Hunting

Winning The Cultural War
Charlton Heston
Harvard Law School Forum
February 16, 1999

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 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 ís 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.