John Crow

This speech by Charlton Heston is submitted for comment.

July 14, 2001

Winning the Cultural War

Charlton Heston's Speech to the 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 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 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 commission 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 NativeAmerican, for God's sake. I also happen to 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 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 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 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.

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Eyler Coates

Frankly, I see very little here to discuss. Charlton Heston has expressed his opinions, and I agree with him for the most part. It's a free country, and everyone should feel free to express their opinion on the issues of the day. The essential quality of our form of government is, it is based on SELF-government. That means the people govern themselves, and open discussions on important issues are essential if the people are to reach a consensus on those issues. It is somewhat disturbing to hear that G.W. Bush reportedly has only disdain for public opinion. It makes one wonder if he fully recognizes just who are the ultimate sovereigns of this country.

Self-government means that the people of a community determine community standards, within areas that do not violate the inalienable rights of individual citizens. And in order for them to do that, it is absolutely necessary that they be free to express themselves and able to persuade their fellow citizens of their views.

Mr. Heston's speech was concerned with a sense of liberty and with freedom of speech and what is right. He recognizes a struggle over our right to say what resides in our hearts, and the efforts by some to mandate what is acceptable in speech and thought, i.e., what is "politically correct." Anti-intellectual theories are being forced upon us, both from the right and from the left.

Of course, what is one man's anti-intellectual theory is another man's cutting-edge advancement in the evolution of society. Who is to say? The answer is, the people themselves should determine this in the free marketplace of ideas. And this always means that ideas with which a person may not agree have got to be afforded the same right to be aired as ideas that are agreeable.

In his own personal laundry list of attempts to impose mental conformity, Mr. Heston omits the attempts by the religious right to force their views, derived from their own religion's dogma, upon everyone else. He fails to note the number of people who attempt to block legal access to abortion clinics, or those who go so far as to murder doctors for preforming what our society has determined are perfectly legal abortions. He overlooks the attempts by the religious right to prevent stem-cell research for reasons based solely on religious dogma. These are attempts to suppress the quest for knowledge in the name of "the sanctity of life." Such acts of suppression fail to recognize that healing lives relates just as much to the sanctity of human life as any religious dogma.

Mr. Heston calls upon Americans to resist these attempts to suppress debate, but to do it non-violently. And with that we could only agree. We should all speak out against attempts by small groups of people to cram their views down the throats of all the rest of us. But that means allowing the views of BOTH sides of issues to be aired.

July 16, 2001

Todd

Free speech should never be taken for granted as it is our God given right. It may hurt at times, as many song lyrics make me cringe, but there is a simple solution for that, don't buy it!!!! I hate to think of a society where goverment controls what is seen and heard by the public. It makes me think of Nazi Germany and many great works that Hitler had burnt.

The right to bear arms is another right that we should never let go of, but at what price? I hate to see all the shootings at our schools and in the country as a whole, but I don't want a situation where a body could just take us over and we have no recourse because we don't have the right to bear arms. All our rights come with some cost. It's just up to us to keep them and use them responsibly.

July 19, 2001

Kawboy

I don't much like the idea either, but government must control some aspects of both the right to free speech and the right to keep and bear arms. As little as possible, we hope, but to a degree, we expect them to do so, and we elect them to do that very thing! They will indeed do so long as we want, only so long as we keep pressure on them to do so. Republican or Democrat. Remember this, the more people abuse these rights, the more the Government WILL crack down!

Do you know who Jim Bowie was? I mean, the maker of the Bowie Knife who died at the Alamo. Well, he was a great fighter and used to wrestle the biggest alligators he could find when in LA, but he knew that it was mighty dangerous, once you got a hold of them, to ever let them go. If you weren't careful, you could get hurt or killed. Make the wrong move, though, go to the right or left too far, and the result is the same.

Seems these days, the 1st and 2nd amendments are competing. I think it's nonsense. Both must be regulated -- to a degree, but the argument is to what degree. I don't believe every person has the right to own an Abrahm's tank, for example! The Jeffersonian Perspective has an excellent article on gun ownership. I'd like to suggest the same for a freedom of speech article, and would strongly argue that lyrics to modern heavy metal and rap contribute tremendously to violence in our society.

Look, when I was a tyke, I loved Daniel Boone and John Wayne (still do). I wanted to be just like them. They generally did good on their movies but, always were in fights, and usually won. Always conflict, but they always were defending what was right. I didn't see that, though, I saw only that they always fought and always won! Always a good reason, nevertheless, and the fights sold the movies. The men wanted to be like that and so did I. Now, kids don't emulate John Wayne. They try to imitate rock stars so they can get the girls and money and whatever else. They pretend to be holding an electric guitar acting like imbeciles in hopes to get attention from the females and generally, they do.

Alright, what teen wants to be like John Boy Walton? I have yet to see one who does, but when we see teens dancing to heavy meatal, taking drugs, listening to lyrics that once, would have been prohibited, do we expect them to act any different than I did when I was young? Do we really think that Marilyn Manson, had no effect on the Columbine massacre and only the access to guns did? Think about it, what influenced you, and why. If the Government can regulate arms, they must also regulate speech, to some degree.

I am against as much as I can be, any laws against gun ownership. But I want to ask you, what provokes a person into firing that gun? Music? Drugs? Alcohol? I've been there, well, not drugs, but I've been around it.

Bottom line: Is Heston a hypocrite? He promotes guns but wishes to suppress freedom of expression? Take another look. He wants some common sense and courtesy. Decency from one man, to another, from one race, to another. Shoot, if you were to use some of the language in today's music, you'd be allowed no comment on this website. That's good. If you don't think so, protest.

July 22, 2001

Todd

I have to disagree with the above statement. I do NOT believe that music alone causes a child to kill. It makes me sick when people want to blame society's ills on everything except the real problem. To me society itself is the problem. Both parents are forced to work just so they can have anything, so the children are forced to raise themselves or to be raised by strangers. Families don't spend the time together they once did. No one wants to take responsibility for their actions anymore. I am not big on religion, but it also seems to me that morals are slipping, and everyone is out for themselves. Yes, our heros of yesterday are gone but nowadays kids are just not looking in the right place. I have to admit as a child Dan Marino was my idol, but also there were a few teachers I looked up to. A child just needs to be pointed in the right direction. I hope I do that for my daughter.

July 23, 2001

Fred

Heston's comments are generally well taken, as far as they go. The Ice T "song" is scurrilous and reprehensible. But Heston cites the extreme example of the side of the cultural war with which he disagrees. When he and the extreme right protest against ideas with which they disagree as being against God or country, they are entitled to their views, but not to the suppression of the views they oppose. And I fear that indeed that is what the extreme right would do if they could. It seems that throughout history, people of all political and/or religious beliefs want the government to advance their cause and suppress that which they oppose. What Heston did at the Time-Warner meeting was proper. It was not government action. Yet I imagine that, if asked, most of those with whom Heston makes common cause would support the posting of the Ten Commandments in schools, courtrooms and other public buildings, i.e., by the government. Because they agree with it, believe it is a good thing, and that all would benefit by forced exposure to it, they want the government to compel the exposure of those ideas to all, whether they agree or not, whether they are offended or not. After all, why tolerate error? But Americans have the right to be wrong, without the government deciding for them.

December 23, 2001

Annie!

This is a nice group, but I thought it was supposed to be about Thomas Jefferson. Why is there this long speech by Charlton Heston and his comments about Ice T? Are they relevant to a discussion on Thomas Jefferson?

December 24, 2001

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