Richard Spencer

October 28, 2009

Tom: unfortunately, I don’t have time at the moment to go into this. (I’m preparing for the HL Mencken Club, and one minor personal emergency has followed another.) But I would just like to say that I don’t think the Anglican Church could have endured as long as she has if an irrational (groundless, do you think?) antipathy towards the Catholic Church were her foundation. It is true, of course, that Protestant identity has been intertwined with the development of modern national identity (and England is not alone in this regard.) But to suggest that a country’s independence from Rome makes its intellectuals more prone to atheism is a bit of a stretch. Moreover, Dawkins’s recent blog is embarrassing and conventionally leftist, to be sure, though the man is no buffoon as a scientist, nor I do think his work is a part of soccer hooliganism. I myself picked up the England-bashing paddle the other day, but in my mind, if Britain is worse than the rest of Europe, it’s only by a matter of degrees. And I’m not holding out hope that the West will be saved by Italy or Spain, or the Catholic Church, to be frank. Who knows what motivates the political Left? I am sure, however, that the contemporary Right is not well served by dwelling on ancient hatreds.