Heston on "Winning the Cultural War."

02-13-2001, 02:02 PM

> '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 the 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 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, 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 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
> 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.

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 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,
> 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."