Letters to a Young Progressive: How to Avoid Wasting Your Life Protesting Things You Don't Understand Read Free Page A

moral relativism that tends to go with it—to feel so smugly superior? Somehow their new political stand for equality makes them feel like they’re better than other people—better than the families who are sending them to college, better than ordinary Americans, and, especially, better than Tea Party members, Rush Limbaugh fans, and people who watch Glenn Beck.

LETTER 3
     
    “The Trees”
     
    Zach,
    Speaking of people to whom leftists feel smugly superior, I’m going to write you today about Ayn Rand. In recent years, there has been a resurgence of interest in her books.
    After escaping from the Soviet Union in the 1920s, Rand became a famous American playwright, philosopher, and novelist. She wrote many books, three of which I would urge you to read. The first, We the Living, based on her youth in early Soviet Russia, is a lot like Orwell’s 1984. The second, The Fountainhead, is a longer novel expounding her philosophy, which is known as objectivism. The third, Atlas Shrugged, is her most famous work and includes the most complete explanation of her views on economics and morality.
    As a Christian, I reject a good bit of what Ayn Rand has to say. Because she doesn’t take the fall of man into account, I don’t think she has a complete explanation for why capitalism works better than socialism or communism.
    But Rand defends capitalism eloquently by pointing out a key flaw in socialism, and I am not at all uncomfortable recommending her books. (In fact, I have made the case for reading books whose messages I completely reject, including the original works of Marx and of Hitler. There is much to be learned from studying the works of those with whom you disagree—and much to be missed by ignoring them.)
    It could take you several weeks to read those three books. Meanwhile, I want to draw your attention to a song that was written by a rock musician influenced by Ayn Rand. The artist’s name is Neil Peart—a member of the band Rush. Neil is arguably the greatest rock and roll drummer who has ever lived. He is also one of the greatest songwriters.
    When I was a teenager in the 1970s, “The Trees” was one of my favorite songs. I didn’t know at the time that the song was a stinging indictment of socialism and communism inspired by Neil’s reading of Ayn Rand novels. It’s literally a song about trees—maples who “want more sunlight” and oaks who “ignore their pleas.”
    When I look back on it, I am somewhat embarrassed that it took me so long to figure out the symbolism behind the oak-versus-maple contrast. This is a classic Marxist over-simplification, which is intentional on Peart’s behalf. There are only two classes of people, according to the worldview of Karl Marx—the haves and the have-nots or, as he called them, the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.” Here, the oaks are the “haves” or the “bourgeoisie,” and the maples are the “have-nots” or the “proletariat.”
    The scenario in the song is interesting because it raises the issue of absolute versus relative poverty. When the maples claim that the oak trees grab up all the light, they are exaggerating—actually, the author of the song, Neil Peart, is exaggerating for effect. Oaks are big trees, to be sure. In my own yard, there is an oak that is 100 feet tall that will eventually grow to be about 125 feet tall. But maples are big trees, too. I have a sugar maple that is about 60 feet tall that will eventually grow about 80 feet.
    Peart, quite ingeniously, shows that the have-nots are often better characterized as simply having less than others. Their problem is not really that they do not have enough to get by. The problem is that, in their view, the oaks are “too lofty.” In other words, others have much more than they do. That is the key phrase because it reveals that covetousness, rather than true need, is what is motivating the maples. In reality, that is what always motivates collectivism.
    The results of