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 that 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 lives 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 a little. About a year ago I became president of the
National Rifle Association, which protects the right to keep and bear arms of
American citizens. 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...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 affected thoughts and speech are
mandated. For example, I marched for civil rights with Dr. King in 1963 -
long before Hollywood found it fashionable I might say. 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 throughout
my whole career. 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 am talking
about, 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 you 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 - at last - 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 the local Indians, only to
learn that authentic Virginia chiefs really liked the name "The Tribe".
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 own 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
twelfth
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 then 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? Uh-huh...there's a few...
Now that 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.
Now 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? Democracy is dialog! 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 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. That's what it is: 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. Now I'm not complaining, but my own
decades
of social activism have left their mark on me.
Let me tell you a story.
A few years ago, 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 counrty - 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 of Time/Warner 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'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 ...."No...no, I won't do to you here what
I did
to them. Let's just say I left the room in stunned 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 still 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 have to 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. I Thank you.