"Winning The Cultural War"
Harvard Law School Forum
Tuesday, 16 February 1999
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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
issues. 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, and 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 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'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.
