Winning The Cultural War
 

                Charlton Heston
                 February 16, 1999 

                 Harvard Law School Forum
                 February 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 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.