Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1499

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Russell Kirk, c/o Henry Regnery Co., 20 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago 4, Illinois

November 23, 1953

Dear Dr. Kirk:

I have just finished going through your admirable work, The Conservative Mind, and with a great deal of pleasure. It is certainly a timely contribution to a kind of scholarly thinking that has been too much in abeyance for a good many years.

Two or three years ago my friend, John Chamberlain, in discussing a popular novel written intensely from the individualistic point of view (The Fountainhead, by Ayn Rand), wondered if that might not be a fore-runner to a spate of publications in reaction against the so-called Liberal but really socialistic trend current for so many years. Between Henry Regnery, Devin Adair Garrity and the Caxton Press it may be that something like that is being brought about. I truly hope so and predict that in this your most excellent volume will be outstanding for a long time to come.

There is a tendency among many to evaluate Conservatism in purely negative terms. I do not share that, but I do believe Conservatism has, or will come to have, a great deal more to offer mankind than it has exhibited historically thus far.

My own reflections on this are expressed in the note with which I inscribed a copy of your book before sending it to a very thoughtful and scholarly friend who I know will appreciate the gift. I am setting them down here as well:

As human society evolves, all unconscious, now in triumph, now in decline, towards its destined or­ganic norm, two tendencies, one to save, the other to waste and destroy, appear. The one is called conservatism, the other radicalism.

In times of growth and gain conservatism stands motionless on guard. In times of fear and loss, when growth declines, radicalism rides high and conservatism only seeks to retard the downward trend.

Conservatism saves and conserves. Its power is in the brake, for it is the stator, not the motor, of social organization and advance. Radicalism, born of frustrations, is explosive. But for the brake of conservatism it would completely destroy.

Conservatism, inert and potential, affords no release, gives no forward guidance to the social power. The task of the “Conservative Mind” is to find the rationale implicit in the organic relationships among men. It must develop a positive non-political dynamism of its own.

Advance in social organization awaits a dynamic conservatism that will have motor power as well as braking power, that finds the forward way and sets foot in it.

All hail to an enlightened, to a rational, to a dynamic conservatism.

November 13, 1953                           S. H.

 

    

     I would be greatly pleased to hear something of your views as to the future of conservatism as a positive social power.

To my mind one of the main camouflages under which radical liberalism has concealed its inherently subversive trend has been the so-called “Land Reform” idea — a kind of intellectual Trojan horse full of pinks and ultimately reds. This idea seems to be almost universally tolerated and even positively entertained by those in high places, both political and academic. For your pos­sible entertainment on this subject I am enclosing a small publication of my own in refutation of the land communist dialectic so greatly popularized for the last fifty-odd years by Henry George’s Progress & Poverty and his single tax followers in most parts of the world. You will note the forward by John Chamberlain, and I hope will find something in it of more than negative value, particularly in the two pages following page twenty-one.

Could not this suggested proprietary administration of community services be the foundation for the possible technology of a dynamic, non-political conservatism? I would value your suggestions apropos of this.

Again complimenting you on your most noteworthy accomplishment, I am

Sincerely yours,

 

SH:m

Enc. “Progress & Poverty Reviewed” with supplementary discussion

“Why the Henry George Idea Does Not Prevail”