CHARLTON HESTON
SPEECH
Charlton Heston speaking on 'Winning the
Cultural War,' Tuesday, February 16, 7:30 pm, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall.
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Mr. Heston begins:
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.
It’s just that there always seems 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 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. 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’m sure 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 Orwell Ian 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 like that? 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 country, 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 the 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 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?
That scares me to death. It 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? Democracy is dialogue!
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.
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 laws 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
left their mark 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’s 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.