The photo with George Allen referenced in Wikipedia (Lowell - 4/6/2008 9:25:58 AM)
In real life, Heston campaigned for Democrats Adlai Stevenson and John F. Kennedy, supported civil rights "long before Hollywood found it fashionable," and opposed the Vietnam War. Believe it or not, the future NRA president even supported President Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968. In later life, Heston turned much more conservative politically. From Wikipedia:
By the 1980s, Heston opposed affirmative action, supported gun rights and changed his political affiliation from Democratic to Republican...He campaigned for Republicans and Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush.[...]
n 1996, Heston attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations. There he posed for a group photo with former White Citizens Council organizer and founder of the Council of Conservative Citizens, Gordon Lee Baum, and former Republican Senator George Allen (VA), which was published in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer. [12]
Heston was the President and spokesman of the NRA from 1998 until his resignation in 2003. At the 2000 NRA convention, he raised a hand-made Brooks flintlock rifle over his head and declared that presidential candidate Al Gore would take away his Second Amendment rights "from my cold, dead hands." In announcing his resignation in 2003, he again raised a rifle over his head, repeating the five famous words of his 2000 speech[citation needed]. He was an honorary life member
There was also the (in)famous interview with Michael Moore in Bowling for Columbine.
Charlton Heston lived a complex life, in other words, hard to summarize in an easy soundbite. In many ways, his political evolution paralleled that of the country as a whole. Personally, I will best remember Charlton Heston as Moses in The Ten Commandments and as the lead characters in thrillers like Omega Man and Planet of the Apes. But I will also remember him bizarrely denying global warming. A complex man leading a complex life. May he rest in peace.
Perhaps he recognized the basic injustices of his time and never really grew from that. Civil Rights was a no brainer during the 1960s and perhaps gun-control was almost non-existent at that time, making a gun control law well within reason?
Vietnam was a pointless war that was getting tens of thousands of soldiers killed; and leaving Vietnam was not going to cause a regional crisis that would greatly affect world economies, like leaving Iraq may cause.
The issue with Iraq is about getting out responsibly and realizing that Bush's mistake at getting us into Iraq will have serious consequences for years to come, with oil prices, and terrorism.
Leaving Vietnam left a region in chaos, yet natural resources weren't as much of an issue, and global terrorism was not an issue. Cambodian slaughters, and Vietnamese massacres of Hmong and others in Laos followed, but did that affect America's economy?
So, maybe Heston could deal with the more basic nuances of key issues during his day, which had much more to do with social justice, than the nuances of today, which have to deal with global repercussions.
In the Obit out-pouring of Charlton Heston many of his long time friends described him as a courageous liberal .... but since he championed gun ownership as any Libertarian would .... he was label a conservative wacko.
It occurs to me that my favorite Senator Jim Webb may actually have a politic closer to Charlton Heston than anyone here at RK might want to admit.
By the way of the photo .... did not Senator Webb originally endorse Mr. Macca?
Life is complex ... ain't it?
Heston had some positions that I didn't agree with. I think that we need to keep the legal framework allowing affirmative action because we have no idea what future form of institutionalized racism our society may have to deal with 100 years from now. I do not want to see it banned - just ceased to be implemented as the need gradually fades. But someone can disagree with me about affirmative action and that doesn't mean that they are racist.
As for the global warming issue, yeah I disagree with him about that as well. But global warming is an issue which didn't even exist in the civil rights era. What would Martin Luther King or Bobby Kennedy have had to say about it? We have no idea. I'd like to think they'd have agreed with me but it's a scientific matter that is completely divorced from the political issues that defined left wing politics in the 1960's. There is no real contradiction between identifying with the civil rights movement that created modern liberal culture versus denial of global warming.
Heston was an elderly man already suffering from Alzheimers when the evidence proving man-made global climate change became an avalanche. Surely it is unreasonable for us to expect him to have been 100% up to date on the matter. I certainly forgive him for not agreeing with us about the issue.
Charlton Heston was a good guy all around. I'm sorry to hear that he's gone.
