Spencer Heath Archive

Item 1619

Carbon of a letter from Heath to Mercer Parks, 3030 Locke Lane, Houston 19, Texas

May 27, 1957

 

 

Dear Mr. Parks:

     It was very good of our friend, Dr. (“Baldy”) Harper, to mention each of us favorably to the other. I share your satisfaction at such kindness, only fearing that I am not diligent enough as a letter writer to profit as otherwise I might.

     I share your wonder that in all the world so few have thought effectively concerning government. I am minded of an Amos-and-Andy-like dialogue between two colored exercisers of the “sovereign franchise,” to wit:

“Whut’s all dis hyer talk about ‘dem’cratic guv’ment’?”

“Why, dat’s de guv’ment by de people.”

“Yeah, I knows ‘bout dat. Whut I wanna know guv’ment by whut people?”

“You doan’ know dat? Dem’s de people whut, by our votin’s, has got everything whut it takes to take everything whut we got.”

     Of course, the crux for Burke and Randolph and all the other disillusioned has been the need of some widely generalized common services (to aid and implement the private exchanges) and no known alternative to the political mode of arbitrary and coercive pre-payment for them. For, except in free — what we call private — enterprises, we have not yet drawn any line between being served and being ruled. Meantime, thoughtful minds must wonder and wander in vexation between the need and the mode of meeting it. Of course, under the Providence you speak of, there must be — and is — an alternative that when sought can be found.

     I am intrigued by your perception that actually there is no now. As I see it, everything is in motion and all motion has rhythm, which is the very essence of time. So there is no such thing as either zero motion in space or zero interval in time.

     I am convinced that much of the current mental con­fusion lies in the failure to distinguish fancy from fact, the abstract from the concrete. Our capacity for conception far out-runs our capacity for experience. The twentieth-century “revolution” in physics consists largely in treating mere mathematical abstractions as though they could be objectively experienced — a de­plorable reversion, doubtless temporary, back to medieval subjectivism. An example of this is in the millions of printed words about the obvious impossibility of deter­mining position and velocity at the same time, not real­izing that this involves the contradiction of both motion and non-motion at the same time.

     Political ‘science’ cherishes similar contradictions, such as “free” government — non-coercion and coercion in the same relationship and at the same time; also treat­ing non-coercion, a mere negative, as though it were a something — freedom — instead of a zero or void.

     Freedom, the exercise of options, is achieved only in a positive (life serving) relationship, reciprocal on both sides, involving no coercion on the part of either. It arises only in the performance of voluntary contracts, in the practice of mutual benefit under the free-enterprise golden rule of each doing unto others as he would have others do unto him. There is no other rule in free enterprise and no freedom, among men, under any other kind of rule.

     But, I must remember (as Sam Walter Foss, author of “The House by the Side of the Road,” puts it at the end of “The Calf Path”), “I was not ordained to preach.”

     Many thanks to our “Baldy” for putting me in touch with you. My own careful explanation of things, under the title, Citadel, Market and Altar, is on the point of being published. A sample of its dust jacket is en­closed. I have hopes it will remove some of the shadows from the shape of things to come.

Cordially,

SH/m

Enc: Jacket

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