As you probably know by now, Charlton Heston, the actor known for playing the lead roles in films such as the Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, passed away this past Saturday. He portrayed Biblical characters such as Moses and John the Baptist, as well as the historical figures Michelangelo, El Cid, and Marc Antony.

Our family tradition at Easter is to watch ‘Ben Hur’ every year, usually broken up into 2 days as it’s a long movie. We often will watch ‘The Ten Commandments’ around Easter as well. So naturally, we were saddened by his passing.

But there’s more to this story. Charlton Heston exemplified the kind of character that is so rare in Hollywood (or anywhere, for that matter nowadays). He got married early (to Lydia Clarke), stayed married, fathered children, and never seemed to make the gossip columns.

He was also an early celebrity marcher in the U.S. civil rights crusade, before it was popular, a six-term president of the screen actors guild, and received the Academy Awards’ Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 1977. He was also president of the National Rifle Association for 5 years, never wavering in his support for Second Amendment rights.

In February 1999, he made a speech to the Harvard Law School Forum, on Winning the Culture War. As home schoolers, we are in the somewhat unique position of following a path contrary to the prevailing public school culture. Whatever reason you may have had to begin homeschooling, you’re making a statement that you believe the public school path is not the one you want your child to follow.

There’s a lot of wisdom in his speech for us about our rights to freedom of thought, and how political correctness is replacing truth, so we wanted to reprint some excerpts that we found particularly enlightening. You can read the entire speech here. Now the excerpts:

“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…your own freedom of thought…your own compass for what is right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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 in to 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 law 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.

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.

So that this nation may long endure, I urge you to follow in the hallowed footsteps of the great disobediences 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.

Thank you”.

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