DON BELL REPORTS

A WEEKLY COMMENTARY

Year Twenty-Nine ... Number Thirteen ... April 2, 1982

Table of Contents

HUMANISM ON THE OFFENSIVE, OR JUST OFFENSIVE?

A half-page advertisement in The New York Times Book Review announces that "Corliss Lamont at Eighty celebrates a distinguished life with the publication of The Philosophy of Humanism." This is the sixth edition, is revised and enlarged and features an introduction "exposing the Moral Majority." The blurb openly confirm that "The Moral Majority has particularly targeted Humanism, claiming 'most of the evils in the world today can be traced to Humanism ... It is destroying our cultures, families, country and .. the entire world'."

The claim can be considered accurate, accurate enough that we felt someone ought to just as accurately expose Corliss Lamont, who is much more than the author of books about Humanism, or honorary chairman of The American Humanist Association, or 'chairperson' of the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, or a multimillionaire whose daddy left him an inheritance gained by the financial manipulations of an International Banker who took charge when the late J.P. Morgan went to his ultimate reward.

Putting our attitude into action, we started digging into some of our old files and books to refresh our memory. One of the first things we came upon was a Report on Communist Activities in the United States which was issued April 1, 1935 by the Intelligence Bureau of the United States Navy. This kind of documentation can be suppressed, but it can't be disproved. And the Naval Intelligence Report contained this statement:

"Therefore the Robert Morss Lovetts, Roger Baldwins, Clarence Darrows, Arthur Fishers and a long string of Communist-minded intellectuals (Harry F. Wards, Jane Addamses, Frederick J. Libbys, Dorothy Detzers, Kirby Pages, Corliss Lamonts, George S. Countses, Sherwood Eddys and William Kilpatricks) that are busily engaged in spreading the philosophy of discontent destructively, not constructively, are the primary factors in the situation which loyal Americans must contend for the preservation of American ideals, traditions, institutions and government. These are the 'fringe revolutionists' too lacking in intestinal fortitude to go all the way with Communism, but who stand by and urge the Communist to do his worst, and provide him with protection, sympathy and defense, while he commits the overt act they have not the courage to commit themselves." [Underlining to Corliss Lamont's name added].

Almost all of these aiders and abettors of Communism named by the Naval Inteligence Bureau have, with the passage of time, been whitewashed and made image-pure in the eyes of the public. They have been exalted to Humanismic sainthood by the mind-benders and people-shapers, by the controlled communications media, the institutionalized church and the state school. Since birds of a feather do flock together -- especially ducks, as our late friend Senator Joe McCarthy used to tell us -- it seems appropriate that we of the Lamont opposition cite some of the past Un-American accomplishments of these birds who were identified with Comrade Lamont. So, briefly, some cases and characters:

ROBERT MORSS LOVETT. A peripatetic professor who was president of the League for Industrial Democracy, the U.S. counterpart of the British Fabian Society, Lovett also served as director of the American Civil Liberties Union, as a trustee of the communistic Federated Press, and a trustee of the Communist-aiding Garland Fund. While teaching at the Rockefeller-supported Chicago University, he was investigated in 1935 by the Illinois Senatorial Investigating Committee which charged: "Professor Lovett's activities in communistic or unpatriotic organizations and associations with communist speakers prove that Professor Lovett cannot be an asset to any forward-looking American institution." So he 'retired' and was appointed governor of the Virgin Islands by President Roosevelt, but was promptly removed by an Act of Congress and his pay withheld. Whereupon he is said to have said in anger, "I hate the United States! I would be willing to see the whole world blow up, if it would destroy the United States!" An equally subversive friend of his, Milton Mayer, wrote of Lovett: "The associate of so many Communists, the defender of so many more, and the tool of all of them has never been a Communist. Yet, of the four hundred organizations which the FBI connected him with, it is safe ... to name three that were not at any time and in any degree infested by Commies."

ROGER BALDWIN. When organizing the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Baldwin wrote to his associates: "Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise. We want to look patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about the Constitution, what our forefathers wanted to make of the country, and to show that we are really the folks that really stand for the spirit of our institutions." But his deceptiveness was shown when he wrote in a Socialist symposium published by the radical Vanguard press in 1929: "I believe in revolution -- not necessarily in the forcible seizure of power in armed conflict, but in the process of growth of class movements determined to expropriate the capitalist class and to take control of all social property. Being a pacifist ... I am opposed to revolutionary violence ... But I would rather see violent revolution than none at all ..."

CLARENCE DARROW: This agnostic lawyer was a charter member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, later named the League for Industrial Democracy. He became internationally known for his defense in the Leoeb-Leopold trial. A year later he unsuccessfully defended against William Jennings Bryan in the Scopes evolution trial. However, his attacks on Bryan and Bible truths opened the way for the teaching of the theory of evolution in state schools, which was an essential tenet of the religion of Secular Humanism.

HARRY F. WARD. Author of the Methodist Social Creed of 1908, Ward was an active member of the Communist Party while also serving as associate secretary of the Federal Council of Churches, now named the National Council. The House Un-American Activities Committee Report (1953) states that Ward "had for many years been the chief architect of communist infiltration into and subversion of the field of religion, and that he had used his role as professor of social ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York for this purpose."

JANES ADDAMS. A Fabian Socialist and member of the national committee of the ACLU, this forerunner of the Women Libbers organized Hull House in Chicago, was a great friend of Eleanor Roosevelt.

KIRBY PAGE. Posing as a Socialist Gospel Christian, Page was successful in spreading propaganda in favor of Communist Russia throughout the church organizations affiliated with the Federal and National Councils of Churches.

SHERWOOD EDDY. Another religious leader who used his ministry to promote Communism.

DOROTHY DETZER. She became executive of the HUAC-cited Women's League for Peace and Freedom. Another favorite of Eleanor Roosevelt.

GEORGE S. COUNTS. A disciple of John Dewey of progressive education fame, Counts "went beyond Dewey" in his promotion of a New World Order which was to be achieved through the state schools. Like Dewey, he went to Soviet Russia as American Adviser to the Communist State Summer University in Moscow and translated a Communist "New Russia Primer" for use in American schools. Perhaps best known in educationaist circles for his revolutionary book, "Dare the Schools Build a New Social Order?"

WILLIAM KILPATRICK. A follower of Dewey, Kilpatrick was vice president of the League for Industrial Democracy, also visited Communist Russia where he was warmly welcomed. He was taught, accepted and upon his return to the United States promoted "the Soviet ideal of a supranational government to be achieved by the employment of the national state in a revolutionary program." (Quoted from "The Messianic Character of American Education," by Rousas Rushdoony). A fixture at Columbia Teachers College, he has been called "the symbol of radicalism in education" and credited with "having influenced more teachers and children than any other person in this generation, according to many educators" (from "Bending the Twig," by Augustin A. Rudd).

These were a few of the Communists, Fabian Socialists, radicals, social gospellers and educationalists mentioned by the U.S. Naval Intelligence Bureau in connection with Corliss Lamont, who is the principal subject of this report because he has made a direct attack on Christian American activity, in behalf of what has now become a state religion: Secular Humanism. Having noted briefly a few of his associates, let us now regard this honorary president of the American Humanist Association.

CORLISS LAMONT. The story really begins with the parents of our subject. Thomas W. Lamont was a Harvard graduate who was working as a financial reporter on a New Jersey newspaper. According to Rose L. Martin in her "The Selling of America," Lamont "displayed a rare gift for ingratiating himself with the most imposing figures of Wall Street." And the most imposing figure of the time was J.P. Morgan, who spotted Lamont and gave him a position in his firm. Soon Lamont was a junior partner in the company. Then came a brief hiatus in his climb to money and power. Colonel House was organizing his "The Inquiry", a team of young intellectuals who were to accompany him to Paris and the Peace Conference that was to end the war and set up the League of Nations. And Lamont was selected as one of the group. Here was born what came to be called The Council on Foreign Relations, Lamont being a charter member. Also, he had connections with the super-secret Pilgrim Society USA. He and his wife became officers in the Foreign Policy Association. Mrs. Lamont was a trustee of the pro-communist New School for Social Research (Eleanor Roosevelt was a member of the board). Meanwhile, back on Wall Street, Thomas had become a senior partner with J.P. Morgan, had become sufficiently imnportant that it was he who signed the so-called "Bankers' Report" advocating diplomatic relations with Soviet Russia. President Roosevelt duly followed suit and in 1933 established full diplomatic relations with the Bolshevik regime.

Meanwhile, young Corliss had grown up, graduated from Harvard, which school had received a two million donation from Lamont Senior. Corliss, while a student had become active in the League for Industrial Democracy, began his career of writing and teaching to promote Communist causes. His first important public notice came about as a result of his relationship with the Carnegie foundations. In his well documented book "Prejudice and the Press," Frank Hughes wrote: "The Carnegie Endowment's 1946 Yearbook, reported that the Carnegie Endowment had distributeed to its 'international mind alcoves' in high schools and universities copies of 'The People of the Soviet Union,' by Corliss Lamont. Lamont was a lecturer in the Jefferson School of Social Science, the Commuinst Party school in New York City, and has been affiliated with a host of Communist Front organizations." The HUAC and other Congressional investigating committees have listed Corliss Lamont as having been a member of 56 Communist and/or Communist Front organizations. A brief but accurate account of the pro-Communist activities of the Lamont family can be found in an unexpected place, in the pages of the book "Tragedy and Hope," which is subtitled "A History of the World in Our Time," by the late Carroll Quigley. Beginning on page 945 of this book we read:

Permit us to hypothesize. Corliss Lamont the multimillionaire was a dedicated if not a card-carrying Communist. He had devoted his life to the proselytization of his Godless religion. He was doing this as a writer of books, as a lecturer to students, and as a financier of the Communist Party and its scores of Fronts. But he was exposed, publicly charged and condemned at a time when the preaching of outright Communism was on the wane. The time of the McCarrans and the McCarthys had come, and even a few serious attempts were being made to drive the Red Tares out of the gardens of administration and academy. Lamont sensed that the preaching of Communism was no longer sufficiently productive if preached in the name of Communism. So, Lamont and his ilk sought a new approach, a different name, another way to delude and deceive, and win people away from Christian tradition and Bible-centered law and morality. And this was found in the very philosophy that was preached by Satan in the Garden of Eden: the philosophy of humanism, belief in the unrestricted ability of man. The belief that man is able to save himself, to guide his own evolution and that of society; to control himself, his world, and all things else. Of course, if man can control and re-order all things, then man will have recreated the world and made it into a paradise, a kingdom of gods. And this, whether you call it Communism, Socialism, Fabianism, Fascism or Democracy is the dream of Secular Humanism. And where Communism can fail, people will still fall for that satanic lie when called by the name of Humanism. But -- Glory to God -- its two strongest institutions, the state and the state school, are in rapid decay, and Christian reconstruction may become the wave of the future. Again, God willing and at least a remnant be found worthy.

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