Charlton Heston at Harvard University on 02/16/1999

1/14/09


"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 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 as 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 to time ,friends and colleagues, they're essentially friends from Time Magazine,
say 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 commissioned 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 brightist. 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 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 modernday
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."

It's been almost a year since he passed away,but he is still a voice for all to pay attention to. And don't shrug off attacks against free speech or the 2nd Amendment or any other values that you hold dear.Or your rights will disappear as surely as the taxes will soon be going up now that the socialists have stolen the elections and high jacked the media . Who will stop them when they come for you for speaking out? If you will not speak out now for your own rights, protect talk radio by asking your Senators to fight all attacks against the only free voices left in America. If the left does not care for them, they should get their own talk radio programs and listen to them. I do not agree with liberal voices and their socialist views. Why should I have to hear their point of view? I hope you enjoyed his words as much as I did. Paladin kcs