- 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 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 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 ís 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.
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