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
thank the 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 ís 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.
(END)
---------------------------
Winning
The Cultural War
