Below
is an excellent message given by Charlton Heston at
Harvard.
It is entitled 'Winning the Cultural
War' and was given at the
Harvard Law School Forum, February
16, 1999.
It makes you
"Think" about how far political correctness is
twisting society.
Kind of radical
at times, but you have got to admit, "He might be
right..."
I remember my son when
he was 5, 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 will do my best. There
always seem to be a lot of different fellows up here. I am
never sure which one of them gets to talk. Right now, I
guess I am 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 is
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 have called me
everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a
"brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know ... I am
pretty old ... but I sure thank the Lord I ain't senile. As
I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second
Amendment freedoms, I have realized that firearms are not
the only issue. No, it is much, much bigger than that. I
have 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
have 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 are 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 ... thats out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negroes."
Jimmy Baldwin and most of us on the March said "black." But
its a no-no now.
For me, hyphenated
identities are awkward ... particularly "Native-American." I
am 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 13th-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,
and (b) didn't know how to use a dictionary to discover the
meaning, and cactually 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 are supposed to debate ideas, surrender to
their suppression? Lets 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 is 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 will 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 has 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 Vietnam.
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.
If Dr. King were here, I think he
would agree.
Thank you.
" Faith is the bird that surmises
the dawn --
and it sings while darkness still is
there"
--Gunbord Hermansson (Sweden)
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