Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1587

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Stir­ling Harrison, Commonwealth’s Attorney, Leesburg, Vir­ginia, together with newspaper clipping of the article in question and Mr. Harrison’s reply.

January 15, 1956

 

 

Dear Mr. Harrison:

     Let me express to you my great appreciation of your article in the Loudoun Times Mirror, clipping of which my daughter, Lucile MacCallum, has sent me. It is good to see some good, old-time constitutionalism still hold­ing its ground with some of our still politically sober citizens.

     For all its present desuetude, States’ Rights is all there is between the common citizen and a distant bureaucracy, whether resident in Washington or in Moscow. Compared with the rights of citizens to make their own local laws, integration is only a minor issue. But even so, forcible integration is one step in the direction of “totalism.”

     This whole matter of segregation rests upon educa­tion, so-called, being given as a privilege or enforced as a servitude. If and when parents are free, they will spend their own money for education just as they spend it for anything else, without letting politicians spend it, allegedly, for them. They will then be free to discriminate, and not be compelled to act indiscriminately.

     My friend, Frank Chodorov, a year or so ago, wrote a sound analysis and appraisal of our public school situa­tion. It appeared in the December 2, 1953, number of Human Events, published in Washington D.C., copy of which I am sending you. Its conclusions and proposals, while written long in advance, set forth the sound prin­ciples on which the Gray Amendment should rest.

     Your own article is the only truly statesmanlike support of the Gray Amendment that I have seen.

     With best personal regards, I am               

                                               

                            Sincerely yours,

SH:m

Enc: Article, Chodorov’s Solution to the Schools