The 'Something' undermining our Nation
By Holly Swanson © 1999 WorldNetDaily.com, May 99
Charlton Heston addressed the topic 'Winning the Cultural
War' at the Harvard Law School Forum, February 16, 1999. Here is the text of that speech:
By Charlton Heston© 1999 WorldNetDaily.com
I remember my son when he was 5, 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 thank the I Lord ain't senile. As I
have stood in the cross hairs 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 13th-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 Vietnam. 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 is
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 percent
of the students graduate with honors ... choke the halls of the board of regents. When an
8-year-oldboy 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.
Charlton Heston recently said, in a speech at Harvard, that "Americans
know something, without a name is undermining this nation, turning the mind mushy when it
comes to separating truth from falsehood and right from wrong. And they don't like
it."
That something, the "it," the source undermining our nation has a
name. "It" has been carefully concealed behind a seemingly friendly face
and deliberately kept out of the public eye. "It" is the Green
Movement. It is where the fuel for unrest is coming from. The facts clearly
show the environmental movement has been hijacked. The Greens are using the
tremendous support the American people have for the environmental cause to advance a
political agenda the American people know nothing about. It is as ingenious as it is
dangerous. The plan is to quietly transform America using the environment as the
excuse to eliminate key elements in our society such as individualism, free enterprise,
private property rights, the right to bear arms and our moral foundation. It is a
perfect vehicle to hide behind because Americans really care about the environment.
The president of National Wildlife Federation, Mark VanPutten, said in December
1998 the Endangered Species Act "has been the catalyst for a profound change in how
we view the land" and it had helped to bring about "an unheralded
revolution" in land use. He went on to say "to those who oppose us, my
message to you is simple, get over it!"
An unheralded revolution, meaning an "un-announced revolution" is
taking place in America. It is imperative that we, as a nation, begin to make clear
distinctions between Green politics and environmental protection. The goals of the
Green Movement, Green Party, and the Clinton-Gore Administration are nearly
identical.
The President's Council on Sustainable Development, the PCSD, was established by
Executive Order No. 12852 in June 1993 by President Clinton. In March of 1996, Clinton
directed the Council to "continue its work and begin implementing the reports
recommendations." The ideas the Greens and the PCSD are advocating match the
ideas Lenin used to con a nation into communism.
Take a long, hard look at following chart. It's happened before.
Same ideas, same goals, same results?
"The only task that remains is to organize the population in co-operative
societies, with most of the population organized in co-operatives, socialism will achieve
its aim automatically... the system of civilized co-operatives is the system of
socialism" -- Lenin
Hollywood has done the American people a great favor by creating the controversy
over Elia Kazan's Oscar award for Lifetime Achievement. Kazan named Hollywood's
Communists 47 years ago. Why attack an 89-year-old man because he did what was
right? Is it to silence Americans because Green communism is alive and well and
needs to be challenged now?
Charlton Heston again gives us courage and hope. When asked about Kazan,
he said, "Sometimes the good guys win."
Related Links:
- Also
found on the Conservative News Service
- Internationalist &
Isolationism
- The 'Something'
undermining our Nation
- George Bush and the Guardianship
Presidency
- NOAM CHOMSKY: The New World
Order (Transcript)
- NATO's War of
Aggression Against Yugoslavia
