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If you want the ceiling repainted 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 reconnect you with your own sense of liberty of
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, DC 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, DC, 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 laws
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 Warner's, 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 disobedience's 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.