Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA20609 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 21 Feb 2001 23:42:14 GMT Subject: Fwd: Charleton Heston speech Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 18:39:47 -0500 x-sender: wsmith1@camail2.harvard.edu x-mailer: Claris Emailer 2.0v3, Claritas Est Veritas From: "Wade T.Smith" <wade_smith@harvard.edu> To: "Memetics Discussion List" <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Message-ID: <20010221233946.AAA28143@camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.127]> Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
"It really didn't have legs...."
Seems to have gotten up and about....
- Wade
******************
A speech Charleton Heston gave to the Harvard Law School Forum -
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's 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
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." And 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 am not 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, and
newanti-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
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 fan 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.
===============================================================
This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Feb 21 2001 - 23:44:31 GMT