(Updated)Have You No Decency, Mr. Kesler Sir?
(Posted by Mona)
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Bruce Kesler has denominated Ned Lamont as a pink diaper baby, because Ned’s grandfather, Corliss Lamont, was a member of the Communist Party USA. Kesler coyly states he is not, oh not at all, claiming Ned is a communist. But:
The ideological inheritance is still there.
And was it not just yesterday that Lanny Davis had told us the new McCarthyism is on the left? Well, the old one is apparently so alive and well, that people can be tarred with the ideological sins of their grandparents.
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That would be bad enough, but Kesler’s smarmy smear is not even true. First Kesler had Corliss down as Ned’s father, then, relying on wiki, he “corrected” himself and now claims Corliss was Ned’s grandfather. In point of fact, Corliss Lamont was Ned’s great-uncle, as reported in both the The Weekly Standard and The Nation.
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Kesler’s stunt is simply deplorable, and would be, even if Corliss Lamont had sired Ned.
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(None of which is to say anything nice about Corliss. Indeed, I am appalled that the Columbia Law School maintains the “Corliss Lamont Chair of Civil Liberties,” given that Corliss was a Stalinist.)
[Edited to correct misspelling of Kesler's name.]
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Update:
In comments Mr. Adams objects that Corliss Lamont was merely a fellow-traveling Stalinist, not a CPUSA member. It is my considered view that Corliss was a CPUSA member, because Louis Budenz identified him as such. Moscow ordered that some American Communists keep their membership secret, and the CPUSA slavishly obeyed all such directives.*
Budenz and other defecting Communists have been vindicated regarding those they named as Communists, by archival evidence in the former Soviet Union that was briefly opened up to American historians in the early 90s, as well as by the Venona decrypts that the NSA declassified a decade ago. While I am aware of no evidence specifically buttressing Budenz’s identification of Corliss Lamont as a CPUSA member, the Moscow archives — that are now closed to historians — have barely been plumbed.(Thank you KipW in comments.) Budenz, however, has been shown to be truthful about many other Communists he named.
In comments Mr. Adams objects that Corliss Lamont was merely a fellow-traveling Stalinist, not a CPUSA member. It is my considered view that Corliss was a CPUSA member, because Louis Budenz identified him as such. Moscow ordered that some American Communists keep their membership secret, and the CPUSA slavishly obeyed all such directives.*
Budenz and other defecting Communists have been vindicated regarding those they named as Communists, by archival evidence in the former Soviet Union that was briefly opened up to American historians in the early 90s, as well as by the Venona decrypts that the NSA declassified a decade ago. While I am aware of no evidence specifically buttressing Budenz’s identification of Corliss Lamont as a CPUSA member, the Moscow archives — that are now closed to historians — have barely been plumbed.(Thank you KipW in comments.) Budenz, however, has been shown to be truthful about many other Communists he named.
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But again, none of this has the remotest relevance to Corliss’s great-nephew, Ned. My paternal grandfather was an anti-Semitic follower of Fr. Charles Coughlin, and I’m, well, not. And by the way, tho I link to wiki, unlike Mr. Kesler I tend to rely on it only when I independently know that it is essentially accurate, as I do in this case.
Comment by Jon H —
August 9, 2006 @ 10:34 pm
According to Slate Corliss was Ned’s great UNCLE.
Which is a different thing than a grandfather, and probably not a relation that tends to be very close when the age difference is as large as it is in this case. Corliss was born in 1902, so was in his 50s when Ned was born.
Comment by Hesiod —
August 9, 2006 @ 10:40 pm
Well…Bush’s grandfather was cited by the feds under the “trading with the enemy act” for laundering Nazi party money through his bank.
This was DURING WWII.
So…Kessler doesn’t want to GO there.
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Comment by Jon H —
August 9, 2006 @ 10:48 pm
It’s worse. It seems Kessler is basing his claim on Wikipedia. Wikipedia until TODAY said that Corliss was Ned’s great-uncle. The history of the Ned Lamont page shows that this was changed, and the change was cited to a SINGLE right-wing opinion column on a right-wing website. That column doesn’t offer any evidence for the claim.
So, basically, the Wikipedia article was edited to create a slur, and Kessler publicized it. Did Kessler edit the Wikipedia article?
Comment by Mona —
August 9, 2006 @ 11:20 pm
The truly amusing thing about Kessler’s revolting smear, is that he starts out shrieking that the MSM doesn’t conduct enough good research, or it would have alerted us to the fact that Corliss was Ned’s
father, grandfather. (My link to The Nation didn’t take, sorry.)Comment by Tano —
August 10, 2006 @ 12:27 am
What is their point anyway? Being descended from Trotskyites would put him in the same category as most of the neoconservatives!
Comment by Clyde Adams III —
August 10, 2006 @ 5:02 am
“Corliss Lamont, was a member of the Communist Party USA.” As far as I can tell, you, Jim Henley, are the only one claiming this. Kesler calls him a “communist fellow-traveler”, which implies he was NOT a Party member.
Corliss Lamont was an apologist for Stalin, which is outrageous. At the same time, his civil liberties record seems most impressive, so I can’t feel too appalled by the Columbia chair.
From Wikipedia:
Comment by Mona —
August 10, 2006 @ 7:45 am
Mr. Adams – I wrote that post, as Jim’s guest blogger.
Louis Budenz, a high-ranking member of the CPUSA who defected and turned anti-Communist informer and crusader, cited Corliss Lamont as one of the hundreds of CPUSA members who kept their membership secret. Budenz, like other defectors such as Whittaker Chambers or Elizabeth Bentley, have been overwhelmingly vindicated regarding the truthfulness of those whom they alleged to be CPUSA members. Archives of the former Soviet Union and of the NSA’s Venona decryptions, have shown that these defecting Communinists were naming names of actual Party members.
While I am aware of no archival evidence that specifically reveals Corliss Lamont as a CPUSA member, those archives have been only initially investigated. So far, however, men like Budenz are shown to be accurate; given Corliss’s repulsive career apologizing for every monstrous Communist tyranny that unfolded, it is not a stretch to believe he was a CPUSA member.
Naming a “civil liberties” chair after a man who justified, minimized and denied the crimes of Jospeh Stalin, is grotesque. Whether he was a CPUSA member or not — but the weight of evidence is that he was.
But that has nothing to do with his great-nephew, Ned.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 10, 2006 @ 7:54 am
From what I know of the 1930’s, I suspect that we could find quite a few people with grandparents, great uncles, great aunts, etc. who were in the Communist Party.
Comment by Uncle Kvetch —
August 10, 2006 @ 8:41 am
people can be tarred with the ideological sins of their grandparents
GWB’s grandfather served as the treasurer of the first national capital campaign of Planned Parenthood. I’m sure that once this fact is widely known, the bobbleheads of cable news simply won’t be able to stop talking about What This Means.
Or not.
Comment by Kip W —
August 10, 2006 @ 10:03 am
Captain Nitpick here, with a small and totally irrelevant correction: “the Moscow archives — that are now closed to historians — have barely been plummeted.” The last word should probably be “plumbed.”
Other than that, I got nothin’. Captain Nitpick’s job here is done!
Comment by Nell —
August 10, 2006 @ 5:14 pm
the Moscow archives — that are now closed to historians — have barely been plumbed.
Can anyone point me to more information on this? I remember several interesting articles based on documents opened up then, but I missed hearing that they’re now closed. When/how/why did that happen?
Comment by Mona —
August 10, 2006 @ 5:34 pm
Nell, if you follow my link at the words “American historians,” that will take you to the web page of John Earl Haynes. If you peruse the articles that he makes available there, they discuss his use of the materials in the Soviet archives, and how the Russian govt decided it had second thoughts about letting all this info be perused — cold hard cash had briefly loosened them up.
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After Haynes and several others wrote fascinating books reproducing and examining the materials they did study, intelligence people in Moscow decided that was enough.
Comment by Clyde Adams III —
August 10, 2006 @ 6:37 pm
Mona,
I’m sorry for clumsily confusing you with Jim.
I agree with the main point, that Corliss Lamont’s sins have nothing to do with Ned, and Kesler is despicable to suggest otherwise.
Your update says “Mr. Adams objects that Corliss Lamont was merely a fellow-traveling Stalinist, not a CPUSA member.” This is a distortion of my comment. I have no opinion about whether Corliss was a CPUSA member, and I expressed none. My comment was about what people *claimed*. The first sentence of your post falsely implies that Kesler claimed Corliss was a CPUSA member. Kesler did *not* claim this; in fact by using the “fellow traveler” term he implied the opposite.
As for the civil liberties chair, there’s little more to say. I respect your opinion, but I don’t share it. In my view, Corliss’ sins were unforgivable, but they still don’t wipe out his substantial contributions, which were specifically in the area of domestic civil liberties.
Clyde
Comment by Mona —
August 10, 2006 @ 7:09 pm
Mr. Adams: I do apologize if I misread your statement, and I did not intend to distort your words. It is true that Kesler does not claim Corliss was a CPUSA member, but he has only the most superficial familiarity with issues regarding domestic Communists; Corliss behaved the way he did almost certainly because he was a secret member of the CPUSA, not a mere fellow-traveler. But the difference there was often merely cosmetic anyway. Harry Dexter White never joined the CPUSA — Party discipline was not attractive to him — but he was a reliable espionage agent in FDR’s Treasury Dept. who passed govt secrets to his Soviet handlers.
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But I should have been more clear that I was drawing on my own knowledge rather than what Kesler wrote.
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Speaking of Kesler, by email he has repeatedly advised me that he’s tired of this whole subject, and has an anonymous source that backs up his original claim, no matter what everyone else — from Slate, to The Weekly Standard, to The Nation — says. He is not inclined to ask the anonymous source to come forward, and doesn’t care to discuss the matter further.
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