#1: Why I think Mr. Heston would have made a great President: Author: stovepipe, Location: Pine, Az.Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:06 am ---- 1:
Well, here I am still in the chariot. I am pleased to be among political thinkers, and I hope, political activists ... fellow charioteers, if you will.
My life has always been pretty active. I marched with Martin Luther King in 1963, long before Hollywood found it fashionable. Supporting civil rights then was about as popular as supporting gun rights is now. Yup, I'm currently the President of the National Rifle Association.
Clearly, my views are not bound by political correctness. The thought police do not frighten me. I hope I frighten them.
Since your Political Union debates follow traditional structure, my resolution would go something like this: Be it resolved that societal dishonesty can kill you. That is to say, a world without consequences is a world without truth, and that you can die from that lie.
I believe that in your heart you already know something is profoundly wrong. When bartenders are responsible for drunk drivers' acts, and gunmakers are responsible for criminals' acts, and nobody is responsible for O. J. Simpson's acts, something is wrong.
As students, you should search for truth. Your brain evolved to demand reality. It can best process information against an unchanging backdrop of certainty.
But that's hard to find. Your world is all spin. Actions are further and further removed from consequences. Cause and effect are, at best, theoretical. Equal and opposite reactions are no longer PC.
The Dow tops ten thousand, but our lives are not enriched. We enjoy unprecedented affluence, but our souls are impoverished. Our lungs inhale the rarefied air of prosperity, but our hearts yearn for nourishment. You lack that invisible anchor that tethered your grandparents to reality -- you know what I'm talking about.
Our nation's abundance is like a narcotic that masks our malady -- we feel too good to acknowledge that we're sick. We're like the cocaine-snorting rock star, who dares not look in the mirror -- the ghoulish reflection would ruin the buzz.
In his book "The End of Sanity," Martin Gross says, "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 give you two good examples: This Administration's approach to crime and to war. Our government's duplicity proves my point.
If you drove into Richmond, Virginia, today, you'd be greeted by billboards with giant words that say, "An illegal gun gets you five years in federal prison." These warn all felons that Project Exile is in effect. Project Exile simply enforces existing federal law. Project Exile means every convicted felon caught with a gun, no matter what he's doing, will go to prison for five years. No parole, no early releases, no discussion, period.
My, my -- incarcerating armed felons. What a novel idea. It works, like no other anti-crime policy ever proposed. Project Exile, in its first year in Richmond, cut gun homicides by 62 percent. And as you'd expect, related gun crimes like robbery, rape and assault also plummeted. That means hundreds of people in Richmond today are alive and intact who, without Project Exile, would be dead or bleeding.
For years the NRA has demanded that Project Exile be deployed nationwide. Makes sense, huh? The laws are already on the books. Just enforce them.
But Bill Clinton won't do it. When he says he's serious about fighting crime, consider that as a matter of policy -- as a matter of policy - the Clinton Administration is not prosecuting violations of federal gun law. In fact, they reversed the Bush Administration's policy of prosecuting felons with guns. Instead, with plea bargains, a wink and a nod, they've been letting armed felons off the hook. From 1992 to 1998, prosecutions have been cut almost in half.
So while Project Exile was saving lives in Richmond, federal prosecution for gun law violations everywhere else dropped by 46 percent.
Such fraud could not happen without the news media's alliance in the dishonesty; it goes utterly unreported. Here are more examples.
Everyone remembers the press's podium-pounding for Clinton's Crime Bill and its "urgently needed" juvenile gun transfer provisions. It became law. But nobody is reporting that, out of thousands of certain offenders, his Justice Department bothered to prosecute only five people in 1997 and six in 1998.
Everyone remembers all the press support for his "desperately needed" semi-auto gun ban -- that outlawed guns based solely on their appearance. But nobody is reporting that, out of thousands of certain offenders, the Clinton Administration prosecuted four people in 1997 and four in 1998.
Everyone remembers that media love-child, the Brady Bill. Mr. Clinton repeatedly claims that a quarter million handguns have been prevented from falling into the hands of convicted felons. But nobody is reporting what matters to you: How many of those quarter million people were convicted and taken off your streets for the federal crime of being a felon trying to buy a gun? Try nine!
It's surreal. Mr. Clinton stands in the Rose Garden with his ten prop cops, lip-biting in pained support of some new law. The press does its best to get it passed. It becomes law. Then everybody forgets about it. And Americans buy it over and over and over again.
Maybe you think a politician's lies can't hurt you. But let me tell you, armed felons can.
Passing laws is what keeps politicians' careers alive. Enforcing laws is what keeps you alive. But nobody's getting arrested, nobody's going to jail, it's all a giant scam. It's not real life. It's a big lie, packaged by an alliance between this Administration and a media that systematically propagates its doctrine. Forgive my severity, but that's precisely the definition of the Soviet propaganda machine of the '50s and '60s.
While this Administration weaves reality spun from empty air and heavy breathing, the NRA is helping fund Project Exile to keep it alive. I submit to you that the consequence of what we're doing saves people ... and the consequence of what they're doing kills people.
It's a certain consequence that if you choose not to prosecute criminals, people will die. It is also a certain consequence that if you choose to go to war, people will die.
Consider Kosovo. Though undeclared, the war is real. What is unreal is Bill Clinton's grasp of its consequences ... and perhaps yours.
From the outset it appears nobody anticipated that first, human consequence of war called refugees, that first stream of tragedy that spills from armed conflict. It seems our leadership is surprised and unprepared, caught short on tents, food, clothes and medicine for tens and tens and tens and tens of thousands of refugees.
Now, I am not one of those conservatives who reflexively opposes everything Bill Clinton does with knee-jerk uniformity. Whether or not we should have gone is irrelevant. That debate is over.
So let's discuss what reality demands of us now. The only good war is a fast and decisive war, with overwhelming military might that results in quick victory.
But that chance is lost. Instead we're doling out cruise missiles like popsicles in a popularity-poll-guided war, conducted by a man who did not display the will to fight as a younger man, whom I doubt would go fight now, and who would not offer his own loved ones to march on Kosovo.
Warfare experts grasp the truth that Mr. Clinton doesn't: now we're in it, we must win it. That means that ground troops -- daddies, neighbors, classmates, uncles, husbands, and good friends -- are going to die. Are you willing to send yours?
More important, are you willing to take a round in the gut? I mean you here tonight. You, and you, and you. You're the flesh that fills uniforms. You may say that's melodrama; but this actor filled a uniform for two years overseas.
You there, listening politely while you plan your next date and your first million, are you willing to put that all aside -- just as thousands of good men did 60 years ago -- and go fight?
Or are you thinking, as I suspect, that it's some lesser person's job? Or that, nestled safely in our distance and abundance, we can just wiggle joysticks on remote control missiles and win this ... Gameboy war?
If you believe that, you have lots of equally naive company. A CNN/Gallup poll three days ago reported that 2 out of 3 Americans think we have a moral obligation to fight Milosevic. But an equal number, 2 out of 3, were unwilling to agree that casualties are an acceptable consequence. So we're all for moral obligation, alright ... as long as there is no pain, no price, no consequence.
No, the truth is, life has consequences and must be lived in that reality, not as it is pretended to be lived by people who aren't honest. We have an arrogant Administration and conspiring media who are getting us into events that have genuine consequences.
But then, this President has long seen himself as free of consequences.
There is something wrong with a government that purposely, as a matter of policy, ignores the consequences of letting armed felons go free, or of going to war.
To me, that disappointment is the grand tragedy of the Baby Boomers. For all the dreams we had for the generation that now runs this country -- my generation's children and your generation's parents -- for all the Baby Boomers' achievements in communications and space and medicine, it is all for naught if you inherit and perpetuate societal dishonesty.
So what can you do?
I learned the answer 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 refuse to go along. You disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely.
But when you're asked to live their lies, you practice civil defiance. You refuse to go along with the spin and facade and vacant language of dishonest people.
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 refused to go along. Racial discrimination was illegal, but violation had no consequences. Segregation was illegal, but prosecution of offenders was not a policy. So Dr. King taught us to defy societal dishonesty with action -- and changed our country.
Disobedience is in our DNA. We feel innate kinship with that defiant spirit that tossed tea into Boston Harbor, sent Thoreau to jail, refused to sit in the back of the bus, and protested a dishonestly fought war in Viet Nam.
Our uniquely American genes naturally defy political posturing. For example: Who's conducting the greatest intellectual rebellion in history right now? It's not the likes of the New York Times or Washington Post or other traditionally crusading journals of American opinion. No, it's the Internet, built by and for the minds of young people like you, people yearning for truth.
In that same spirit, I'm asking you to disavow cultural dishonesty with massive civil defiance against a government spoiled by prosperity ... against wishful thinking masquerading as leadership ... and against news media who perpetuate the untruth that action can occur without consequence.
I ask you, in Lincoln's words, "so that this nation may long endure, "please ... do what you must to reveal, and then revere, truth ... expect and accept the consequences of your actions and those of your nation ... and every day, test what you see with what you know is right.
And when it's dishonest, defy it. Follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobedience movements of history that freed exiles, founded religions, defeated tyrants, and 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.
2:
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 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 as 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 to time ,friends and colleagues, they're essentially friends from Time Magazine, say 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 commissioned 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 rightist. 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 Vietnam. 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.
#2: Re: Why I think Mr. Heston would have made a great President Author: stovepipe, Location: Pine, Az.Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:14 am ---- Compare this man thinking, and what Ronny did for Us..... to our current President.
NUFF SAID.
Where have all the Good Fighters gone????
#3: Re: Why I think Mr. Heston would have made a great President: Author: Ominivision1, Location: IowaPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:40 am ---- Charlton Heston had common sense, something lacking in today's higher ups.
#4: Re: Why I think Mr. Heston would have made a great President: Author: inthedark, Location: OntarioPosted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:21 pm ---- Thank you Stovey for lighting a spark in me to read these authors. I have always liked Charlton Heston's common sense, decorum, grace and abilities.
#5: Re: Why I think Mr. Heston would have made a great President: Author: stovepipe, Location: Pine, Az.Posted: Tue Jan 17, 2012 2:38 pm ---- No problem.
He has a pretty cool gun collection too! lol.
I find it utterly dumbfounding how far we've fallen since those words were spoken. Add the current Regime's debauchery and it's amazing we can still do anything.
With any luck American's will remember their roots and get out and vote this time.
