RALEIGH, NC.—John Hood is a writer, president of a charitable foundation, and a tap dance teacher. His expertise in multiple areas gave him a unique perspective on Shen Yun Performing Arts. He took notice of Shen Yun’s efforts to uphold tradition and he expressed his support for their work. “Tradition is really the sum total of human experience. It’s what people have learned over the course of generations of time, proving certain kinds of practices or beliefs or values to be useful,” he said. “There’s a famous writer that calls tradition, the democracy of the dead. The idea being that people who’ve lived in the past were no less intelligent, no less wise, no less experienced than we are.” He also spoke about the tragedy of communism when it tries to change or eliminate tradition. “What happens with communism, or other kinds of ideologies that try to sweep away tradition …