Speech by National Rifle Association First Vice President Charlton Heston Delivered at the Free Congress Foundation's 20th Anniversary Gala December 7, 1997.
Well, I guess that goes with the territory. But as I've stood in the
cross hairs of those who aim at Second Amendment freedom, I've
realized that guns are not the only issue, and I am not the only
target. It is much, much bigger than that— which is what I want to
talk to you about.
I have come to realize that a cultural war is raging across our land... storming our values, assaulting our freedoms, killing our self-confidence in who we are and what we believe, where we come from.
How many of you here own a gun? A show of hands?
Thank you. I wonder—how many of you in this room own guns but chose
not to raise your hand?
How many of you considered revealing your conviction about a constitutional right, but then thought better of it?
Then you are a victim of the cultural war. You are a casualty of the
cultural warfare being waged against traditional American freedom of
beliefs and ideas. Now maybe you don't care one way or the other
about owning a gun. But I could've asked for a show of hands on
Pentecostal Christians, or pro-lifers, or right-to-workers, or Promise Keepers, or school voucher-ers, and the result would be the same. What if the same question were asked at your PTA meeting? Would you raise your hand if Dan Rather were in the back of the room there with a film crew?
See? Good. Still, if you didn't, you have been assaulted and robbed
of the courage of your convictions. Your pride in who you are, and
what you believe, has been ridiculed, ransacked, plundered. It may be
a war without bullet or bloodshed, but with just as much liberty
lost: You and your country are less free.
And you are not inconsequential people! You in this room, whom many
would say are among the most powerful people on earth, you are shamed
into silence! Because you embrace a view at odds with the cultural
warlords. If that is the outcome of cultural war, and you are the
victims, I can only ask the gravely obvious question: What'll become
of the right itself? Or other rights not deemed acceptable by the
thought police? What other truth in your heart will you disavow with
your hand?
I remember when European Jews feared to admit their faith. The Nazis
forced them to wear six-pointed yellow stars sewn on their chests as
identity badges. It worked. So—what color star will they pin on our
coats? How will the self-styled elite tag us? There may not be a
Gestapo officer on every street corner yet, but the influence on our
culture is just as pervasive.
Now, I am not really here to talk about the Second Amendment or the
NRA, but the gun issue clearly brings into focus the war that's going
on.
Rank-and-file Americans wake up every morning, increasingly bewildered and confused at why their views make them lesser citizens. After enough breakfast-table TV promos hyping tattooed sex-slaves on the next Rikki Lake show, enough gun-glutted movies and tabloid talk shows, enough revisionist history books and prime-time ridicule of religion, enough of the TV anchor who cocks her pretty head, clucks her tongue and sighs about guns causing crime and finally the message gets through: Heaven help the God-fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle class, Protestant, or—even worse—Evangelical Christian, Midwest, or Southern, or—even worse—rural, apparently straight, or—even worse—admittedly heterosexual, gun-owning or—even worse—NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff, or—even worse—male working stiff, because not only don't you count, you're a downright obstacle to social progress. Your tax dollars may be just as delightfully green as you hand them over, but your voice requires a lower decibel level, your opinion is less enlightened, your media access is insignificant, and frankly mister, you need to wake up, wise up and learn a little something about your new America...in fact, why don't you just sit down and shut up?
That's why you don't raise your hand. That's how cultural war works.
And you are losing.
That's what happens when a generation of media, educators, entertainers and politicians, led by a willing president, decide the America they were born into isn't good enough any more. So they contrive to change it through the cultural warfare of class distinction. Ask the Romans if powerful nations have ever fallen as a result of cultural division. There are ruins around the world that were once the smug centers of small-minded, arrogant elitism. It appears that rather than evaporate in the flash of a split atom, we may succumb to a divided culture.
Although my years are long, I was not on hand to help pen the Bill of
Rights. And popular assumptions aside, the same goes for the Ten
Commandments. Yet as an American and as a man who believes in God's
almighty power, I treasure both.
The Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of those wise
old dead white guys who invented this country. Now, some flinch when
I say that. Why? It's true...they were white guys. So were most of
the guys who died in Lincoln's name opposing slavery in the 1860s. So
why should I be ashamed of white guys? Why is "Hispanic pride"
or "black pride" a good thing, while "white pride" conjures up shaved
heads and white hoods? Why was the Million Man March on Washington
celebrated in the media as progress, while the Promise Keepers March
on Washington was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I'll tell you
why: Cultural warfare.
Now, Chuck Heston can get away with saying I'm proud of those wise
old dead white guys because Jesse Jackson and Louie Farrakhan know I
fought in their cultural war. I was one of the first white soldiers in the civil rights movement in 1961, long before it was fashionable in Hollywood—believe me—or in Washington for that matter. In 1963 I
marched on Washington with Dr. Martin Luther King to uphold the Bill
of Rights. I'm very proud of that. As vice-president of the NRA I am
doing the same thing.
But you don't see many other Hollywood luminaries speaking out on
this one, do you? It's not because there aren't any. It's because
they can't afford the heat. They dare not speak up for fear of CNN or
the IRS or SAG or the ATF or NBC or even W-J-C. It saps the strength
of our country when the personal price is simply too high to stand up
for what you believe in. Today, speaking with the courage of your
conviction can be so costly, the price of principle so high, that
legislators won't lead so citizens can't follow, and so there is no
army to fight back. That's cultural warfare.
For instance: It's plain that our Constitution guarantees law-abiding
citizens the right to own a firearm. But if I stand up and say so,
why does the media assault me with such a slashing, sinister brand of
derision filled with hate?
Because Bill Clinton's cultural warriors want a penitent cleansing of
firearms, as if millions of lawful gun owners should genuflect in
shame and seek absolution by surrendering their guns. That's what is
now literally happening in England and Australia, of course. Lines—
long lines—of submissive citizens, threatened with imprisonment, are
bitterly, reluctantly surrendering family heirlooms, guns that won
their freedom, to the blast furnace. If that fact doesn't unsettle
you, then you are already anesthetized, a ready victim of the
cultural war.
You know, I think, that I stand first in line in defense of free speech. But those who speak against the perverted and profane should be given as much due as those who profit by it. You also know I welcome cultural diversity. But those who choose to live on the fringe should not tear apart the seams that secure the fabric of our society.
Now I've earned a fine and rewarding living in the motion picture
industry, yet increasingly I find myself embarrassed by the dearth of
conscience that drives the world's most influential art form. And I'm
an example of what a lonely undertaking that can be.
Nobody opposed the obscene rapper Ice-T until I stood at Time-
Warner's stockholders meeting and was ridiculed by its president for
wanting to take the floor to read Ice-T's lyrics. Since I held several hundred shares of stock he had no choice, though the media
were barred. I read those lyrics to a stunned audience of average
American people—the stockholders— who were shocked at the lyrics that
advocating killing cops, sexually abusing women, and raping the
nieces of our Vice-President. True, the good guys won that time
though: Time-Warner fired Ice-T.
The gay and lesbian movement is another good example. Many
homosexuals are hugely talented artists and executives... also dear
friends. I don't despise their lifestyle, though I don't share it. As
long as gay and lesbian Americans are as productive, law-abiding and
private as the rest of us, I think America owes them absolute
tolerance (This is one area I disagree with Charlton on. Decent Christians do not have to tolerate immorality). It's the right thing to do.
But on the other hand, I find my blood pressure rising when Clinton's
cultural shock troops participate in homosexual-rights fund-raisers
but boycott gun-rights fund-raisers. .. and then claim it's time to
place homosexual men in tents with Boy Scouts, and suggest that sperm
donor babies born into lesbian relationships are somehow better
served and more loved.
Such demands have nothing to do with equality. They're about the
currency of cultural war—money and votes—and the Clinton camp will
let anyone in the tent if there's a donkey on his hat, or a check in
the mail or some yen in the fortune cookie.
Mainstream America is depending on you—counting on you—to draw your
sword and fight for them. These people have precious little time or
resources to battle misguided Cinderella attitudes, the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it's a divine duty for women to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other, and all the New-Age apologists for juvenile crime, who see roving gangs as a means of youthful expression, sex as a means of adolescent merchandising, violence as a form of entertainment for impressionable minds, and gun bans as a means to lord-knows-what. We've reached that point in time when our national social policy originates on Oprah. I say it's time to pull the plug.
Americans should not have to go to war every morning for their
values. They already go to war for their families. They fight to hold
down a job, raise responsible kids, make their payments, keep gas in
the car, put food on the table and clothes on their backs, and still
save a little for their final days in dignity. They prefer the America they built - where you could pray without feeling naive, love without being kinky, sing without profanity, be white without feeling guilty, own a gun without shame, and raise your hand without apology. They are the critical masses who find themselves under siege and are long for you to get some guts, stand on principle and lead them to victory in this cultural war.
Now all this sounds a little Mosaic, the punch-line of my sermon is
as elementary as the Golden Rule. In a cultural war, triumph belongs
to those who arm themselves with pride in who they are and then do
the right thing. Not the most expedient thing, not the politically
correct thing, not what'll sell, but the right thing.
And you know what? Everybody already knows what the right thing is.
You, and I, President Clinton, even Ice-T, we all know. It's easy.
You say wait a minute, you take a long look in the mirror, then into
the eyes of your kids, your grandchildren, and you'll know what's
right.
Don't run for cover when the cultural cannons roar. Remember who you
are and what you believe, and then raise your hand, stand up, and speak out. Don't be shamed or startled into lockstep conformity by seemingly powerful people. The maintenance of a free nation is a long, slow, steady process. And it is in your hands.
Yes, we can have rules and still have rebels—that's democracy. But as
leaders you must—we must—do as Lincoln would do, confronted with the
stench of cultural war: Do what's right. As Mr. Lincoln said, "With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us finish the work we are in... and then we shall save our country."
Defeat the criminals and their apologists, oust the biased and bigoted, endure the undisciplined and unprincipled, but disavow the self-appointed social engineers whose relentless arrogance fuels this vicious war against so much we hold so dear. Do not yield, do not divide, do not call a truce. Be fair, but fight back.
It's the same blueprint our founding fathers left to guide us. Our enemies see it as the senile prattle of an archaic society. I still honor it as the United States Constitution, and that timeless document we call the Bill of Rights.
Freedom is our fortune and honor is our saving grace.
Thank you.
"JUST HITTING ANOTHER
