At a moment in our history when the “progressives” with their belief in a governmentally controlled society have come so close to their goals, it’s imperative that Americans who want a free society push-back on every front.
One of those fronts is fiction, since many people will read and remember ideas presented in a novel more than anything else. That’s why Ayn Rand’s 1957 book Atlas Shrugged is mentioned so often when you ask conservatives and libertarians how they came to hold their views.
A new novel, The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale is exactly the book we need in 2022. In it, author George Leef gives us a frightening picture of what the country would look like after eight years of complete leftist dominance and, amidst the gloom, finds a ray of hope. (Full disclosure: George was a faculty colleague of mine back in the 1980s.)
The novel’s setting is in the near future, after two terms under American president, Patricia Farnsworth. She is a leftist zealot who has used every dirty trick possible to cement in place rule by the Democratic Party and its ideological support groups. The government controls speech it doesn’t like through a Hate Speech Commission; the Supreme Court has been packed with justices who adhere to the “living Constitution” approach and rubber stamp anything that expands governmental power; the rule of law lies in ruins; the welfare state has grown exponentially; inflation runs wild.
President Farnsworth has recently left office and wants a reliable leftist writer to do her biography. She chooses Jennifer Van Arsdale, a Washington Post writer who has long been of service to her and the Democrats with aggressive, slanted journalism. Jennifer is thrilled, since she reveres Pat Farnsworth for her transformation of America from its old-fashioned ideas about liberty and capitalism into an enlightened nation where government ensures “fairness” for everyone.
Jennifer flies to Farnsworth’s palatial home near Laguna Beach, California to interview her. Everything is going just as she expected until, one evening, Jennifer has a nasty encounter with reality in town. That sets in motion a series of events that cause her to question all of her beliefs about economics, politics, and society.
It’s at this point that Leef’s skill as an educator, shines. He puts key messages into the mouths of ordinary people—messages that cause Jennifer’s entire worldview to collapse like a house of cards. One character, a Navy vet, conveys to her wisdom that sounds just like Thomas Sowell. Another, an immigrant, explains the truth about inflation as Ludwig von Mises might.
Crucially, Jennifer comes to see that the U.S. is being torn apart by the war of the Takers against the Makers. The Takers want to dominate, extracting ever more wealth from the Makers so they can build what they see as the perfect society. The Makers just want to be left alone to live their lives as they think best. Jennifer grasps reality: America under the control of the people she once idolized is doomed to a steady loss of prosperity, harmony, and progress.
One of the book’s strongest insights is the way our education system has been hijacked by “progressives” and twisted to serve their ends. Starting in grade school and on through college and beyond, students get a steady diet of lessons laced with the clichés of socialism and rarely if ever learn anything to suggest that a free society is desirable. Leef’s field has long been higher education policy and the way he has a retired professor explain to Jennifer why federal subsidies for college were a terrible blunder is razor sharp.
I also applaud the author for his efforts to bring about clarity in language. He wants to restore the word “liberal” to its original meaning, which is the exact opposite of what “liberal” has come to mean since the New Deal, namely authoritarian. Leef also goes after the ubiquitous term “social justice,” which, as Hayek observed, is devoid of meaning but serves to excuse all sorts of governmental coercion.
Without giving anything away, the novel’s climax is one that lovers of freedom will savor. It’s something of an homage to Atlas Shrugged.
Leef’s novel makes you think about America’s future. Just how close are we to the point where the Takers seize permanent control—the point of no return? They have a lot going in their favor: The White House, Congress, a vast, domineering bureaucracy, limitless federal spending, an education system that imparts a collectivist mindset rather than knowledge, and much of the media spinning numerous stories to advance the statist agenda. Can freedom make a comeback?
Perhaps, and the reason I think so is that the American people are wising up to “progressivism.” They now see that many public officials have been wrong about Covid and related issues. They see that government is far less about the public good than about power and perks for those with connections. They know that much of the media deceives them. There are many real-life Jennifer Van Arsdale’s across the country who are on the verge of rejecting what they’ve been taught about government.
But we don’t need just to defeat the Biden/Schumer/Pelosi axis. We need to rebuild support for freedom. Americans used to overwhelmingly believe in freedom. They were Makers who minded their own business and willingly helped those who couldn’t help themselves. With a minimal state, the country made tremendous progress.
Today, after generations of collectivist policy and propaganda, many Americans fear freedom. We even have a president who scoffs at it.
Our future is dim unless we can turn the tables on the statists by restoring belief in freedom. The Awakening of Jennifer Van Arsdale is a book that will do that.
Dr. Timothy G. Nash is the director of the McNair Center at Northwood University.
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