text of a letter to the author of an investment newsletter
Dear ...
I am a long-term subscriber to your newsletter. I am an outcast academic, publishing, when able to, under the imprint ‘Oxford Forum’.
It is easiest to account for my position in life by going right back to the beginning. The rejection of hereditary ability is a salient, if somewhat concealed, feature of modern anti-capitalist ideology.
I showed remarkable precocity from an early age. This is something of which the modern world does not approve – although pre-1945, the concept of IQ was still accepted. As a result, I was thrown out at the end of my ruined education with no usable qualification with which to make an acceptable career. Therefore I founded my own independent academic organisation with the intention of working my way back into a normal university career at a higher level.
I hoped that others would join me in this endeavour, but in practice found that my position aroused little sympathy, but did arouse intense opposition. Over the decades I acquired some associates. Those who are here now are people who had themselves aroused unjustifiable opposition, which had made it impossible for them to make suitable careers. Other associates I had fell away, apparently for no better reason than that somebody like me, who had been thrown out by people with status, should receive no help in attempting to remedy his position.
I am seeking people to come and live nearby, because cooperation between individuals who are prepared to criticise the ideology could lead to significant, and possibly dramatic, increases in the resources and opportunities of those concerned.
You are the sort of person we have in mind, since you are clearly prepared to envisage increasing your own capital and helping other people to increase theirs as well. We would like people like you to come and live in Cuddesdon, a village on the edge of Oxford, which is easily accessible to both London and Oxford. Cuddesdon is on a hill, with clean air, and views of the Chilterns.
Kind regards,
etc.
Celia Green
‘We appeal for £5m as initial funding for our unrecognised and unsupported independent university.’
Charles McCreery, DPhil
