Spencer Heath Archive

Item 3024.

“Thoughts prompted by a careful reading of Professor Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind, — and wherewith, as a gift volume, it is being inscribed”

November 1953

 

 

 

AS HUMAN SOCIETY EVOLVES, all unconscious, now in triumph, now in decline, towards its destined organic norm, two tendencies appear — one to serve, the other to waste and destroy. The one is called Conservatism, the other, Radicalism.

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

     Conservatism conserves and saves. Its power is as a brake; for it is the stator, not yet a motor, of social organization and advance. Radicalism is born of frustrations; dynamic, it is also 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 and operative 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, 1953                                  Spencer Heath