Wisteria is a climbing vine native to the northeast USA and east Asia. In small doses, it is a pleasant addition to its surroundings. It produces pleasant-smelling flowers, has no thorns, and appears, at least on the surface, to be capable of thriving with little attention.
However, appearances are misleading. Left to its own devices, a single wisteria plant can send out 30-foot-long runners in a single season. These runners root wherever they touch the ground, and if left undisturbed, become very hard to remove. If they touch a vertical surface, they climb it, and again, if left alone, they will thicken into woody stems capable of tearing down a house.
Moreover, if left unpruned, wisteria puts all of its energy into expansion and stops flowering. The only reliable way to get it to flower is to cut it back hard each year—much harder than would appear necessary at first glance.
There is no lack of collectivist ideas that have enriched our society. For example, a few days ago I attended a wonderful theatrical performance, at which one of the actors claimed that the performance would have been impossible were it not for government support, and implored the audience to write to their state legislators to urge them to increase that support. I do not know whether his claims were true, but I do know that live theater is an expensive proposition, and we would all be the poorer were it to die out.
But even if collectivism springs from noble impulses, it will take over if not kept in check. Georges Clemenceau once said: "If a man is not a socialist in his youth, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 30, he has no head." Few people would want to live in a society with no heart, but even fewer would want to live in one with no head.
And so I smother my temptation to take a backhoe to the wisteria in my yard, preferring instead to go out every day with my pruning shears and remove the shoots that keep appearing, leaving only the main plant and encouraging it to concentrate its energy into producing flowers, not runners.
