Editor's Note: Charlton Heston addressed the topic
'Winning the Cultural War' at the Harvard Law
School Forum, February 16, 1999. Here is the text
of that speech:
By Charlton Heston
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'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 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,'
(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 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.
"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 Ìs 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 percent 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.