I like this speech. What do you think?

The following remarks were delivered February 16, 1999 at the Harvard
Law School Forum. Provided by the FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771,
FRESNO, CA 93794

16 March, 1999

By Charlton Heston

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 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's 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.

A liberal agreeing on no gun control?

By MICHAEL COREN Sun Media

I hate guns. They terrify me. I have never owned one and never will. I
have little sympathy for the gun culture or the gun lobby. Both seem
crass and crude. If I had my way, guns would not exist. But - and this
but is the size of a Liberal grant - we do not live in a perfect world
and I am prepared to admit that reality sometimes stings. More than
this, the relative lack of gun control legislation in the United
States had nothing, absolutely nothing, to do with a 6-year-old in
Michigan shooting another child to death. Nor had it anything to do
with other child killings, with murders by street gangs, with any of
the shootings in Canada.

Indeed, gun control is one of the great misnomers of modern times. We
cannot control guns and we don't have to either. What we have to
control is the decaying social fabric of North America and our
headlong rush into an ethical vacuum. Good God, this one isn't rocket
science.

A few fundamentals: Guns are extraordinarily common in Canadian and
American rural communities, where the crime rates are lower than
anywhere else in either country. Farm kids shoot from an early age and
are in the company of firearms before they can walk. Yet there are
hardly any violent rampages and so-called accidental discharges of
weapons. Guns have existed in very large numbers for more than two
centuries. They were common among ordinary families from the 1740s.
Children did not kill with them.

After 1945 Canada was flooded with handguns brought home from Europe
and Asia by soldiers. Teachers of the time report of half of the class
bringing dad's shooter to school. These were military weapons, deadly
and efficient. Were there mass slaughters? Of course not. But
according to some zealots, it's all about registration.

So just who are these people so anxious to tell us what to do and how
to do it? Curiously enough, the activists campaigning for draconian
gun control seem to be the same activists who are calling for a lower
age of sexual consent, for more children's rights, for increased
funding of daycare rather than support for families, for a wholesale
dismantling of the society that has served us so well for so long.

If you doubt me, just take a look. It is an almost infallible rule
that the more permissive a person is on social and moral issues the
more in favour they are of strict gun control. Coincidence? Please. It
is not that such people are sinister, simply that they are wrong.
Dangerously wrong. Ignore the disease, misinterpret the diagnoses and
then prescribe the wrong medicine.

It's too late for that nonsense now. The patient is dying and we have
to operate fast. As for the ailments, they should be obvious.
Single-parent families and the absence of male authority figures.
Parents never seeing their kids because both are working and junior is
parented by the television. Teachers emasculated and unable to
chastise children who instead revel in their thuggery. An obsession
with the self-esteem of kids who in fact scream for boundaries and
borders. Endless discussions about children's feelings, encouraging
them to act out the slightest whim. Constant attacks on the virtues
of family, chastity, faith, respect, order and tradition. TV that
deadens the mind and the sensibilities with graphic violence,
grotesque pornography and vacuous pop videos, and then hosts long
discussions wondering why kids are going wrong. I want, I need, I
must have, I know, I am, I rule, I'm cool, I'm everything. You're
nothing, you're not me, you don't understand, you suck, you don't
matter. And I'm the centre of the universe. I know it because I feel
it and nobody dares tell me otherwise.

Laugh when Jimmy uses obscene language, believe that Susan can do no
wrong even when the cop and the teacher tell you otherwise, decide
that your "self-fulfillment" in some job is more important than Jake
seeing his mother when he comes home from school, and say you can't
control what Brittany watches on television when you haven't even
tried. It ain't about guns, it's about you. And you, and you. Don't
blame mechanics for your own madness.

Michael Coren is a Toronto-based writer and broadcaster

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I have to say, I was quite surprised when I read through this after the first sentence. I do agree that gun control is not the problem, and can not fix anything. Guns are not the problem! The social problems in this country are the problems. And giving government handouts will not solve that. The only way to solve the problem is to get back to Biblical roots. A biblical based marriage and family. If you do this, and that family will follow the Bible, they will raise kids the way they should be. If this cycle continues, eventually the social problems will be fixed based on biblical standards. With out the Bible, you will not fix this problem. With the Bible, and God, you can!