talking about, I was compared to Timothy McVeigh.

From Time magazine to friends and colleagues, they're essentially
saying, "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind. You are using language
not authorized for public consumption!"

But I am not afraid. If Americans believed in political correctness,
we'd still be King George's boys-subjects bound to the British crown.

In his book, "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross writes that
"blatantly irrational behavior is rapidly being established as the
norm in almost every area of human endeavor. There seem to be new
customs, new rules, new anti-intellectual theories regularly foisted
on us from every direction. Underneath, the nation is roiling.
Americans know something without a name is undermining the nation,
turning the mind mushy when it comes to separating truth from
falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it."

Let me read you a few examples.

At Antioch college in Ohio, young men seeking intimacy with a coed
must get verbal permission at each step of the process from kissing
to petting to final - at last - copulation ... all clearly spelled
out in a printed college directive.

In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who
had been infected by dentists who had concealed their AIDs --- the
state commissioner announced that health providers who are HIV-
positive need not... need not ... tell their patients that they are
infected.

At William and Mary, students tried to change the name of the school
team "The Tribe" because it was supposedly insulting the local
Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs really liked
the name "The Tribe".

In San Francisco, city fathers passed an ordinance protecting the
rights of transvestites to cross-dress on the job, and for
transsexuals to have separate toilet facilities while undergoing sex
change surgery.

In New York City, kids who don't speak a word of Spanish have been
placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish
solely because their own names sound Hispanic.

At the University of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died
at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college
officially set up segregated dormitory space for black students.
Yeah, I know ... that's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes."
Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said "black." But it's a
no-no now.

For me, hyphenated identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-
American." I'm a Native American, for God's sake. I also happen to
be a blood-initiated brother of the Miniconjou Sioux. On my wife's
side, my grandson is a twelfth generation native American ... with a
capital letter on "American."

Finally, just last month ... David Howard, head of the Washington
D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while
talking to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course,
"niggardly" means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was
forced to publicly apologize and then resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some
people in public employ were morons who
        1. didn't know the meaning of niggardly,
        2. didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the meaning, and
        3. actually demanded that he apologize for their ignorance."

What does all of this mean? It means that telling us what to think
has evolved into telling us what to say , so telling us what to do
can't be far behind.

Before you claim to be a champion of free thought, tell me: Why did
political correctness originate on America's campuses? And why do you
continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate
ideas, surrender to their suppression?

Let's be honest. Who here thinks your professors can say what they
really believe? Uh-huh…there´s a few…

Now that scares me to death, and should scare you too, that the
superstition of political correctness rules the halls of reason.

You are the best and the brightest. You! here in the fertile cradle
of American academia, here in the castle of learning on the Charles
River, you are the cream. But I submit that you, and your
counterparts across the land, are the most socially conformed and
politically silenced generation since Concord Bridge. And as long as
you validate that ... and abide it ... you are - by your
grandfathers' standards - cowards.

Here's another example. Right now at more than one major
university, Second Amendment scholars and researchers are being told
to shut up about their findings or they'll lose their jobs. Why?
Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayor's
pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars
from firearm manufacturers.

Now I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not
shocked at that, I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw
material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Democracy is dialog! Who
will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of
free thought and expression lay down your arms and plead, "Don't
shoot me."

If you talk about race, it does not make you a racist. If you see
distinctions between the genders, it does not make you sexist. If
you think critically about a denomination, it does not make you anti-
religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does
not make you a homophobe.

Don't let America's universities continue to serve as incubators for
this rampant epidemic of new McCarthyism. That´s what it is: New
McCarthyism.

But, what can you do? How can anyone prevail against such pervasive
social subjugation? The answer's been here all along. I learned it
36 years ago, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington
D.C., standing with Dr. Martin Luther King and two hundred thousand
people.

You simply ... disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course.
Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say
or how to behave, we don't. We disobey social protocol that stifles
and stigmatizes personal freedom.

I learned the awesome power of disobedience from Dr.King ... who
learned it from Gandhi, and Thoreau, and Jesus, and every other great
man who led those in the right against those with the might.

Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that
disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent
Thoreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that
protested a war in Viet Nam.

In that same spirit, I am asking you to disavow cultural correctness
with massive disobedience of rogue authority, social directives and
onerous law that weaken personal freedom. But be careful ... it
hurts. Disobedience demands that you put yourself at risk. Dr. King
stood on lots of balconies.

You must be willing to be humiliated ... to endure the modern-day
equivalent of the police dogs at Montgomery and the water cannons at
Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. Now I'm not
complaining, but my own decades of social activism have left their
mark on me.

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago, I heard about a rapper named Ice-T who was selling
a CD called "Cop Killer" celebrating ambushing and murdering police
officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the
biggest entertainment conglomerate in the counrty - in the world.

Police across the country were outraged. rightfully so - at least
one had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the
CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around it
because the rapper was black.

I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly
Hills. I owned some shares of Time/Warner at the time, so I decided
to attend. What I did there was against the advice of my family and
colleagues I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of a thousand
average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop
Killer" - every vicious, vulgar, instructional word. "I GOT MY 12
GAUGE SAWED OFF
I GOT MY HEADLIGHTS TURNED OFF
I'M ABOUT TO BUST SOME SHOTS OFF
I'M ABOUT TO DUST SOME COPS OFF..."BR>

It got worse, a lot worse. I won't read the rest of it to you. But
trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces.

The Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at
their shoes. They hated me for that.

Then I delivered another volley of sick lyric brimming with racist
filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing two 12-year old nieces
of Al and Tipper Gore.

"SHE PUSHED HER BUTT AGAINST MY ...."No…no, I won't do to you here
what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in stunned
silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps, one of
them said "We can't print that." "I know," I replied, "but
Time/Warner is still selling it."

Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll
never be offered another film by Warners, or get a good review from
Time magazine. But disobedience means you have to be willing to act,
not just talk.

When a mugger sues his elderly victim for defending herself ... jam
the switchboard of the district attorney's office.

When your university is pressured to lower standards until 80% of
the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of
regents.

When an 8-year-old boy pecks a girl's cheek on the playground and
gets hauled into court for sexual harassment ... march on that school
and block its doorways.

When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays
you ... petition them, oust them, banish them.

When Time magazine's cover portrays millennium nuts as deranged,
crazy Christians holding a cross as it did last month ... boycott
their magazine and the products it advertises.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the
hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences of history that freed
exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and yes, in the hands of
an aroused rabble in arms and a few great men, by God's grace, built
this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree. I Thank you. Charlton Heston

Heston enshrined"

[cd jones]

Thought it about time for this again

[liberallarry]

niggard (from Old Norse knoggr=stingy)

From Funk and Wagnalls College Dictionary. I got curious.

[Libertarianize the GOP]

fyi

[liberallarry]

Thanks. First time for me.

[cf_river_rat]

Thank you. bttt