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     By Charlton Heston
     (c) 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 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 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 CDs
     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-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.