Charlton Heston:
The Harvard Speech
16 March, 1999
By Charlton Heston
CNS Commentary
(Editor's Note: The following remarks were delivered February
16, 1999 at the Harvard Law School Forum and are reprinted here
with permission.)
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 ... 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
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 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 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's
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% 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.
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