This is a must read from a man that as an actor (in my opinion stands for
what is good,a man of integrity!!) who at the risk of osterization by the industry SAID IT
THE WAY IT IS!!.
For 50 years, the Harvard Law School Forum has been sponsoring speeches by luminaries
ranging from Fidel Castro to Gerald Ford to Dr. Ruth. Sometimes the speeches have
generated a bit of media coverage, sometimes not. But one given last month by Charlton
Heston has taken on a life of its own.
Heston, the actor and conservative activist, delivered a stem-winder to about 200
listeners about "a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to think and
say what resides in your heart."
"He knew he was coming to a liberal environment, and clearly a group of his listeners
was conservative and another was more liberal," said David Christopherson, president
of the forum. "About half respectfully challenged him during the questions. It
generated a lot of debate around the campus. But what happened caught us off-guard."
What happened was Rush Limbaugh's radio talk show. On March 15, 1999, Limbaugh read the
entire speech on the air, only to find himself bombarded with thousands of requests for a
copy of it. The same thing happened at Harvard Law.
"We couldn't keep up with all the requests," said Mike Chmura at Harvard.
"It really didn't have legs and might have been forgotten if Mr. Limbaugh hadn't
decided to deliver it."
'Winning the Cultural War' - Charlton Heston's Speech to the Harvard Law
School Forum, Feb 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 repainted 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 them gift to connect
you with the hearts and minds of those great men, then I want to use that same gift now to
reconnect you with your own sense of liberty of 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, 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 gayrights 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, DC, 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 manwho 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 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's selling it." Two months later,
Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner's,
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 disobedience's 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.
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world;
indeed, it's the only thing that ever
has...