I remember my son, when he was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. He said,"My daddy pretends to be people."
There have been quite a few of them.
Prophets from the Old and New Testiments, 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 cealing repainted, I'll do my best. It's just that there always seems 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 wether this nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Those words are true again.....I believe we are again engaged in a great civil war, a cultural war that is 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 miricle 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. I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve.....I serve as a moving target for the media who have called me everything from "ridiculous" and "duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man." I know I'm pretty old.....but I sure, by Lord, ain't senile. As I have stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Ammendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are not the only issue. No it's much bigger than that! I've come to understand that a cultural war is raging accross our land, in which, with Orwellian ferver, certain acceptable thoughts and speech are mandated.
For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963-long befor Hollywood found it fashionable. But when I told an audience last year that white pride is just as valid as black 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 speach when I drew an analogy between singling out a innocent Jew and singling out an innocent gun owner, 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, was compared to Timothy McVeigh. From Time magazine to friends and coleagues, they're essentually saying "Chuck, how dare you speak your mind like that? 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 "blatent irrational behavior is rappidly being established as the norm in almost every area of human endevor. There seems 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 country, turning the mind mushy when it comes to seperating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like it! Let me read a few exampes. 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 cocealed their AIDS-the state commissioner announced that health prviders who are HIV-possitive 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 suppsedly insulting to the local Indians, only to learn that the authentic Virginia chiefs truely 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 seperate toilet facilities while undergong 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 solely because their last names sound Hispanic. At the Unversity of Pennsylvania, in a state where thousands died at Gettysburg opposing slavery, the president of that college officially set up segregated dormatory spaces for black students. Yeah, I know.....it's out of bounds now. Dr. King said "Negros". 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 Souix. On my wifes side, my grandson is a thirteenth gneration native American.....with a capitol letter on American. Finally, just last month.....David Howard, head of the Washington D.C. Office of Public Advocate, used the word "niggardly" while talkng to colleagues about budgetary matters. Of course "niggardly" means stingy or scanty. But within days Howard was forced to publicly appologize and resign. As collumnist 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 appolgize for their ignorance." What does all 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 origionate on America's campuses? And why do you continue to tolerate it? Why do you, who are supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let's be honest. Who here thinks their proffessors can say what they realy believe? That scares me to death. It 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 are the cream. But I submit to you, and your counterparts accross the land, are the most socialy 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 Ammendment 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 mayors pending lawsuits that seek to exort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. I don't care what you think about guns. But if you are not shocked about that, then I am shocked at you. Who will guard the raw material of unfettered ideas, if not you? Democracy is dialogue! Who will defend the core value of academia, if you supposed soldiers of 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 homo-phobe. Don't let America's universities continue to searve 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 Jr. and 200 thousand people. You simply..... Disobay. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to feel, we don't. We disobay social protocall that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom. I learned the awsome power of disobedience from Dr. King.....who learned it from Ghandi, 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 inate kinship with that disobedient spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, that sent Troreau to jail, that refused to sit in the back of the bus, that protested a war in Viet Nam. In that same spirit I'm asking you to disavow cultural correctness with massive disobedience of rogue athority, 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 equivlant of the police dogs at Montgomery or the water cannons at Selma. You must be willing to experience discomfort. I'm not complaining, but my own decades of social activeism have left their mark 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 offcers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world. Police accross 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 advise of my family and colleagues. I asked for the floor. To a hushed room of about a thousand average American stockholders, I simply read the full lyrics of "Cop Killer"--every vicious, vulgar, instructional word. "I GOT MY 12 GUAGE 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 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 volly of sick lyrc brimming with raceist filth, where Ice-T fantasises about sodomizing two 12-year old neices 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 reporter said "We can't print that.", "I know", I replied, "but Time/Warner is selling it." Two months later Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offerd 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 deffending herslf.....jam the switchboard of the district attourney's office. When your Universit is pressured to lower it's standards untill 80% of the students graduates with honors.....choke the halls of the board of regents. When an 8-year old boy pecks a girls cheek on the playground and gets hauled into court for sexual harrassment.....march on the school and block it's doorways. When someone you elected is seduced by political power and betrays you.....petition them, oust them, banish them. When Time magazines cover portrays millenium nut as deranged,crazy Christians holdng a cross, as it did last month.....boycot 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 arroused rabble and a few great men, by God's grace, built this contry. If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree.