Charlton Heston

So the papers today said Charlton Heston died last night at home at the age of 84. Liberals around the country, I’m sure, are breathing a sigh of relief. Many radicals are probably doing the same, even Chumbawumba once wrote a song mocking Heston, derisively titled ‘Moses with a Gun’. All in all I can’t help thinking it’s a bit unfair.

I mean, sure, dude was a conservative and the NRA which he headed did a lot to help mobilize gun owners and supporters of the constitutional right to bear arms to support republican candidates over the years. But to me me at least, the fault there lies with the democrats who decided that instead of dealing with any of the real causes behind crime and violence they were going to attempt to stop violent crime by attacking people’s constitutional rights to keep and bear arms for personal defense and as a check against the rise of government tyranny.

Heston, like millions of other americans, supported the republican party because the republican party supported them on the issues they cared most about – god, guns, and butter. He certainly didn’t become one of the most famous champions of american conservatism because of any opposition to civil rights or social equality – the things that should have been the core of the democrat’s platform. After all, Heston was an outspoken supporter of the Civil Rights movement from early on, well before it was popular or acceptable for a white guy like him to speak up in defense of the rights of people of color.

To me, the legacy of a man like Heston, and the millions of working class white people who abandoned liberalism in favor of conservatism around hte same time (the so-called “Regan Democrats”) is that leftist parties (and I’m using the term *very* loosely here since it’s only by a truly extreme stretch that the Democrats can be considered at all “leftist”) and movements can only be successful if they do more then just pay lip service to the rights of working-class people and labor unions. They have to identify the principles that they stand for and then STAND for them. Everyone knows what the Republican party’s core issues are – low taxes, the right to bear arms, anti-abortion, pro free-trade, pro-business, anti-union, pro-military, anti-social programs. There’s a lot to disagree with there, obviously, but at least it’s clear what they believe in and what their agenda is going to be once in office. The democrats have no such clear program, the best they can offer is that they’re not republicans. Which may well be a good starting place for a minority opposition party, but is just plain not a functional platform for a political party that hopes to keep power for any period of time. Not that I particularly *want* the Dem’s to gain and keep power, but still….

This isn’t just an American phenomenon, of course. New Labour in England has the same problem – if it wasn’t for overwhelming and habitual support from people in the Celtic countries, Gordon and Tony’s “centrist” (read: spineless) Labour party would have been turned out of office a long time ago. Once Scotland, Wales, and North Ireland get their independence (and they will!) Labour’s reign will be at an end. And once the Tories figure that out and throw their support behind the independence movements (in a move reminiscent of the USSR’s Velvet Divorce when Russian Nationalists supported the aspirations of Ukrainian, Polish, and other minority Nationalists in order to break up the USSR) the momentum of Plaid and the SNP will be unstoppable and the English Labour party – left to stand on its own – will collapse, leaving the Torry’s firmly in charge of Jolly old England. Which is going to suck for the English since the Torries are evil bastards, but then New Labor has been pretty nasty too so maybe it all evens out.

The point is this: Heston was a man who lived according to his principles. I can respect and admire that, even if those principles didn’t always take him to places I can agree with or support. Democrats would do well to remember that, and take some notes since Principles are one thing they’ve been sorely lacking in for a very long time.

Posted: April 6th, 2008 under politrix.
Comments: 1

Comments