Charlton Heston, speaking on 'Winning the Cultural War,' Tuesday, February

16, 7:30 pm, Ames Courtroom, Austin Hall. Sponsored by the Harvard Law

School Forum, a student organization at Harvard Law School. For almost 50

years, the Forum has been bringing to HLS noteworthy individuals from all

fields to engage in exciting and wide-ranging exchanges of ideas. Forum

programs are open to the public and generally consist of a speech or panel

discussion followed by a question-and-answer session.

Mr. Heston

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.

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 tho ught ... 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

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 miracle 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’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 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 "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 country, 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 th at 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 the 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 apo logize 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 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?

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, 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 undermi ne 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? Democracy is dialogue!

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 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 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 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 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 sell ing 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 f ew great men, by God’s grace, built this country.

If Dr. King were here, I think he would agree.

Thank you.