For 50 years, the Harvard Law School Forum has been sponsoring speeches by
luminaries ranging from Fidel Castro to Gerald Ford to Dr. Ruth. Sometimes
the speeches have generated a bit of media coverage, sometimes not. But one
given last month by Charlton Heston has taken on a life of its own. Heston,
the actor and conservative activist, delivered a stem-winder to about 200
listeners about "a cultural war that's about to hijack your birthright to
think and say what resides in your heart." 

 

"He knew he was coming to a liberal environment, and clearly a group of his
listeners was conservative and another was more liberal," said David
Christopherson, president of the forum. "About half respectfully challenged
him during the questions. It generated a lot of debate around the campus.
But what happened caught us off-guard." What happened was Rush Limbaugh's
radio talk show. On March 15, Limbaugh read the entire speech on the air,
only to find himself bombarded with thousands of requests for a copy of it.
The same thing happened at Harvard Law. "We couldn't keep up with all the
requests," said Mike Chmura at Harvard. "It really didn't have legs and
might have been forgotten if Mr. Limbaugh hadn't decided to deliver it."


 

 

 

'Winning the Cultural War' Charlton Heston's Speech to the Harvard Law
School Forum, Feb 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. 

 

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
rain-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 broiling. 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 seeks 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, 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, DC, 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 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.

 


 <mailto:kfarris@tconl.com>