Fatherhood Quote by Pete du Pont

Inheritance usually gets framed as comfort. Du Pont frames it as risk, and that choice is doing a lot of political work.

By opening with "almost 200 years", he’s not just offering biography; he’s staking a claim to legitimacy. In American politics, longevity reads as rootedness, and rootedness can be quietly transmuted into authority: I was here before the arguments; I belong in the room where decisions get made. The du Pont name already carries corporate gravity. He preempts the suspicion of inherited power by recasting the family story as an origin myth of toil and danger rather than privilege and insulation.

The gunpowder detail is a shrewd pivot. "Very dangerous" is plainspoken, almost understated, and it pulls the listener away from boardrooms and toward blast sites. Two deaths in the lineage makes the fortune feel earned in blood, not merely accumulated. It also launders industrial capitalism through sacrifice: yes, the enterprise was profitable, but it was also deadly, and the family paid the price. That’s a way of asking for moral credit without explicitly demanding it.

Context matters: du Pont operated in a state where his surname is both brand and political weather system, and in an era when voters increasingly distrusted dynasties. This anecdote tries to neutralize "he’s a rich heir" by swapping in "he’s the product of pioneers". The subtext is a defense of establishment power that wants to sound like grit.