Mayor Mamdani’s false choice |
“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism,” socialist New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani pledged in his inaugural address.
Etymologically, “collectivism” has its roots among late-19th-century Marxists. The collectivists were the ones who ran the gulags. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn will tell you there was nothing warm about the winters in Ekıbastūz.
Critics instantly pounced, recalling the past horrors of Stalinism and the current evils of North Korea. And in condemning the socialist idea of collectivism, Mamdani’s critics rushed to embrace the “rugged individualism” he was rejecting.
Gov. Jim Pillen (R-NE) took to social media to proclaim that “much of America, and especially Nebraska, remains and will forever be a place where rugged individualism and freedom are prized.”
Bishop Robert Barron declared on X that “Catholic social teaching has consistently condemned socialism and has embraced the market economy, which people like Mayor Mamdani caricature as ‘rugged individualism.’ In fact, it is the economic system that is based upon the rights, freedom, and dignity of the human person.”
The race to reject everything Mamdani is unsurprising. He is a self-avowed socialist whose mantras include radical pablum like “Queer liberation means defund........