Winning The Cultural War
Charlton
Heston
February
16, 1999
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 this 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 resides 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. About a year
ago I became president of the
National Rifle Association,
which protects the right to keep
and bear arms. 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 thank the
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, 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 acceptable thoughts
and speech are mandated.
For example, I marched for civil
rights with Dr. King in 1963
-– long before
Hollywood found it fashionable. 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. 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 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 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
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
to local Indians, only to learn
that authentic Virginia
chiefs truly like the name.
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
last 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 thirteenth
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
resign.
As columnist Tony Snow wrote:
'David Howard got fired because
some people in public employ
were morons who (a) didn't know
the meaning of niggardly,'
(b) didn't know how to use a
dictionary to discover the
meaning, and (c) 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? It 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.
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? 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 a
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. 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. I'm not Complaining,
but my own decades of social
activism have taken their toll
on me. Let me tell you a
story.
A few years back 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 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 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...
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 ....'
Well, I won't do to you here
what I did to them. Let's just
say I left the room in echoing
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 Ãs 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 must 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.
Thank you.
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