Think

Speech by Charlton Heston at Harvard

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:

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/Warners 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.