Автор: Даша. (---.dialup.co.ru)
Дата: 07-09-01 19:47
Предлагаю вашему вниманию речь, вызвашую большой интерес в Гарварде - речь консерватора о свободе мыслить и свободе мнений. Мне ее прислали друзья. Извините, что на английском, она длинная и перевод требует времени. Речь обращена к американским студентам и касается Америки, но я считаю, что для нас эта тема даже более актуальна, особенно для молодежи.
The following is something that both conservatives and liberals are
embracing. So, please don't delete this without reading it just because
you see that it is about a speech given by a conservative.
> > >
> > > >> Subject: Charleton Heston speech at Harvard Law School For 50
years, the Harvard Law School Forum has been sponsoring speeches by
luminaries ranging from Fidel Castro to Gerald Ford to Dr. Ruth.
> Sometimes the speeches have generated a bit of media coverage, sometimes
not. But one given last month by Charlton Heston has taken on a life of its
own.
> > Heston, the actor and conservative activist, delivered a stem-winder to
about 200 listeners about "a cultural war that's about to hijack your
birthright to think and say what resides in your heart."
> > >
> > > "He knew he was coming to a liberal environment, and clearly a group
of his listeners was conservative and another was more liberal," said David
Christopherson, president of the forum. "About half respectfully challenged
him during the questions. It generated a lot of debate around the campus.
> > > But what happened caught us off-guard." What happened was Rush
Limbaugh's radio talk show. Limbaugh read the entire speech on the air, only
to find himself bombarded with thousands of requests for a copy of it. The
same thing happened at Harvard Law. "We couldn't keep up with all the
requests," said Mike Chmura at Harvard.
> > >
> > > "It really didn't have legs and might have been forgotten if Mr.
Limbaugh hadn't decided to deliver it".
'Winning the Cultural War' - Charlton Heston's Speech to the Harvard Law
School Forum:
> > >
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 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'm 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 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/Warne 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.
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