The fight for the Bill of Rights lives on.

NED LAMONT'S DRAMATIC entry into the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut saw renewed interest in the life and works of his great uncle, Corliss Lamont. The website of the older Lamont--Columbia University philosophy professor, former president emeritus of the American Humanist Association, longtime trustee of the American Civil Liberties Union, and 1977 Humanist of the Year--saw a spike in traffic no doubt comprised of enterprising journalists, campaign strategists, and, one hopes, a few friends, old and new. As his widow I can tell you that Corliss himself would be chuckling in his customary way if he knew about Google, Wikipedia, and the method by which he had achieved such "immortality."

Were Corliss alive today he would also sympathize with the dilemma that courageous patriots face as they are goaded, scoffed at, and denigrated as un-American in the current surge of McCarthy-like orthodoxy. He would slowly shake his head in dismay and remind us that he'd "been there, done that." He'd express further disbelief that despite all the collective efforts to protect our rights, particularly the right to free speech as contained in Article 1 of the Bill of Rights, we are no more secure to champion, publicize, and enumerate those precious rights than we were in his day.

How is it that opposing a war on ethical grounds and out of respect for human rights standards could be considered un-American? How is it that objecting to the present administration's worldview and foreign policies can be deemed un-American? How can it be that ethical respect for myriad views and support of international norms translates into aiding and abetting the enemy du jour, and is, hence, un-American?

Publicly or even privately expressing an opinion, writing a dissenting point of view, or taking an independent position are all time-honored traditions guaranteed by our Bill of Rights. It is almost as though the general public has little or no knowledge of its own precious heritage.

Corliss liked to share a vignette from 1918, when dissenters against World War I were suspected of subversive activities, and in which a socialist stood on a Bronx street corner and read from the Declaration of Independence. When he came to the part that said, "Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it," a policeman arrested him. "But, why?" he protested, "these are not my words; these are the words of Thomas Jefferson!" "Where's that guy?" demanded the officer. "We'll get him too!"

In 1952 when Corliss Lamont was running as the American Labor Party candidate for the U.S. Senate in New York, he was repeatedly denied the use of previously planned public and private meeting spaces. After being closed out of a scheduled meeting in Kingston, New York, he proceeded to read the Bill of Rights to a small gathering under the light of a street lamp, reminding them that "freedom of speech" and "the right of the people to peaceably assemble" are rights for which every U.S. citizen should be willing to give his or her life.

In his book Freedom Is as Freedom Does: Civil Liberties in America (first published in 1956), Corliss gives detailed descriptions of the abuses of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and of the intimidating excesses of the McCarthy days, which he describes as the mid-century American witchhunt. Corliss himself was summoned before Senator Joseph McCarthy for being a freethinker and holding suspect views during that period of anti-communist hysteria.

Corliss had written a book called The Peoples of the Soviet Union, a research study on racial minorities that took no position on the Soviet economic and political system. This book had been used by the U.S. Army as a resource, yet its author was called into question for promoting communist propaganda and probed about having subversive connections and being part of a "communist conspiracy to overthrow the government" the accusatory catch-all phrase that could be leveled even against an attendee at a meeting.

This is a timeworn technique; you'll hear the same kind of accusatory smear in the newly coined term "Islamofascist," asserting that there is an interconnected conspiracy among disparate and wholly independent groups of people who happen to share a heritage. It is just as absurd to use this term to brand independent thinkers who renounce war and voice objection to the demonizing of those groups. Such thinkers are accused of "aiding and abetting" the alleged Islamofascists.

Pointing out inconsistencies and counterproductive, unethical policies of our government is an obligation of the wide awake and concerned citizen. And ironically, this is the very method by which truth seekers and whistleblowers get labeled un-American. Questioning directives from the Oval Office makes us freethinkers--and what could be more appropriate than being a freethinker in the land of the free? This is what democracy is supposed to be about.

Corliss Lamont was indeed an all-around freethinker. In the introduction to Freedom Is as Freedom Does, H. H. Wilson, an associate professor of political science at Princeton University, makes the following observations:

   One of the remarkable strengths of democratic
   societies has been their capacity for producing
   dissenting individuals.... Corliss Lamont has
   achieved an honored position as one who dares
   to differ with majority opinion in politics, economics,
   and philosophy ... he has persisted in his
   efforts to convince others that the best way of solving
   human problems is through the use of intelligence
   and reason ... and [he] insists upon the
   right of people to read, hear, see and consider, otherwise
   we make a mockery of the democratic principle
   that the sovereign power rests with "We the
   people of the United States." ... further, he points
   out that the Constitution does not provide for the
   economic implementation of civil liberties ... the
   problem persists of the inability to present minority
   opinions because of the cost of printing and
   distribution and access to the mass media ... we
   must devise methods that can be reconciled with
   our technology, our complex and integrated society,
   and our democratic aspirations.

One regret Corliss expressed was that because of his political activism and his challenge to political, economic, and religious orthodoxies, he wasn't respected by his contemporary philosophers, especially some at Columbia University who actually snubbed him. With the more democratic medium of the Internet, he is safely integrated amongst philosophers whom he admired such as Santayana, Dewey, Democritus, Voltaire, Spinoza, Aristotle, and Lucretius. This would have pleased him immensely. What a comeuppance to his detractors: Corliss Lamont, freethinker and Humanist, the philosopher who insisted that human beings are very mortal, has achieved his own measure of immortality and recognition through technology. You can visit his website at www.corliss-lamont.org.

Beth K. Lamont is a Humanist activist and the American Humanist Association's co-representative to the United Nations Department of Public Information where, to counter the prevalence of faith-based organizations, she helped form the Council of Ethics-Based Organizations.