Max More wrote:
>
> Although I have one or two minor reservations, for a public speech this is
> damned fine. Practically John Galt-like.
>
> Mr. Heston, you ARE the Omega Man!
> >
> > Winning the Cultural War' Charlton Heston's Speech to the Harvard Law
> >School Forum February 16, 1999
snip..
> > 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.
snip
> > 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 D.C., 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.
Does this sound like someone who believes in sitting on the fence? In
being 'open minded' about liberty? This is why I have been getting ever
more adamant about not treating kindly with the leaders of the luddite
groups that oppose an extropic future. The development of our culture
now and in the future is in a state of constant flux, and luddites are
treating it as a war, and they treat us as the enemy. Refusing to
acknowledge this and accept the state of conflict is, in fact, denial
born of fear, or cowardice, or just plain laziness or a concern for
other priorities.
I accept that ExI, as the type of non-profit that it is, shouldn't be
active in political activities, but, dammit, that doesn't mean we
shouldn't have some sort of political action group organized to oppose
the forces of luddism. I challenge the members to enlist in the struggle
that has already begun.
Mike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:46 MDT