Ned Lamont: Pink Diaper Baby With Silver Spoon In Mouth

MSM reporters repeatedly comment about how the anti-war Ned Lamont, now official Democrat Party candidate for U.S. Senator from Connecticut, is paradoxically a wealthy businessman.

If these MSM reporters had any research skills, they would report both his financial and ideological inheritance.

Ned Lamont’s grandfather (see "Whoops" at end of post), Corliss Lamont, was a brilliant, very wealthy by inheritance, communist fellow-traveler through the ‘30’s and ‘40’s and ‘50’s, who continued in such anti-U.S. foreign policy crusades on to his death in 1995, having opposed the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

In 1934, Corliss Lamont identified himself to former communist Max Eastman as a “Truth Communist,” saying he – according to Eastman – “did not accept the policy of political lying to the masses practiced by the official communist parties under Stalin.” However, 1n 1938, Eastman wrote to Lamont that,

[Y]ou continued to run with the Stalinist chiefs. You never exposed their political lies, or said publicly what you said to me in private. For a very long time you played friends with both Lie Communists and Truth communists, and gave your money with one hand to the Stalinists and with the other to independent revolutionary papers…Anybody who plays both sides in quiet times will be found in a crisis on the side of power….

In 1952, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Myth of Soviet Aggression”:

The fact is, of course, that both the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations, in order to push their enormous armaments programs through Congress and to justify the continuation of the cold war, have felt compelled to resort to the device of keeping the American people in a state of alarm over some alleged menace of Soviet or Communist origin.

In 1961, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Crime Against Cuba”:

[T]]he abortive 1961 invasion at the Bay of Pigs was worse than that. It was an outright crime against the Cuban people; and it was also a crime against the American people, against the United Nations and against world peace.

In 1975, Corliss Lamont wrote in “The Meaning of Vietnam and Cambodia”:

We have rejected and still reject, the attempts of President Ford, Secretary of State Kissinger and the U.S. Establishment in general to sweep under the rug the cruel, immoral and unconstitutional war of aggression waged, directly or indirectly, by the United States for thirteen years, 1962-1975, in Southeast Asia.

Corliss Lamont’s “civil libertarian” agenda as a director of the ACLU from 1932 to 1954 was made clearer as first Vice Chairman of the communist allied National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, founded in 1951, which did not exclude communists from membership and whose mission was to defend war resisters and accused communist spies. Its primary legal counsel was the firm of secret members of the CPUSA Victor Rabinowitz and Leonard Boudin.

The sins of the fathers (and grandfathers) may not be visited upon the sons, but the philosophy of this father appears to have been well transplanted. By no means am I calling Ned Lamont a communist, if any still exist. It’s obvious, however, that Ned Lamont has a similar taste for causes, and for radical associates from the Netroots Left to Al Sharpton. (A;lso, see here.)

WHOOPS: Ned is the grandson of Corliss, according to Wikipedia. I'd dropped the "grand..." when typing and carried the error through. The ideological inheritance is still there.

UPDATE: An article in Slate says that Corliss Lamont is the great-uncle of Ned Lamont. Some question whether a great-uncle would have less influence on the thinking of Ned Lamont than a grandfather. Depending on the particular family circumstances, either more or less influence may occur. We don't know. Regardless, the 60-year high prominence of Corliss Lamont and his high energy of persistence in his views cannot have failed to be notable within his family. This post raised the interesting continuities of opposition to U.S. foreign policy.

I, myself, come from anti-totalitarian Socialist grandparents and a quite liberal family. Many have noted the influence of this upbringing in some of my expressed views at this blog and elsewhere. It's true. I've examined them over the years, and they continue. No one can measure, including oneself, the scientific degree of family influence in anyone, but continuities are properly notable.

HISTORICAL NOTE: I just heard from a personal correspondent who knows Ned Lamont, and likes him and his family, that Corliss Lamont is Ned's grandfather. -- Regardless, Ned is solely responsible, as an adult, for his views, statements and behaviors, and I believe that Corliss Lamont would be proud to see how Ned Lamont is performing.