Rush was the founding prog-metal act, and arguably still stands at the vanguard (although Tool is probably very close behind, if not abreast of them at this point). The trio (in its modern incarnation of Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson and Neal Peart) has always emphasized virtuosic musicmanship and tight arrangements in their performances, and have always written imaginative, literary lyrics, often focused on political themes including personal responsibility and liberty. They early on identified strongly with Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, and some of their songs are paeans to her writings (notably Anthem, about which they wrote an eponymous tune, as well as the entirety of the first side of their album 2112.)
Reportedly Peart, having undergone some recent personal tragedy, has disavowed his previous Objectivist leanings. While I have never professed Objectivism entire, I certainly sympathize with its intent and agree with its general premise, and with that in mind, I want to try to recapture some of the old Peart spirit by discussing two of the band's signature tunes (we'll cover the more ambitious 2112 in a later installment).
For those who haven't heard it--or who have, but not in the past hour or so--here is a video presentation of "The Trees," with lyrics.
How you interpret this song's early verses will no doubt depend on your ideological slant. If you're a maple, you'll sympathize with the maples. If you're an oak, you'll wonder why the maples can't be happy in their shade.
For my part, I do not believe that poverty is oppression. And oaks do not inhibit maples' growth; only the maples' own nature can do that.
The Rod Serling twist of the final couplet drives the point home in stunning fashion. The song is warning us of what Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell and countless others have warned us about: that measures taken to enforce equality will result in a net reduction of liberty, and will impose equality only at the lower limit of the disparity, not the upper.
This introductory song should provide you a pretty solid understanding of Rush' position on government. Although it is nowhere implied in the lyrics, one may infer the proposition "the government governs best that governs least" from the manifest preference for liberty expressed by that final couplet. Government can do little to nothing to promote equality without massive use of force, whereas to promote liberty, all it really has to do is stay out of our way.
But that was a relatively straightforward example. It was purely metaphorical, of course, but the metaphors were obvious, and the language relatively free of overextension. Let's check out a more sophisticated instance. This is one of those longer, more challenging compositions, but I urge you to check out the video anyway in order to spare me the necessity of typing up all the lyrics.
This is the kind of lyric that English professors salivate over. There's a whole microcosmic planet of metaphors and assorted figures of speech to dissect. We'll just cover a few.
"Wheels within wheels, in a spiral array; a pattern so grand and complex." This is obviously a literal description of the eddy-pocked environment of an actual tidal pool, but could just as easily be describing the galaxy, the entire universe, or perhaps any of the complex-adaptive systems we give labels such as "society" or "market economy."
The question is, then, which of these meanings do we take from the line? Knowing Peart, the band's chief songwriter, any and all options have merit. But as the song continues, it becomes apparent that the meaning that is most Peartinent here is the last.
"Time after time, we lose sight of the way; our causes can't see their effects." I don't think it comes any clearer than this. When you tinker with society, or the market economy, you introduce unintended consequences. This is the foremost of the many objections libertarians of all kinds offer in protest of big government. A complex-adaptive system like a market economy isn't a machine that you can tinker with at will. The vast array of hidden variables, and the rich panoply of relationships between servomechanisms and actuators is such that any minor change will introduce many ripple effects that cannot be predicted in any linear fashion. There is no control. There is only the illusion thereof. (We'll get into Michael Crichton's frequent use of this theme in a later installment.)
Of course, we can take "cause" in the literal sense of a prime movement that entails consequences, but it's just as valid to utilize the other common meaning, a "principle, aim or movement" that one commits to, usually by appealing to government force.
"In their own image, their world is fashioned; no matter they can't understand." This relates the entire system back to ourselves, as implied by the "simple, kind mirror to reflect upon our own." We are busy little creatures, chasing out our destinies, living in our pools and forgetting about the sea. We bring our own expectations, our own perceptions, and our own prejudices to the discourse, and because of that, we cannot comprehend, often cannot tolerate contrary opinions. (Jonathan Haidt has covered the variability in neural wiring that accounts for the diversity in moral expression, and we will be touching on this from time to time as well. Suffice to say for now that liberals and conservatives come at politics from very different directions, and there is often little hope that either side will even comprehend the other's position. Libertarianism stands some chance of being able to bridge the gap.)
What this variability implies for politics is the necessity of keeping moralistic solutions off the national stage. Although Rush are Canadian, this principle applies particularly well to the United States. Our federal government is, or should be, restricted in its duties by the Constitution; all other matters are left to the states, and to the people (read that, "the market") to deal with. The Constitution is concerned with defending property rights and civil rights, so those operations, and no others, should fall to the federal government. Issues of moral variance--how to deal with crime, whether actions such as abortion or gay marriage are acceptable--belong to the states. The federal government shouldn't even be involved in those, and the Court, especially, has no business treading there.
That's my take on the song. Each of the examined verses touches on some aspect of libertarianism, from personal liberty to regulation to decentralization and states' rights. Of course, it's entirely possible that Peart never really delved into complex systems and market economics, and that I'm overthinking the lyric. But I doubt that. Peart's quite the scholar, and even if he wasn't explicitly discussing macroeconomics and unintended consequences, there's the very real possibility that he was subconsciously doing so. (My vaunted obsession with the Collective Unconscious need not be dragged into this. Neil has stated that when writing 2112, he realized only late in the process how closely the story hewed to Rand's plot in Anthem, and attributed her in an "inspired by" credit on the album. He may well have been thinking in purely biological terms when he penned those lines, while his own personal unconscious chose for him words that tied the song to an economic context.)
I'm going to leave you with just one more. No analysis here. Just listen and read the lyrics.
And enjoy.
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