Speech By

Charlton Heston at Harvard

By Charlton Heston
                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/Warner Ěs
                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.
 
I do not personally agree with everything Mr. Heston
said in his speech, but I do think it is thought provoking.
 
 
I found this speech at  American Family Online
 
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