READ BOOK EXCERPTS

The Courage To Be Free
Table of Contents
Foreword The Courage of Charlton Heston by Wayne LaPierre
Chapter 1 Why Freedom Takes Courage
Chapter 2 My Life on the Front Lines
Chapter 3 Society Doodled on a Desktop
Chapter 4 How We Lost More than the Farm
Chapter 5 Raging Revisionism
Chapter 6 The Second Amendment: America's First Freedom
Chapter 7 Dr. King Didn't Dream of Ice-T
Chapter 8 Hollywood's Heroes: The Entertaining and Retraining of America
Chapter 9 Hunting: A Tradition in the Crosshairs
Chapter 10 A Colorblind Nation ... Unless You're White
Chapter 11 A Tent Revival for Tolerance
Chapter 12 Ten Covenants of Courage
Appendix Selected Speeches

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Excerpts from The Courage To Be Free
by Charlton Heston

On cultural warmongers ...
The message from the cultural warlords is everywhere, delivered with the arrogant swagger of absolute confidence. Summarized, it is this: Heaven help the God-fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle class, Protestant (or even worse evangelical) Christian, the midwestern or southern (or even worse rural) hunter, apparently straight or admitted heterosexual gun-owning (or even worse NRA-card-carrying) average working stiff, or even worse still male working stiff, because not only do you not count, you're a downright obstacle to social progress. Your tax dollars may be just as welcome and green as you hand them over, but your voice deserves no hearing, your opinion is not enlightened, your media access is virtually nil, and frankly mister, you need to wake up, wise up, and learn a little something about your new America. And until you do, why don't you just sit down and shut up!

Too many Americans are doing just that. That's why I'm here with a wake-up call.

On being an American ...
Most rank-and-file Americans I know resent the fact that this war has been foisted upon them. They already go to war for their families every day. 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 - the America where you could pray without feeling naive, love without being kinky, sing without profanity, be white without feeling guilty, own a gun without shame, and raise your hand to say so without apology. They long for leaders who will muster some guts, stand on principle, and lead them to victory in this cultural conflict. They are tired of being under siege for their principles and values that have been declared good, right, and just for more than two centuries.

On elitism ...
In twenty-first century America, however, just by signing on to a point of view or specific social agenda, a person can become part of the preferred class. In other words, by no more than posturing and parroting the party line, a person gains otherwise effortless admittance to the "us" and rejects the "them."

The entrance fee to the elite class is at an historical all-time low, requiring only that a person agree to the general tenets, for example, that white males are disposable, corporate America is inherently evil, southern Christians are somewhat dumb and misguided, guns are dangerously prevalent, and lesbian Islamic rainforest biologists (or name any other interest group you like) have more worthwhile views than other people. By no more than learning the language of political correctness, taught by modern media, you're more enlightened.

On religion ...
Several decades ago, the cultural elitists declared that God was dead in America. Many remember the infamous Time magazine cover that declared His demise. Since then God has recovered, rebounded, and proved His resilience. Despite a cultural spin that sought to reduce religion to backwoods superstition, the majority of people in America still find solace in religious traditions. In order to practice their religion freely, however, many Americans are being forced to wade through a thick muck of egotistical and elitist posturing that I doubt the Almighty is proud to witness.

On tolerance ...
The Bill of Rights, as I and the best of America's constitutional scholars read it, embraces religious opportunity for shakers and glossolalians as well as believers who receive communion at gothic-cathedral altars, as well as Quakers who quiver under the Spirit, as well as those who carry Torah scrolls high on their shoulders, as well as Hispanics who bear the lash of the Penitentes. Religious freedom in America is not reserved territory for Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, or Lutherans. Religious tolerance here must also embrace religious practices which some - perhaps even the majority - find bizarre and perhaps even offensive.

On courage ...
I seek to resurrect your greatness of purpose as a citizen of the greatest nation on earth, to reorient the compass of patriotism and conviction that already dwells in your heart, and to move you to action. I want to challenge you first to examine your own heart for the courage to be free, and then to do what it takes to live out that destiny. If I do my part well, the battle will be engaged by one more voice that refuses to let our most basic freedoms as a people be taken captive - yours.

On cultural war ...
Cultural warfare, while no less a transfer of power from one group to another, is for the most part seemingly painless. There are no tortured screams or bloody wounds, no limb-strewn nightmares to haunt a generation. In fact, cultural warlords seek to keep the battle from becoming bloody. Modern media fills the cultural airwaves with a mist of anesthesia, so that principles and values are slowly desensitized to the coming onslaught. The new culture arrives on the heels of this propaganda. It simply moves in and takes over, like slipping a fine new glove over a numbed hand. The outcome of the war is just as devastating, but without bombs bursting, twisted bodies to bury, or rubble to rebuild. A new class, a different culture, simply takes over.

On class division ...
The U.S. Constitution was handed down to guide us by a bunch of wise, old, dead, white guys who invented our country. Many people flinch when I make that remark in speeches. Why?

The fact is, what I say is true. The framers of the Constitution were white guys, old and undeniably wise, and they sure Lord invented the country. Most of those boy-soldiers who died opposing slavery at Lincoln's invitation in the 1860s were white, too. Why should I be ashamed of them?

Why is "Hispanic pride" or "black pride" a good thing, while "white pride" sounds evil, conjuring images of shaved heads or white hoods?

Why was the Million [black] Man March on Washington in 1995 celebrated as progress, while the Promise Keepers March on Washington in 1997 was greeted with suspicion and ridicule? I'll tell you why: class division.

I've stood against class division before, and I stand against it today.

On cultural collision ...
Let me draw the distinctions in broad strokes. On one side, we have a rural society based on farming, with a belief in independent self-determination, individual initiative, and mutual trust. On the other side stands an urban culture in which the individual is subordinate to the group, where transience and congestion alienate man from the land and from his fellow man, where upheaval and social decay give way to crime and a climate of fear, and where many are satisfied to sacrifice essential liberty for the illusion of safety.

So who started the cultural war, and why? For the answer, meet me at the city limits. In almost every act of cultural war, it's there somewhere: the fight between the city boys and the country boys. Look past the facts and faces of issues under debate, and you'll see one party calmly chewing on a wheat stalk while the other is flip-phoning 911.

On gun rights ...
The Second Amendment is, in order of importance, the first amendment. The Second Amendment is America's first freedom, because it is the one right that protects all the others. Among the freedoms of speech, of the press, of religion, of assembly, of redress of grievances, it is the first among equals. The right to keep and bear arms is the one right that permits "rights" to exist at all.

On Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. ...
I believe that if Dr. King were here, and he witnessed his grandchildren listening to blacks referring to their women as "bitches" and "whores," and black entertainment sold as advocacy of killing cops; if he saw black athletes with green hair shoving referees and black football players thrusting a bump-'n-grind in end zones; if he saw black singers grabbing their groins or black boxers biting off opponents' ears, he would ascend the steps of the Lincoln Memorial a second time, summon together the legions of today's timid black leaders and tight-lipped press members, and he would put a permanent end to it.

I'll be proud to stand alongside any black leader with the courage to take such a stand in his place.

On hunting ...
To this day I remember the first quail I shot with my little 20-gauge shotgun on my very first trip afield with grown men. The bird fell clean from a single shot and the dog went to retrieve it. Dutifully the little retriever brought the bird to heel and placed it in my hand. There was just a tiny fleck of dark red blood on the cock's black and white striped head. Then suddenly the quail shuddered, the wings fluttered weakly, then it was still. At that moment I realized it had died in my hand. Heart pounding, face flushed with excitement, I was also suddenly overwhelmed with sadness at the bird's death.

These are difficult sentiments to balance, even though their coexistence is entirely natural in the outdoors. Even so, as long as we share this planet with other creatures and as long as we take from the earth for our sustenance, balance them we must.

On boyhood ...
When I was a boy growing up in Michigan's wild north woods, autumn was a time of exhilarating unrest. Geese migrated overhead, announcing their passage through the pale blue skies with their strange angst of untamed, migratory music. Those of us bound to the earth below watched them wistfully and wished that we, too, could take wing and see the smoldering crimson blaze of maple leaves from their lofty vantage point.

Our dogs, content to sleep under the porch through the summer months or to tag along lazily as we fished during the long daylight hours of July, sensed that something changed with the first frost. It was as if they picked up on the increasing enthusiasm in the men who gathered around the steps of the local country store to tell tales of bucks and venison.

Of course, there were always young boys squeezed into the tight huddle of adult conversation, squirming our way into the inner circle as best we could. The dogs barked and wagged their tails as each story grew longer, more elaborate, and most likely, less true than the one before it. But that was part of the autumn ritual. A good storyteller knew how to embellish without defrocking the dignity of his words. There is, you know, a big difference between a lie and a properly exaggerated hunting or fishing story. Some may find it hard to distinguish - unless you've stood near steps like those, smelled the tobacco smoke, strained to pull each word into your heart over the snarl of sporadic dogfights in the background, and listened while men breathed life into events long past.

The talk was always of dogs, guns, knives, deer on the run, game on the wing, warm clothes, cold winds, and sheer survival. And the talk formed a bond that linked us together, generation to generation. It's a tradition I know my son will pass along to my grandson. America will be less of a nation, I believe, should we ever let these rites of passage fade away.

On personal courage ...
In this collection of essays, I admit I've been critical of societal bullies, posturing elitists, cultural warlords, and other self-appointed engineers who would remodel the Bill of Rights. They should rightfully be "outted" and revealed for the damage they're doing. But I hope you've noted my admonition that the final solution isn't to accuse and condemn them, hoping they'll become converts while we commiserate and lament for a better world. That's a futile waste, since we have an infinitely more powerful weapon at our disposal.

No, the path to victory in cultural war, as it is in most matters of personal conviction, is to live by example - and live loud. All true teaching, like parenting, is best conveyed not by talking it up, but by living it out.

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