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C harlton HestonWinning the Cultural War delivered 16 February 1999, Austin Hall, Harvard Law School
[AUTHENTICITY CERTIFIED: Text version below transcribed directly from the audio (2)] Thank you very much, both for that warm response to the introduction and the introduction. You know, very often people with public faces are introduced with the simple phrase, "Now, ladies and gentlemen, a man who needs no introduction." Believe me, you could always use a good introduction. No, no, no, you laugh, you laugh, but it's true. I have a story that proves it, true story -- didn't happen to me, happened to a friend of mine: Kirk Douglas. This was when Ben Hur was in release, more or less all over. And Kirk said he was walking on a street near his home in Beverly Hills one evening after dinner when he was approached very politely by a stranger who said, "Excuse me, sir, I don't like interfering in the private lives of public people but I cannot let pass this opportunity to tell you what a deeply moving and enormously creative performance you gave in Ben Hur." And Kirk said, "Well thanks very much but that wasn't me; that was another fellow." And the man stood back amazed. He said, "Well if you aren't Burt Lancaster, who the hell are you?" So, I'm glad we've made it clear right at the outset that I'm not Burt Lancaster. I remember when my son was five, explaining to his kindergarten class what his father did for a living. "My daddy," he said, "pretends to be people." That's not bad, actually. That's about it. There have been quite a few of them. Prophets from the Old and the New Testaments, 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'd like me to work on this ceiling, I'll be glad to my best. No, it's just that there are always seems to be a lot of different fellows up here and I'm never entirely certain 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 I mentioned, 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 that 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'm sure 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 or two ago, I became president of the National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms of American citizens. 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've stood in the crosshairs of those who target Second Amendment freedoms, I've realized that firearms are -- 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 accepted thoughts and speech are mandated. For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -- and long before Hollywood found it acceptable, I may say. 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 -- throughout my whole career. 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 the 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'm talking about, 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
Let me read you a few examples. At Antioch College in Ohio, young men speaking and seeking intimacy with a coed must get verbal permission at each step of the process, from kissing to petting to final, at last, copulation -- all clearly spelled out in a printed college directive. In New Jersey, despite the death of several patients nationwide who'd been infected by dentists who had concealed their own 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 really like the name, "The Tribe." 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 didn't speak a word of Spanish had been placed in bilingual classes to learn their three R's in Spanish solely because their own 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's a twelfth 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 about budgetary matters with some colleagues. Of course, "niggardly" means stingy or scanty. But within days, Howard was forced to publicly apologize and then resign. As columnist Tony Snow wrote:
Now, what does all of this mean? Among other things, 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 -- to tolerate it? Why do you, who're supposed to debate ideas, surrender to their suppression? Let -- Let's be honest. Who here in this room thinks your professors can say what they really believe? (Uh-huh. There's a few....) Well, that scares me to death, and 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 this 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. But why? Because their research findings would undermine big-city mayors' pending lawsuits that seek to extort hundreds of millions of dollars from firearm manufacturers. Now, 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 values of academia, if you, the 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 -- does not make you
anti-religion. If you accept but don't celebrate homosexuality, it does not
make you a homophobe. Well, 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 the 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. In that same spirit, I' m 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. Now, 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 ago, I heard about a -- a rapper named Ice-T who was selling a CD called "Cop Killer," celebrating the ambushing and of murdering police officers. It was being marketed by none other than Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the country -- in the world. Police across the country were outraged. And rightfully so. At least one of them had been murdered. But Time/Warner was stonewalling because the -- the CD was a cash cow for them, and the media were tiptoeing around because the rapper was black. I heard Time/Warner had a stockholders meeting scheduled in Beverly Hills, and I owned some shares of Time/Warner at the time, so I decided to attend the meeting. What I did was against the advice of my family and my 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:
It got worse, a lot worse. Now, I won't read the rest of it to you. But trust me, the room was a sea of shocked, frozen, blanched faces. Time/Warner executives squirmed in their chairs and stared at their shoes. They hated me for that. Then I delivered another volley of sick lyrics brimming with racist filth, where Ice-T fantasizes about sodomizing the two 12-year-old nieces of Al and Tipper Gore:
No. No, I won't do to you here what I did to them. Let's just say I left the room in stunned silence. When I read the lyrics to the waiting press corps outside, one of them said, "We can't print that, you know." "I know," I said, "but Time/Warner is still selling it." Two months later, Time/Warner terminated Ice-T's contract. I'll never be offered another film by Warner Brothers, or get a good review from Time magazine. But disobedience means you have to 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 -- 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 then 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. I thank you. Research Note: Thanks to Joseph Slife for his assistance in updating the text and audio content for this address. Transcription Note: Updated on 2/1/14 to include recently discovered content from the address and to correct previous transcription gaps and other anomalies. Audio Note 1: Updated 2/1/14 to include additional content and enhanced quality Audio Note 2: AR-XE = American Rhetoric Extreme Enhancement Page Updated: 10/10/22 U.S. Copyright Status: Text, Audio, Image (Screenshot) = Restricted, seek permission. |
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