Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1653

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Admiral Ben Moreell, Park Mansions, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

July 2, 1958.

 

 

 

Dear Admiral Moreell:

 

     It is really impossible for me to say how much I have been impressed by reading your little volume, THE ADMIRAL’S LOG, which you so kindly inscribed. I notice on the very cover it places God first and government last; Christ and Ceasar; the kingdom of heaven (on earth) and “the world,” as Christ always referred to government. I am happy that the ISI is publishing your little book, and certainly hope it will have a wide circulation in the interest of the future freedom of mankind.

 

     There is, however, just one dilemma with which many of us libertarians are confronted. We do not believe we can obtain food and recreation through the taxing power of political government without becoming enslaved to it. But do we not often assume that this same power can protect us from one another without likewise making us its slaves?

     Food is, of course, no less essential than protection. But nature has given us a diviner mode of obtaining food, namely, by the process of free production and voluntary exchange. Here we have an alternative mode of obtaining, without any loss of freedom, what is essential to our lives. Yet it seems that we generally assume that there is no alternative by which we can obtain community protection otherwise than by granting coercive and confiscatory powers (the camel’s head) to some of our fellow men.

     My contact with some of our libertarian associates shows a feeling that this dilemma is not beyond the possibility of being solved. I am hoping that in my CITADEL, MARKET AND ALTAR you are finding, if not a complete solution, at least considerable progress in that direction.

     In line with your emphasis upon religion as the fount and foundation of human freedom, I am enclosing herewith a copy of my “THE PRACTICE OF CHRISTIAN FREEDOM,” which I read before the Annual Meeting of The Christian Freedom Foundation in New York last year.

     It may interest you to note, from the enclosed pamphlet, that a larger understanding of the “laws of nature and of nature’s God,” in whose practice alone men can be free, runs through all the Purposes of the Science of Society Foundation.

     Again thanking you and with my very best wishes,

                       Sincerely yours,

 

                         Spencer Heath

 

SH/m

Encls: PRACTICE OF Christian FREEDOM

       STATEMENT OF PURPOSES