Charlton Heston

Actor Charlton Heston, born October 4, 1924, was one of some performing artists who received the Kennedy Center honors on December 6, 1997. Mr. Heston remained in Washington D.C. and addressed the 20th Anniversary of the Free Congress Foundation and the 4th Birthday of the NET TV network. The following are excerpts from his Insightful remarks. Mr. Heston and Mrs. Heston celebrated 50 years of marriage in 1994.
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. (Mr. Heston then asked those present who owned a gun to raise their hand.)
I wonder how many of you own guns but chose not to raise your hand? How many of you considered revealing your conviction about a constitutional right, but then though better of it?
If so, you are a victim of the culture war being waged against traditional American freedom of beliefs and ideas. You have been assaulted and robbed of the courage of your convictions. Your pride in who you are and what you believe in has been ridiculed, ransacked, and plundered! It may be a war without a bullet or bloodshed, but with just as much liberty lost: You and your country are less free!
Because you choose to own guns- affirmed by no less than the Bill of Rights- you embrace a view at odds with the cultural war lords. If that is the outcome of cultural war, and you are the victims, I can only ask the obvious question. What will 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?
Rank-and-file Americans wake up every morning, increasingly bewildered and confused at why their views make them lesser citizens. The message gets through; Heaven help the God fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle- class Protestant-or even worse, evangelical Christian, Midwestern or Southern- or even worse, rural, apparently straight-or even worse, admitted heterosexuals, 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 are a down-right obstacle to social progress. Your voice deserves 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 from your new-America and until you do, would you mind shutting up?
That is why you didn't raise your hand. That's how cultural war works. 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 anymore. So, they contrive to change it through 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!
The Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of wise old dead white guys who invented our country! Now some flinch when I say that. Why! Its true-they were white guys! So were most of the guys that died in Lincoln's name opposing slavery in the 1860's. So why should I be ashamed of white guys? Why is "Hispanic Pride" or "Black Pride" a good thing, while "White Pride" conjures shaven heads and white hoods? Why was the Million Man March on Washington celebrated by many as progress, while the Promise Keepers March on Washington was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I'll tell you why, Cultural warfare!
You don't see other Hollywood luminaries speaking out on this do you? Its not because there aren't any. Its because they can't afford the heat! They dare not speak for fear of CNN or the IRS or the SAG or NBC! It saps the strength of our country when the personal price is simply too high to stand for what you believe in. Today, speaking with the courage of your convictions can be costly, the price of principal can be so high that legislators won't lead and citizens can't follow, and so there is no arm to fight back. That's cultural warfare!
Mainstream America is counting on you to "draw your sword" and fight for them. These people have precious little time and resources to battle misguided Cinderella attitudes, the fringe propaganda of the homosexual coalition, the feminists who preach that it is a divine duty for woman to hate men, blacks who raise a militant fist with one hand while they seek preference with the other, New Age apologists for juvenile crime who see roving gangs as a means to only the merchandising violence as a form of entertainment for impressionable minds, and gun bans as a means to only the Lord-knows-what. We have reached that point in time when our social policy originates on Oprah.
Its time to pull the plug!