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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.