Fwd: NEWS - NRA Charles Heston speech

["Jean-Francois Avon" <jf_avon@citenet.net>]

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>Date: Fri, 05 Jun 1998 09:50:22 +0930
>From: SSAA <Sporting.Shooters.Association@adelaide.on.net>
>Subject: NEWS - NRA Charles Heston speech
>Organization: Sporting Shooters Association of Australia

Speech by National Rifle Association First Vice President Charlton
Heston Delivered at the Free Congress Foundation's 20th Anniversary Gala

December 7, 1997 

I like it when the party of Lincoln honors our free heritage. This
nation has been blessed by the minds and mettle of many good people, and
indeed Abe was among the best. A man of great moral character... a trait
often lacking among our leaders. This is disturbing, but not without
remedy. One good election can correct such ills.

Above all, I hope those of us gathered here tonight have more in common
with Mr. Lincoln than just party affiliation. Better that we grasp a
common vision than simply wear the cloak. Even our President pretends to
be a conservative when it suits him. We must be more than that.

I know, I know... it is not easy. Imagine being point man for the
National Rifle Association, preserving the right to keep and bear arms.
Well, I ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve... as a moving
target for pundits who've called me everything from "ridiculous" and
"duped" to a "brain-injured, senile, crazy old man."

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?

How many own two or more guns?

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. 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.


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Jean-Francois Avon, B.Sc. Physics, Montreal, Canada
  JFA Technologies, R&D physicists & engineers
  Instrumentation & control, LabView programming.
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