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Subject: Heston on cultural war
From: dwharding2@cs.com  (Dwharding2)
Date: 12/16/00 11:56 AM US Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: <20001216115636.09750.00001717@ng-fm1.news.cs.com>

 Charlton Heston

"Winning The Cultural War"
Harvard Law School Forum


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. 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.

audio starts here

Dedicating the memorial at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln said of America,
"We are now engaged in a great Civil War, testing
whether that 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 of American citizens. 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.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 affected thoughts
and speech are mandated.

For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 - long
before Hollywood found it fashionable I might say. 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 throughout
my whole career. 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 am talking about, 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 you 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 - at last - 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 the
local Indians, only to learn that authentic Virginia chiefs really liked
the name "The Tribe".

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 own 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 twelfth 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 then resign.

As columnist Tony Snow wrote: "David Howard got fired because some
people in public employ were morons who

didn't know the meaning of niggardly, didn't know how to use a
dictionary to discover the meaning, and 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? Uh-huh.there's a few.

Now that 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.

Now 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 dialog! 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. That's what it is:
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. Now 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 ago, 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
counrty - 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 of Time/Warner 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 ...."No.no, I won't do to you here what
I did to them. Let's just say I left the room
in stunned 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 is still 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 have to 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. I Thank you.



When the second amendment goes down
the others will soon follow.  The second
puts teeth into the others.
When guns are outlawed, only street
criminals and other liberals will have
guns!
 JOIN THE NRA!  Secure your
rights and protect yourself and family!
For membership Dial: 1-877-672-2000
Hearing impaired Dial 1-877-672-8331

Your children's future may depend on it!.