Dr. Paul Kengor: Dr. Charles Hull Wolfe, welcome to V&V Q&A.

Dr. Charles Hull Wolfe: The Center for Vision & Values! It’s a great idea! Kengor: Dr. Wolfe, you’ve led a fascinating life. From a remarkable career in advertising to your work in free-market education and Christian education. But let’s start from the beginning, which, in your case, is quite interesting: When were you born, and who were your parents?

Wolfe: I was born in New York City on June 5th, 1919—from a liberal, college-professor Dad and a conservative get-things-done Mom.

Kengor: Your mother was not political. You called her an “old-fashioned working girl, a non-philosophical American free-enterpriser.” That’s not the case with your father. Your father, Dr. Ernest J. Wolfe, studied and taught with Ruth Bryan Owen, who was the daughter of the great William Jennings Bryan, the liberal Democrat of her day, and was ensconced at the University of Miami at Coral Gables, Florida. But your father ended up moving quite far to the left, politically. He became a Marxist, right?

Wolfe: Yes, became a Marxist as an all-out personal conviction, but that was not something he advocated on the job. Dad never especially publicized his Marxism.

Kengor: Your father ended up at Columbia University? Was this in the 1930s? What department?

Wolfe: Yes, in the 1930s, in the economics and history departments. At Columbia University, and the University of Miami he taught economics with the intention to provide a historic background that would show that the American people faced some sort of economic crisis, and various parts of the population, such as the elderly or the unemployed, needed some kind of social security from the U.S. government. My Dad’s proposal resulted in the Social Security system America has today.

Kengor: He was close to Columbia economists like R.G. Tugwell, correct? Tugwell was well-known for his interest in the Soviet experiment, as recently profiled in Amity Shlaes’ book, The Forgotten Man. (For the record, Ms. Shlaes will be the keynote at our conference on progressivism next April.)

Wolfe: The only kind of economics my Dad wanted me to teach was socialism, but I never did, and l never promised to. He may have kind of dreamed of me going out and winning thousands of ignorant students to socialism, just as I aspired to win them to Christ, but my Dad never succeeded in winning me to any of his radical views. Essentially, my Dad felt things I never felt. He felt rich Americans were bad, that there was no right or moral way for one person to earn or get a lot more money than other people had. He felt that essentially all Americans should have about the same amount of money or wealth, and that it should come from a generous government, from Uncle Sam, not from energetic individuals acquiring land or building a uniquely useful business, or selling exceptionally valuable products. You asked how my father sought to make me a communist. Was it by giving me persuasive literature or certain books? Yes, and there are loads of those, but I didn’t find them either very interesting or convincing. I told my father I had enough to read for school—first for high school, then for college. Like most boys, I needed some time for recreation and some time for sports. Dad felt both were more or less a waste of time. We also disagreed on religion. I felt religion was not just a ritual or a routine, that God existed, that He was real, that He loved me, that He loved everyone, and that He could bless everyone far more than He was currently, and that people first have to open themselves up to Him, “Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” My Dad expressed his religious beliefs toward me by sending me to the Ethical Culture Sunday School.

Kengor: Had not your father raised you to be a devoted Marxist, and to crusade for Marxism among college students? Is it true (George Cahill told me this) that you were literally conceived to be a communist? Or, at the least, that this you’re your father’s intention in having a child? (I’m sure it wasn’t your mother’s intention.)

Wolfe: It was never overtly stated as such. However, as my life unfolded it could very well have been so.

Kengor: How did your father try to make that happen? Did he give you communist literature? Did he send you to CPUSA meetings? Did he have you meet with party representatives around the country? Instead, you went to the University of Arizona—which you chose because of the warm climate, and because you had serious health problems, then went to Mexico and had a religious experience, and your father, who in addition to being a Marxist, was a non-believer, an agnostic or atheist. He didn’t approve of your conversion, did he? How did your father react when you told him you had rejected his dream of his son being a Marxist?

Wolfe: By and large, when my father found I had no particular interest in his scheme for my life, he lost interest in my career.

Kengor: When you rejected that goal of your father, is it true that your father rejected you?

Wolfe: When he found I was not going to play out the dream he had conceived for my life, I would say he literally lost interest in my life.

Kengor: Your father left Columbia to work for FDR and the Social Security Board. Did you have much contact with your father after these New Deal years, and after the two of you split over Marxism?

Wolfe: No, once my father, Ernest J. Wolfe, left Columbia to work for FDR and his Social Security Board, he broke with all his past—with his wife, i.e., my mother and with me. Continued...