'Winning the Cultural War'
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 repainted 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 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 "brain-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 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, 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. None other than
Time/Warner, the biggest entertainment conglomerate in the world, was
marketing it. 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. 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 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.
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