Spencer Heath Archive

Item 2373

Letter to Russell Kirk, Mecosta, Michigan

June 20, 1954

 

Dear Mr. Kirk:

I have recently returned from Florida by way Of Sewanee, Tennessee, and have to acknowledge with thanks your kind letter of May 20th with the enclosures.

 I find your article from QUEEN’S QUARTERLY, “The Face of Britain,” exceedingly interesting — a very beautiful kind of nostalgic artistry, nostalgia for what is passing away. Yet somehow I feel that there are things happening and about to happen that give earnest of future things of even greater grace and beauty than those which are going or have gone.

 

 No, I have not seen Dean Nisbet’s book, I am sorry to say, but intend to do so shortly. I am glad to see that you are projecting a magazine such as you so interestingly describe and forecast. I do hope to become a subscriber. I further hope that you will be as successful in its business organization as doubtless you will be in your selection and organization of material for publication.

 With reference to property in land, I am coming more and more to the conviction that the almost universally accepted fiction of unearned increment has been the prime psychological inhibition on tea conscious evolution of society. Probably no other single misconception has so retarded social growth during the last hundred years. It is interesting to remember that way back in the 1880s a powerful priest in New York City, the Reverend Doctor Edward McGlynn, was excommunicated for preaching the Land Communist dialectic after the manner of Henry George. After six years of bitter controversy he was reinstated in full on the basis of a statement of his land Communist views which was officially declared to contain nothing contrary to Christian faith or to Catholic doctrine. I am enclosing a copy of Dr. McGlynn’s “doctrinal statement” upon the basis of which he was reinstated, wondering what will be or has been your reaction to it. Almost everyone to whom I have shown it finds it incontrovertible — notwithstanding its inherent irrationality.

 

 I am expecting to visit my daughter in Lansing early next month — two scholarly grandsons (one an undergraduate) perhaps will accompany me. It will indeed be worth a day’s journey to all of us to visit you in Mecosta if that should not interfere with any of your plans.

 Meantime I am sending you a manuscript of Citadel, Market and Altar by express and with the thought that some of its fundamental conceptions will be interesting for us to talk about, especially with reference to a dynamic conservatism.

 My two copies of The Conservative Mind are in circu­lation among friends and acquaintances, some of whom are quite excited about it — especially these grandsons.

 With sincere best wishes to yourself and all your projects.

 

Cordially yours,

SH:sm