Corliss Lamont: Renegade Patriot [ASF]

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Transcription of Dialogue

OPENING REMARKS.
BOUDIN: And I don't think Corliss ever expressed, to me or to anybody else, any concern for the consequences of litigation. And then again, I think he was moved, to a large extent, by the feeling that he was doing something worthwhile, not only for himself, but for other people.
LAMONT: Because the Fifth Amendment would have been a total out for me, and I didn't want an out. I wanted to get in there and fight McCarthy, so that's why I took the First Amendment, because that forced him to take measures against me and get me indicted by Congress. And then we went to the courts, and I won!
THE BATTLE WITH SENATOR JOSEPH R. MCCARTHY.
HEAP: So this is where McCarthy questioned you?
LAMONT: Yes, he sat up there on the Bench, and threw questions at me, which I didn't answer. I regard all your questions as unconstitutional because they violate the civil liberties of a scholar and an author, but in addition, I say that I have no need to answer your questions because your committee, itself, was never properly constituted in a legal and constitutional way by your superior committee in the U.S. Senate.
HEAP: It was hard for me to really become sort of interested and involved and I wonder how the ordinary person, who doesn't run into a First Amendment situation every day, can really concern themselves with these things.
LAMONT: Well, I'm afraid you're right that the average American citizen is not daily concerned with civil liberties in this country. But if some action, as you suggest, immediately affects them like the boycott of a film or the censorship of a book, well then, he will come forth and do his duty as a citizen in upholding the Bill of Rights.
HEAP: So you think people should speak out even at risk of perhaps being looked down upon by friends and relatives, that sort of thing?
LAMONT: They certainly should speak out, and win over their friends and relatives to a principled position in defense of the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. After all, if you are an American citizen, then it is your duty to inform yourself about the violation of these democratic procedures when freedom of speech is violated or freedom of the film or any other freedom of that kind.
COMMENTS ON HUMANISM.
LAMONT: Humanism rejects all belief in the supernatural, and relies to the solution of human problems on scientific method, reason, and democratic procedures. Humanism's insistence on this life is all leaves men and women to concentrate on great this earthly causes such as international peace, the reduction of nuclear weapons and, a favorite of mine, civil liberties.
SUIT AGAINST THE U.S. POSTMASTER GENERAL.
LAMONT: I didn't receive the mail. I received a postcard from the U.S. Post Office in San Francisco saying --
Dear Mr. Lamont, Arrived for you here, apparently a magazine from Communist China and we want to know whether you want to receive it, and if you do, just write back. If you don't write back, then we'll throw it away.
Well, I did neither. I immediately started a suit against the Postmaster General for delaying and interfering with my legitimate mail. I had not ordered this magazine. I was not a subscriber, but somebody in China had sent it to me, thinking that I might be interested, and that case I lost in the lower courts. Usually, we civil libertarians lose the cases in the lower courts, but then, when this got to the Supreme Court, I had a different court ruling, and I remember going down to Washington, D.C., to hear the argument on my case in the Supreme Court building itself. And, of course, that was extremely interesting, and my lawyer was there to fight the case, and in this case it was Leonard Boudin who carried on the argument, and I didn't really expect to win in the Supreme Court but, gee whiz, only a few months later they handed down a unanimous decision saying that this was an unconstitutional law and that it violated the First Amendment.
And it was the first decision in the U.S. Supreme Court that declared a statute unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the First Amendment, so that I was rather pleased at that!
CLOSING REMARKS.
BOUDIN: Well it may be that he is inherently, although mild in appearance, a pugnacious man, and he does like a fight, and he does feel physically well when he's in a controversy.
LAMONT: Yes, I think, I guess, I've been a whistle blower all my life. Certainly, I've been blowing the whistle at the United States Government!

Corliss Lamont: Renegade Patriot
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Corliss Lamont: Renegade Patriot
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