What an honor it is to address the Free Congress Foundation.
At a glance "Free" reads as a verb rather than an adjective.
"Free Congress." Not a bad directive for Mr. Clinton. Anyway.
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 that simply wear the cloak. Even our
President pretends to be a conservative when it suits him. We
must be more than that.
I know its not easy. Imagine being point man for the National
Rifle Association, preserving the right to keep and bear arms. I
ran for office, I was elected, and now I serve&as a moving target
for pundits whove called me everything from "ridiculous" and
"duped" to a "brain-injured, senile and crazy old man."
Maybe that comes with the territory. But as I have stood in the
crosshairs of those who aim at Second Amendment freedom, I have
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 today.
I have come to realize that a cultural war raging across our land
storming our values, assaulting our freedoms, killing our
self-confidence in who we are a what we believe.
How many of you own a gun? A show of hands maybe?
How many own two or more guns?
Thank you. 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 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 dont care one way or
the other about owning a gun. But I couldve asked for a show of
hands of Pentecostal Christians, or pro-lifers, or
right-to-workers, or Promise Keepers, or school vouchers-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 with a film crew?
See? 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 and 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 choose to own guns
affirmed by no less than the Bill of Rights. But you embrace a
view at odds with the cultural warlords.. If that is the outcome
of cultural war, and you are victims, I can only ask the gravely
obvious question: Whatll 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 yellow stars as identity badges. It
worked. So what color star will they pin on gun owners chests?
How will the self-styled elite tag us? There may not be a Gestapo
officer on every street corner, 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 warfare
thats 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 hyping tattooed
sex-slaves on the next Rikki Lake, enough gun-glutted movies and
tabloid shows, enough revisionist history books and prime-time
ridicule of religion, enough of the TV anchor who cocks her 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
admitted heterosexual, gun-owning or even worse
NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff, or even worse male
working stiff, because not only dont you count, youre a
downright obstacle to social progress. Your tax dollars may be
just as delightfully green as you hand them over, but 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 about your new
America&and until you do, would you mind shutting up?
Thats why you didnt raise your hand. Thats how cultural war
works. And you are losing.
Thats what happens when a generation of media, educators,
entertainers and politicians, led by a willing president, decide
the America they were born into isnt 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 Gods almighty presence, I treasure both.
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 Lincolns 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 shaved heads and white hoods? Why was the Million
Man March on Washington celebrated as progress, while the Promise
Keepers March on Washington was greeted with suspicion and
ridicule? Ill tell you why: Cultural warfare.
Now, Chuck Heston can get away with saying Im proud of those
wise old dead white guys because Jesse Jackson and Louis
Farrakhan know I fought in their cultural war. I was one of the
first white soldiers in the civil rights movement, long before it
was fashionable. In 1963 I marched on Washington with Dr. Martin
Luther King to uphold the Bill of Rights. As vice-president of
the NRA I am doing the same thing.
But you dont see many other Hollywood luminaries speaking out on
this, do you? Its not because there arent any. Its because
they cant afford the heat. They dare not speak up for fear of
CNN or the IRS or SAG or ATF or NBC or even W-J-C. It spas 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 can be so high, that legislators wont lead and
citizens cant follow, and so there is no army to fight back.
Thats cultural warfare.
For instance: Its plain that our Constitution guarantees
law-abiding citizens the right to own a firearm. But if I stand
up and say so, why is the media assault on me such a slashing,
sinister brand of derision filled with hate?
Because Bill Clintons 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. Thats what is now literally underway in England and
Australia. Lines of submissive citizens, threatened with
imprisonment, are bitterly surrendering family heirlooms, guns
that won their freedom, to the blast furnace. If that fact does
not unsettle you, then you are already anesthetized, a ready
victim of the cultural war.
You know that I stand first in line in defense for 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.
Ive 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 worlds most influential
artform. And I am an example of what a lonely undertaking it can
be.
Nobody opposed the obscene rapper Ice-T until I stood at
Time-Warners stockholders meeting and was ridiculed by its
president for wanting to take the floor to read Ice-Ts 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&shocked at lyrics that
advocating killing cops, sexually abusing women, and raping the
nieces of our Vice-President. The good guys won that time:
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 dont despise their lifestyle, though I dont 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. Its the right thing to do.
On the other hand, I find my blood pressure rising when Clintons
cultural shock troops participate in gay-rights fundraisers but
boycott gun-rights fundraisers&and then claim its 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. Theyre about the
currency of cultural war money and votes and the Clinton camp
will let anyone in the tent if theres a donkey on the hat, a
check in the mail or some yen in the fortune cookie.
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 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 merchandizing, violence as a form of entertainment for
impressionable minds, and gun bans as a means to lord-knows-what.
We have reached that point in time when our national social
policy originates on Oprah. I say its 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 to live their final days in
dignity. They prefer the America they built where you could
pray without feeling naïve, love without being kinky, sing
without profanity, be white without feeling guilty, own a gun
without shame, and raise you hand without apology. They are the
critical masses who find themselves under siege and long for you
to get some guts, stand on principle and lead them to victory in
this cultural war.
Now if this all sounds a little Mosaic, the punchline 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 whatll sell, not the politically correct thing, but
the right thing.
And you know what? Everybody already knows what the right thing
is. You, and I, and President Clinton, even Ice-T, we all know.
Its easy. You say wait a minute, you take a long look in the
mirror, then into the eyes of your kids or grandkids, and youll
know whats right.
Dont run for cover when the cultural cannons roar. Remember who
you are and what you believe, and then raise you hand, stand up,
and speak out. Dont be shamed or startled into lockstep
conformity by seemingly powerful people. The maintenance of a
free nation is a long, slow, steady process. And its in your
hands.
Yes, we can have rules and still have rebels thats democracy.
But as leaders you must do as Lincoln would do, confronted with
the stench of cultural war: Do whats 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 truce. Be fair, but fight
back.
Its 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.