Below is my column in The Hill on Mamdani’s full-throated pledge to introduce New Yorkers to “the warmth of collectivism.” We have been here before…
Here is the column:
This week, Seattle and New York swore in socialist mayors in what many are portraying as a new era for the Democratic Party and the nation. Of course, it is only “new” for the young voters who have no memory of the economic and political meltdowns of socialist and communist governments in the late 20th Century. Nevertheless, many of them were thrilled as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared at his inauguration that he would introduce the city to “the warmth of collectivism.”
The wind blowing from the West to the East coasts is familiar to many of us who lived through the 1970s and 1980s. In my forthcoming book, I discuss this shift toward socialism as a new generation replicates the same failed policies that marked a long line of collectivist catastrophes.
The current rhetoric and divisions are strikingly similar to the conditions that brought socialist François Mitterrand to power in France in 1981, promising a “rupture with capitalism.” It was a heady time for armchair Marxists. He was sworn into office just weeks after the election of an unknown socialist as mayor of Burlington, Vt. named Bernie Sanders.
Sanders was there this week to give the oath of office to Mamdani after thrilling the crowd with promises of going to war with the “billionaire class” and “wealthy oligarchs.”
Mamdani then repeated his pledge to govern as a socialist and listed off his pledges of free buses and other benefits of socialism. Mamdani had previously pledged everything from free buses to making “Halal eight bucks again.” As a rising socialist activist, he also called for “seizing the means of production.”
The problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher observed, is that you “eventually run out of other people’s money.” Such details are a distraction if you listen to Mamdani. After the mayor said that the free buses would be paid for by increasing state taxes on the rich, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) nixed the idea, knowing her state is already facing an exodus of high-earning taxpayers. When confronted by that refusal and asked how he would pay for the program, Mamdani shrugged and said, “The most important fact is that we fund it, not the question of how we do it, but that we do it.”
It is that easy. Mitterrand promised the same magical economic results for the working class. He even appointed Andre Henry as the Minister of Free Time to assist citizens in their new socialist leisure. As I explain in “Rage and the Republic,” the French economy collapsed, as the British economy had earlier during the “winter of discontent” under Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan. Britain was even forced to seek a loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Both France and Britain would later reintroduce capitalist policies and roll back socialist policies to stop the economic collapse.
We also tried collectivist policies in cities across this country, including a commune on Long Island called Modern Times (now called Brentwood). It lasted about ten years before collapsing.
But the greatest fear is not the replication of failed economic policies, but the assault on individual rights that is sure to come with it. Socialist and communist systems emphasize collective over individual interests. Mamdani also touched on that theme in his inauguration, promising to replace “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.’”
Noting the millions who died under socialist governments, Bishop Robert Barron responded dryly on social media: “For God’s sake, spare me the ‘warmth of collectivism.’”
Even Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Special Envoy, Kirill Dmitriev derided Mamdani’s speech by noting that the new mayor was “doing a solid job steering the U.S. toward Communism.” He wrote “Dear Comrade Mamdani — just a friendly reminder that this has been tried before.”
What is striking about Mamdani in New York and Katie Wilson in Seattle is that they have virtually no real experience in running anything. Indeed, with the exception of a few organizing and college positions, this is believed to be the first major job Wilson has ever held. Both are socialist organizers who have now been handed the mayoral jobs in two of the largest cities in the U.S. on promises to bring about “the warmth of collectivism.”
Of course, neither has come close to a utopian collective outside of a Marxist 101 college course. But it does not matter. In New York, voters have been promised that they will soon be munching on eight-dollar Halal meals on free buses.
Like promises of shares in the Brooklyn Bridge or five-dollar solid gold watches from street slicks, this grift is one of the oldest pitches in politics. But it has been decades since someone ran the scam on a large scale. Fittingly, some participants at Mamdani’s inauguration complained that it lacked any food, music, or bathrooms. On a cold, miserable Friday, the new budding socialists had to stand outdoors and imagine the “warmth of collectivism” coming in the new utopia known as New York.
It seemed Mamdani had already achieved true equality for everyone in attendance.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. He is the author of the forthcoming “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution” on the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
Just because a man dies in a communist country does not mean that it was the communism that killed him.
No. But decisions made by Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc. lead to the deaths of millions.
Fascinating.
Now we have two PR firms polluting the blog comments: One for Zelensky and one for Marx and Mamdani.
We can point out that communists litterally murder – often in millions the citizens of their own countries that disagree with them.
Or you can do a regression on free markets vs. communist societies and after factoring out starting standard of living and other differences unrelated to ideology you will find the death rate in communist and socialis societies far higher.
Somehow all of the failures and extremes of right governments are forgotten while you look to left failures very different from Mamdani to fortune tell his supposed eventually failure. Your dogma reads as fear to me.
You’re right. The living conditions in South Korea are basically the same as in North Korea, and Western Europe was the same as Eastern Europe during the Cold War (/sarc).
Closer to home, Chavez and Maduro took one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America and made it so poor through socialism that their people starved en masse and 20% fled the terrible conditions. Just like Cuba is now an economic basket case.
But yeah let’s forget all that and just claim they all did communism wrong and only we know how to do it right so it produces better results than a free market 🙄
I’d explain the difference between nationalism to end exploitation and communism, but you didn’t learn any history worth spit so have no basis from which to understand.
Somehow all of the failures and extremes of right governments are forgotten while you look to left failures
Somehow we are supposed to believe that the failures and extremes of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Min, Xi, Castro, Maduro, etc must be forgotten and we have to believe they are no worse than the failures and extremes of {unnamed] right governments. Same body count!!!!
Your pathetic attempts at propaganda displays as the desperate thrashing of an ineffectual Soviet Democrat apparatchik.
Your move, Tovarisch Fraudulent Moral Equivalancy… Run and hide! This session of Drop A Democrat Dump To Deflect And Disappear is over.
Socialist totalitarian states are not that different from the totalitarian fascist state or the dictator. The US doesn’t fit in those categories and sits almost alone. Why don’t you argue based on a head-to-head comparison? The reason? You can’t.
The World Economic Forum refers to collective governance: “Collective (sometimes ‘collaborative’) governance is an innovative model of governance that is solutions-oriented with a focus on public value, where diverse stakeholders can work in partnership to improve the management of public resources and delivery of services.” Oh, what a wonderful soliloquy of an inflated ego.
A collective government model is not distributive but an aggregated cloistered bowl of muddled minds. In the broadest of terms, the word Collective would have no positive or negative connotation. You can gather a bushel of Apples; have four quarters in your pocket, or an assembly of citizens, their all collectives. Having no value other than being equal, a collective government would treat all citizens as equals, all having the same outcomes.
Posing a question: should the mayor make more $$$ that the street sweeper? Are they not in the same collective?
Let me offer my experience in collectivism, in my second year as a contractor I had four very knowledgeable journeymen employed and they wanted to do piecework together on an apartment complex that was about to start. I asked who the person in charge would be, and immediately they all said the same thing, that they would be their own boss.
Individualists, unite!
What defines a “communist death”?
Any death that happens in a country that happens to be communist?
Even if it is due to old age or a traffic fatality?
Then is a capitalist death any death that happens in a capitalist country?
ATS
How ignorant of history are you
What is a “communist death”
A death that occurs because of either the abysmally bad policies of communist or socialists,
or the intentional murder of people who disagree with them by communists and socialists.
Our first instance of “socialism” was the french revolution – which came with the Guillotine
After executing the aristocrats, the proto socialists started on each other.
The reign of terror was ended by Napolean.
Then socialists like the Nazi’s thought it would be a good idea to kill off the jews, the gypsies, homosexuals, the elderly, the unhealthy, those with mental health issues.
Though before Hitler we had the Blosheviks in Russia murdering peasants – and of course each other.
But Stalin took this to an insutrial scale – murdering a minimum or 80M during his reign of terror.
Mao murdered tens of millions in China – possibly hundreds of millions if you also include the 50+ millions who died of starvation from the bad policies of the “Great leap forward”.
Pol Pot and fellow communists took over in Cambodia and executed 3M cambodians whose political views deviated slightly from communist dogma.
Under Ortega in Nicaragua tens of thousands of indian natives were murdered by the regime.
Today the CCP is busy murdering more than a million Uighurs
and on and on.
Communists and socialists deliberately murder anyone who disagrees with them.
They murder the people of neighboring contires to liberate them.
And their policies result starvation and death.
There are capitalists who want to discriminate against homosexuals, women, and minorities.
Is discrimination denied and prohibited by the Constitution? How in the world can a person be free if he cannot discriminate? If people do not enjoy freedom, they should not be in America.
People must adapt to freedom.
Freedom does not adapt to people; dictatorship does.
“There are capitalists who want to discriminate against homosexuals, women, and minorities.”
You miss the point entirely – but then as always left wing nuts fixate on intentions and feelings not reality.
There are PEOPLE – left right or otherwise who hold a wide variety of good and sometimes reprehensible views.
That has nothing at all to do with ideology – in most of the world today it is still very dangerous to be gay.
If you are looking to assess an ideology – you do not blame it for the fact that people naturally come with both good and bad oppinions.
You evaluate it on how it performs. As an example does it amplify the good in people – or the bad ?
Socialism litterally claims to amplify the good – but in practice it empowers the bad.
Racist white post civil war southerners did not discriminate against blacks sufficiently – in a free market someone will ALWAYS seek to profit from the bad choices of others – so there were stores that served blacks, the railroads put blacks and whites on the same trains on the same cars. To a large extent even the most racist business owners treated black and white customers similarly – because the money of blacks was green and because discrimination was inefficient.
In response the Jim Crow LAWS were passed. to get the discrimination that those in power wanted – Law, Government, FORCE was needed.
The ideology of “free markets” – requires no force. Aall tht is necescary is for govenrment to step out of the way.
With rare exceptions peoples opinions regarding race, sex, religion etc are at most expressed as individual choixes of free association – not as murder.
Turning disapproval if a group into violence nearly always requires govenrment and is theirfore the province of ideologys that empower government.
Are Muslims Capitalists…
Capitalists aren’t exactly the angels you make them out to be.
They have a history of cruelty and heartlessness, too, such as using child labor during the
industrial age.
Mangling your fingers in a greedy, selfish, heartless miser’s machinery due to unsafe working conditions is not utopia, either.
Perhaps not, but neither was capitalism responsible for the deaths of over 100 million people since the beginning of the 20th century.
Have a hundred million people ever died while living under capitalist systems?
Yes, I think they have.
ATS
Actually the oposite is true
Child labor has been the norm for 99.999999% of human existance.
Why ?
Survival.
Child labor does not end until people have a high enough standard of living to be able to afford it.
The same is True of everything you call “heartless”.
These are not consequences of capitalism.
They are the necescities of survival.
Child labor – like all the rest of the supposed capitalist cruelties that you do not bother to mention all end — everywhere in the world without regard for government or regulation, when peoples standard of living is high enough that they are no longer necescary
Capitalism does not create the things you rant about – nature does.
Socialism does not end them.
Government does not end them
Capitalism ends them.
For most of human existance families had large numbers of children.
They needed the labor, and most children did not survive to adulthood.
Make child labor great again!
Whatever that means.
Do you think it is evil for children to have to contribute to the family ?
Should children perform chores ?
When I was 5 I was responsible to empty the trash. My parents had a small business in their home so “the Trash” was many times what a home would produce. I was paid a nickel a trash can.
I had no allowance growing up – I had tasks I could do that I was paid for – and others that I was expected to do just as part of the family.
Bu the time I was 7 I was running the “blue print machine” – my father was an architect (as am I) when a project went out for bids we had to produce sets of drawings and books of specifications for the bidders. This was a small publishing job and this was before copy machines existed, and even when they did – Drawings are 30×42″ and even today copy machines that large are uncommon. Regardless a set of drawings for a school was possibly 200 sheets, and each bidder got 3 sets and sometimes there were 100 bidders.
When a project went out to bids I spent a week or two in front of a blue print machine for 10-12 hours a day.
I was paid $.25/hr.
My mother rant the blueprinting operation as a separate business. She charged clients 90% of the rate for blueprining as the local blueprinting shop. From this she paid me and my siblings for our time. When I went away to college – my costs were paid for from the money she made from the blue printing business – all my siblings went to college – none of us had to borrow money to do so.
Our college education was paid for from the work we had done as children.
I have absolutely no problem with “child labor”
Those of us in the US today are fortunate that if our children work – it is to instill the value of work in them.
Blueprinting is not a “fun job” it involves keeping a giant machine that spews noxious fumes happy, it is repetative and boring – and today it has been replaced by large format digital printers that require little human intervention.
But I learned how to work long boring hours – and still enjoy myself.
Much of my work today is things that I love todo.
But all of us have things we do not like to do that must be done.
What I leaned 60 years ago is still with me today to get through a boring or unpleasant task.
My children did not have to do as much work as a child as I did – but they still had to work,
and that provided them with skills and discipline that their peers did not have in school and in college.
We are fortunate that today child labor is a luxury – not a necescity.
GEnerations before me children worked so the family could survive.
As a child I worked to learn skills and though I did not know it at the time to pay for college.
My kids did not have to work at all. They were required to work – because it was good for them.
Not because we needed their labor – but because THEY needed to learn how to work.
Today Child labor in the US is a luxury that wise parents provide their children to give them a leg up on their peers.
That’s what Epstein said with a hear hear from Bill Clinton!
Capitalists aren’t exactly the angels you make them out to be.
Here’s a desperate Democrat Moral Equivalency – claiming Stalin, Mao, Castro, Maduro, etc and their communism is no worse than capitalism!!!!!
You want to tear at your hair and rend your garments at child labor during the Industrial Revolution – but defend the slavery of imprisonment and death in the communist utopian gulags of Cuba, Communist China, etc.
Entertain us with a lecture on how workplace safety laws in Communist China’s communist utopia are every bit as strict as workplace safety laws in Communist China, Cuba, etc.
Or are you going to do the ol’ Drop A Democrat Dump To Deflect And Disappear?
How China became capitalist (by the Cato Institute):
https://www.cato.org/policy-report/january/february-2013/how-china-became-capitalist
@Anonymous
You regurgitate what you were programed with, with the best of them. I no longer think you are a crusty and resentful old crank, no, you are a kid. A very misinformed, and shaped-like-clay kid, without a single original thought to call your own. Let the grownups talk. You’ll be glad you did, down the line. Guessing you are between the ages of 35-45; yours will be a lost generation, and there is nothing you can do about that.
If you feel the need to blame someone, blame your parents, who basically lied to you your entire life. The dollars you make posting here will not save you from the inevitability of someday, no longer having living parents or grandparents, and no one else giving a sh*t.
Clearly, the years of K-16 indoctrination and brainwashing have paid off for the far left and their converted to communism Democrat Party. “He alone, who owns the youth, gains the future” as Hitler and other would-be despots have said. Meanwhile, despite wealthy Mamdani’s elitist comforts and view from privilege statements, the Venezuelan people are rejecting the warmth of collectivism. It appears that zebras aren’t as tasty and satisfying as they thought. Or they ran out of zoo animals.
Wrongful termination is a real thing that happens.
It’s not the fault of the workers.
https://lipskylowe.com/why-good-employees-get-fired/
What, exactly, is the point here?
His head…
There is no such thing as wrongful termination.
You have no right to a job.
If you want job security work for your self.
The nations that tried to make employment into a right found that jobs dried up.
You are delusional.
Wrongful termination is a real thing that happens. It’s not the fault of the workers.
And the communist version of what percentage of terminations are actually unjustified is?
50%?
25%?
10%?
5%?
1%?
Inquiring rational Democrat minds would like to know. Surely you can share your knowledge of the extent of terminations that are unjustified? Or would that math be too hard?
Justified termination is the real thing that happens in the majority of cases. Forcible wrongful retention of lazy, thieving workers is usually the fault of a Democrat funding socialist union.
This is your cue to finish your episode of Drop a Democrat Dump To Deflect And Then Disappear.
Only the owner, exclusively, of private property may “claim and exercise” dominion and hire, fire, pay, and direct employees.
No legislation or adjudication that denies any aspect, facet, or degree of the absolute 5th Amendment right to private property is constitutional.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
People often only learn by first hand personal experience. When you tell a young child don’t touch the stove, it’s hot. And the child looks at you and says, what’s hot? Well, this is how they find out what hot is. And this is how the people of New York City will learn.
Exactly right—bravo.
I’m a former New Yorker (escapee south is a better description) and, guess what? They will never learn. They will keep voting for the same policies expecting different results.
The warmth of collectivism is due to its proximity to hell.
Good one. Another timely saying: you can vote collectivism in, but you’ll have to shoot your way out of it.
^^^^ award for today’s best comment.
Mamdani also touched on that theme in his inauguration, promising to replace “the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.’” Noting the millions who died under socialist governments, Bishop Robert Barron responded dryly on social media: “For God’s sake, spare me the ‘warmth of collectivism.’”
Mamdani and his ilk are driven by emotions hence “frigidity vs warmth”. Coupling “frigidity” to “rugged individualism” will alienate the male voter, the same demographic Democrats are supposedly trying to lure. Senator Mark Kelly and his seditious former military Democrat Members of Congress were also driven by emotions (read: theater) in hoping to win over Americans in turning against President Trump. Now Kelly has learned his fate, though IIRC he already is a millionaire, (net worth ~ $20M), but busting down his rank is surely to be humiliating. Had he known Trump had ordered the extraction of Venezuela’s Ernesto Maduro, Kelly would have likely called Maduro personally to warm him, e.g. General Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called his China counterpart twice re: Trump’s alleged mental state.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth
@SecWar
[…]
Therefore, in response to Senator Mark Kelly’s seditious statements — and his pattern of reckless misconduct — the Department of War is taking administrative action against Captain Mark E. Kelly, USN (Ret). The department has initiated retirement grade determination proceedings under 10 U.S.C. § 1370(f), with reduction in his retired grade resulting in a corresponding reduction in retired pay.
[…]
These actions are based on Captain Kelly’s public statements from June through December 2025 in which he characterized lawful military operations as illegal and counseled members of the Armed Forces to refuse lawful orders. This conduct was seditious in nature and violated Articles 133 and 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to which Captain Kelly remains subject as a retired officer receiving pay.
9:50 AM · Jan 5, 2026 1.8M Views
https://x.com/SecWar/status/2008189258528665898
Estovir,
Good point about “rugged individualism” will alienate the male voter. After years if not a decade of being accused of being toxic masculinity by Democrats men got fed up with it. And, the Democrat preferred alternative was squishy soy boys, men said, “Ah, no thanks!”
Wilson and Mamdani are community organizers with no real world executive experience, explains Turley. He is right. Remember, another person without experience, who did not manage a MacDonalds restaurant or was the first select man of the tiniest town, was Barack Obama. He was a community organizer also and a part-time law lecturer before he was elevated to senator and after 3 years or so became President of the country. Full of ideas, expressed in engaging speeches, wrapped in charisma. None of the ideas was really new, all already tried in Western Europe without much success, but the genius that is Obama just knew that if you repeat introducing failed policies often enough, at some point they must become a success.
. Isn’t the use of “frigidity” and “warmth” a bit odd? Come out of the arms of the cold wh@re and into the arms of a warm wife? He’s such a poet, a rapper kinda guy…
Ah well, maybe the sanitation workers will collect trash for free bus rides. Who knows.
Have a lucky new year. 🍀
🎄
I have a hunch that Mamdani is not that interested in collectivism. I think he privately feels that America is irredeemably racist and a threat to people of color all over the world, and that the only way to check that threat is to break the back of America. Useful idiots in NYC and Seattle, who don’t understand his intentions, can be recruited in that effort.
I doubt even he actually believes what he says. He’s a jihadist and a communist, not a social democrat. You might as well have Hezbollah taking over NYC. Mamdani will do everything but fire rockets into Long Island.
Wait until Mamdani tries to “collectivize” an apartment building owned and operated by an immigrant slum lord…that ought to be a fight worth watching!
Dumb bastids!
LOL!
Diogenes: “I doubt even he actually believes what he says.”
Very much agree.
But he won’t be jumping from a rock to a frying pan. He’ll just find another rock.
L n D
And he should crawl back under it…
Good comment, D.
The question is why? Why are young people voting for communists now? Perhaps ironically, Charlie Kirk and Tucker Carlson have done more than anyone else I’ve seen to illuminate that question. Using Kirk’s phraseology, these elections of communists are distress signals from the younger generation, who find they cannot afford even a starter home, and many times even with two incomes. Our best path to limit the damage is to find ways of solving that problem, IMHO.
@oldman
Why? because they grew up in the most peaceful and prosperous time modern society has ever seen and have been raised to be entitled to the skies. That’s the simple answer, though there are many other factors (the indoctrination at modern universities, the inability to think critically, ‘fragility’, etc.).
The tin foil hat part of my brain thinks, now that the dems are almost exclusively the party of communism/socialism/collectivism, cabals, and figureheads, that Hochul’s office (or at least that cohort) will actually be running Manhattan, Mamdani is just there for optics, much like the Squad, Biden, or Kamala. Funny how so many of these young nobodies and now nothings magically appear from out of nowhere to run for major positions or offices, eh? Had anyone heard of this dude before recently, outside of his parents’ privileged circles or his birthday parties?
James,
I would add they also do not or have not ever really had to work and just had everything handed to them. Higher education is not helping with grade inflation either. I would also say social media does not help as the younger generations lack interpersonal and communication skills as they stare into their phones almost non-stop.
Saw a movie called The Intern. The intern is a retired senior, who comes to work everyday, on time, in a suit and tie. Clean shaven, neat hair cut. At one point the boss looks at him, then looks at one of her other workers and asks something to the affect of,
“How did we get this?” comparing the intern to the other co-worker. The co-worker had a mess of a hair cut, unshaven, tee-shirt with a flannel over shirt that looked like it was slept in, baggy shorts and sandals.
I think socialism seems so attractive to young people as it is the means of doing the least amount of work with the expectation of getting paid for the maximum amount of work. Some of these young people expect to get loads of praise for just showing up.
The survey this article cites provides some degree of insight. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/yourmoney/consumer/article-13886905/bosses-firing-gen-z-workers-record-time.html
@Upstate
I’ve seen that movie too, and I enjoyed it. And spot on. 👍🏼
Why? Because they recognize that Trump won’t help them with their problems. It’s no different than Trump supporters giving him a chance because they felt left out. Now it’s the younger generations. And democratic socialist ideas are very attractive. Turley doesn’t seem to understand that and therefore he is choosing to bash Mamdani before he has barely started. It’s scary to a Republican or conservative if a socialist idea or policy ends up working.
Democratic Socialist’s ideas are very attractive?
Please give us a few examples of these attractive ideas X. Do you mean like, you will own nothing and like it? Do you mean like allowing the government to control raising your children? Do you mean regulating gas powered vehicles out of existence? Oh, I know I bet you mean open borders where Americas citizens pay with their taxes for anyone coming here.
Please give us some examples.
Roads
Bridges
Public Schools
Those are built by contractors who get paid by any government, including market-based governments. Try a little harder please.
So government paid for an all to benefit. Socialism got it
Straw man. Free market proponents don’t suggest the government should be abolished entirely. And it’s not true that all legitimate functions of the government are communist. That would mean governments did not even exist before communism was invented. Try dropping the silliness and engaging in an adult conversation.
Actually a thing can exist before it is labeled. I would disagree, capitalists actually despise government. Capitalists thrive in environments with no laws, specifically labor laws.
Total BS. The free market cannot work without laws enforced by government. The whole concept of private property and the rule of law are integral to free market economies, which is precisely why they function much better than communist economies with no freedom and no civil rights enforced by government.
More generally your position is: communism and government are indistinguishable. I wonder if you realize your position is incoherent?
What did government pay with and where did they get it?
Roads. Bridges. Public Schools
Those didn’t exist in New York before Commie Mamdani – those are going to finally be built under Commie Mamdani’s communism/Democrat Socialism? That’s what he promised to give those who voted for him? No, of course that wasn’t what he promised, gaslighting Democrat.
I heard promises of Free Stuff – after pillaging the wealth of others to pay for it.
Those aren’t Democrat ideas and are you sure you want to include public schools in that list? From my personal experience in construction projects, when going is involved the cost doubles and triples. That’s the point!
Universal healthcare for one. Lower cost childcare, cheaper higher education. A few that other countries have successfully implemented.
Not everything is better with a free market approach. Sometimes it’s worse.
Universal healthcare, in particular, is a free market approach.
How so?
In a free market (and the U.S. is not a free market), universal healthcare is the most efficient, and moral, approach. .. in an effort to reach that point where supply meets demand.
*otherwise, the rich will buy healthcare and the poor will die.
X says: Universal healthcare for one. Lower cost childcare, cheaper higher education. A few that other countries have successfully implemented.
(thankfully you’re an incompetent salesman for communism X/George – only 360 days of failure left in 2026)
Communist China, the DPRK, Cuba… I’m amazed that there’s no evidence of a mass migration of communist Democrats like George from the failed institutions of America’s somewhat-free markets to communist utopias giving him Free Stuff For You. Meanwhile… a few miles away north of where millions of Americans live:
Canada’s health-care system is not ‘free’—and we’re not getting good value for our money
https://www.fraserinstitute.org/commentary/canadas-health-care-system-not-free-and-were-not-getting-good-value-our-money
Canada’s Ailing Healthcare System Lags Most International Peers
https://cdhowe.org/publication/canadas-ailing-healthcare-system-lags-most-international-peers/
The reason higher education is so expensive in the US s that the federal government intervened by guaranteeing study loans, thus artificially increasing demand.
“Universal healthcare for one. Lower cost childcare, cheaper higher education.”
Don’t you just love how socialists and Leftists completely evade the question: Paid for by whom?
X says Because they recognize that Trump won’t help them with their problems.
To be precise, the previous FOUR YEARS of Biden/Obama socialism didn’t help them with their problems. So they’re going to give a far more virulent form of communism with commie Mamdami yet another chance!
Republicans elected Trump to make a change from the Gracious Loser Republicans – while X celebrates his fellow Democrat communists New York giving American communism another chance.
X… only 360 more days of utter failure left in 2026!
@X: …” if a socialist idea or policy ends up working.” That is the point, X, there is no socialist idea that actually worked and brought success. So, why would socialist ideas be attractive if they have no record of success?
“Why? Because they recognize that Trump won’t help them with their problems.”
Correct – none of us are entitled to help with our problems – they are OUR problems – usually f our own making.
The process of becoming an adult which has been protracted as standards of living rose is learning to deal with your own problems and take responsibility for your own life.
Further – another part of reality is that even those less common problems that are NOT of your own making, are still ultimately only solvable by YOU.
It is your life – no amount of collectivism will make you whole will undo the trauma from whatever bad things have befallen you.
If your spouse beat you, if you were phycially assaulted, if you were raped as an adult or a child, whatever mightbad may gave befallen you in your life – the repair of your body is relatively trivial compared to restoring your soul.
And no one but you can do that.
Whatever your issue – real or imagined – in the end ONLY YOU can fix it.
The complete misunderstanding of humanity at its most basic is the core failure of collectivism.
Ultimately we are all INDIVIDUALS. We are not a hive.
If enough of us are productive because that is in our nature – the rest can survive by stealing from those who produce.
But doing so does nothing to truly improve our lives.
If you have been hurt – by others by nature – only you can fix yourself.
If you are unhappy – only you can give yourself happiness.
If you are anxious or depressed – only you can overcome that.
A man said to the universe:
“Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
“The fact has not created in me
A sense of obligation.”
“democratic socialist ideas are very attractive.”
Absolutely – the false promise that you can get something for nothing,
better still the claim of socialists that you are entitled to, that it is moral to steal to get what you want,
that it is those who wish to thwart your efforts to steal for some allegedly altruistic purposes that are immoral – that is very attractive
2 Corinthians 11:14–15
And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. So it is no surprise if his servants, also, disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deeds.
Socialism offers false promises that it can not deliver.
But for those who wish to be decieved those promises can be very attractive.
Trump has made a variety of promises – Agenda 47 is readily available – it is Trump’s platform,
it is what he promised towin the presidency.
It is what people expect him to deliver.
We can further evaluate those promises – we can weigh whether Trump delivered on them.
We can weigh whether those promises are actually good or not.
Mamdani has also made promises to get elected.
He has been in office only briefly so it is difficult to assess whether he will deliver on those promises.
But we can easily assess whether doing so would be good or evil.
There is little he has promised that has not been tried and failed every time it has been tried.
Outside the deluded left the outcome of Mamdani’s actually succeeding at delivering his promises is completely knowable.
It is my expectation that like most politicians and unlike Trump – Mamdani will fail to deliver.
He will blame the right or the constitution or his enemies to absolve himself of the responsibility for delivering on those promises.
But maybe Mamdani will prove me wrong – maybe he will be the Trump of the left – keeping his promises.
If so NYC is in deep schiff.
No Mamdani is not scary to republicans – he is a Gift.
God knows why in a few stupid blue enclaves in the US the SAnders/Mamdani/AOC nonsense plays
But it does not in most of the country.
“Abigail Spanberger (D–Va.) voiced her frustration with the party’s lurch toward the political left.
If Democrats didn’t shift back toward the center, “we will get f-ing torn apart,” she warned on a conference call with some of the Democrats’ top brass. “And we need to not ever use the words socialist or socialism ever again.””
Absolutely Republicans – and anyone with a brain is bashing Mamdani – they are celebrating an own goal by democrats.
The consequences of Mamdani actually doing as he promised will be paid for by New Yorkers – very few of whom are republicans.
Absolutely Republicans are perfectly happy to see democrats destroy themselvess.
What socialist policy anywhere ever has actually worked ?
Envy can’t be fixed, omfk.
oldmanfromkansas says:
Using Kirk’s phraseology, these elections of communists are distress signals from the younger generation, who find they cannot afford even a starter home, and many times even with two incomes.
The “younger generation” fought our recent war in Afghanistan, they’re the ones who today in January are high up standing in the wind on the monkeyboards of drill rigs in Alaska with dirty hands and more money in their wallets than the average “younger generation” Harvard grad, taking over the running of the family business while their parents move to retirement, finishing their apprenticeships, etc.
The question is why we demand this “younger generation” be represented in the public eye by the failures the media focuses on who live in overwhelmingly Democrat utopian enclaves like New York. The children of elitist American socialists, living in the chosen environments they feel most comfortable in.
The rest of the “younger generation” is too busy living elsewhere in America, building their work and family lives, having the children of the next generation. Nor to take much offense at people bemoaning online what they believe their generation to be.
It was about 60 years ago that I first heard the phrase “kids these days” directed at me from the adults around me and in clever articles in the local five page newspaper, The Daily Bulletin. I think we did okay despite that pronouncement.
LMFAO
Let those New Yawk yankee idiots enjoy what they voted for! All you City property Owners, prepare to surrender your property to collectivism (Communism) where the Somalian implant family running the daycare or other third world mongrel of preference can move on in. I am loving every second of it!
Enjoy what you voted for you stupid Buggers😂😂
NY is real America. Also you dont know the difference between socialism and communism. I bet you grew up a long time ago when the ussr was a big scary red herring for you. Duck and cover bummer
Socialism is the cocoon of Communism, the interim stage where there remains enough of other people’s money to maintain the illusion. As the supply wains against the demands those not pulling their weight must be purged and from the cocoon arises the beast of Communism, you will own nothing and like it. Think of it, a message delivered to you from Klaus Schwab an aged multimillionaire living in complete luxury and decadence. Do you suppose Mamdami will collectivize the Mayors mansion?
Eightball, you’re in the UK where it has happened?
Balkan wars
Mamdani is clever, in his own way.
I believe what he really means with his “warmth of collectivism” –is the intended “strength of collectivism,” i.e., an acknowledgment and starting premise that there are more have-nots (without individual contribution to a better world) than haves.
This ultimately justifies a taking and redistribution of tangible assets.
The hot toddy of congeniality comes blended with whipped cream.
Lin
Go to Citizens Free Press and Cea Weaver a Mamdami tenant official will give you the definition of exactly what he means. Hang on to your hat!
Hey, had no idea what you were talking about until I looked it up on X:
https://x.com/endwokeness/status/2008031475057439076
Thanks for the tip.
I’m going to anchor my hat by weighting it down with a new 250th coin issue released today.
Lin – this brings up the importance of national elections. There are clauses in the Constitution that limit communist intrusions on civil rights, as I’m sure you know (e.g., the due process clause, the takings clause, the first and fourth amendments, etc.). The damage done by communist mayors in NYC and Seattle can be limited only if there are constitutionalist federal judges willing to enforce these civil rights. Leftist judges will often sympathize with the communists and bend the rules to allow more intrusions, whereas judges appointed by people like Trump, and potentially Vance in the future, are far less likely to do so.
Hello NotSoOld and Happy New Year!
I am looking at both your comments above and your points that are well-taken.
I accelerate expansion of your thought by invoking the post-Rehnquist and post-Wilson philosophy of a “Living Constitution,” not dogmatically immutable but rather subject to societal influence. This brings in your 11:39 comment about our youth and our student populations (‘activists in training’) yearning for purpose. That is why I am always harping about the imbalance in critical thought stimulation and lack of Socratic debate in our institutes of higher learning.
Thanks for the good thoughts.
(p.s. miss living in Miami Beach, my neighbor’s holiday potato and leek soup, or cheese/potato knishes with dry champagne!
Lin – thank you for your response. There’s a guy at AEI who seems keyed in on this issue, named Howard Husock. Here’s one of his articles saying we need a “Marshall Plan” to tackle housing affordability:
https://nypost.com/2025/11/13/opinion/we-need-a-marshall-plan-to-tackle-americas-housing-crisis/
Here’s another one where he links low marriage rates with low affordable housing:
https://www.aei.org/op-eds/a-solution-to-the-housing-affordability-problem-marriage/
Yours as always,
Uncle Henry
Name a communist leader.
Name a communist leader.
You were far more entertaining before you escaped the circus where the ringmaster had you perched on a stool clapping your flippers and barking while balancing a beach ball on your nose.
Sealioning:
Sealioning is a form of adolescent trolling where someone persistently demands answers to insincere questions to provoke a response, often pretending to seek a civil debate while actually trying to exhaust or frustrate others with no intention of real discourse. This behavior is characterized by a facade of politeness and a refusal to acknowledge previous answers. Often used as a tactic by whining Democrats in online forums and blogs
Sucker: The person who falls for it.
When I was a young Democrat in Texas, almost 60 years ago, we were taught LBJ’s political philosophy (as embodied in “the warmth” of his Great Society), which was:
“Sure, we stole the pie. But, everybody’s gonna get a piece, so that makes it OK!”
I’m embarrassed to say it took me until the 2,000s to reject Lyndon and Democrat idiocy, and to loathe his philosophy.
Cindy
I was brought up on the same BS. We have to tear it all down to bring everyone up equally… They’ve torn it all down to bring everyone down to a lower level of everything. Rank and file stratification is pretty much the way natural selection works. Leave it to some fing bureaucrat lawyer try to promulgate the laws of nature.
Run, hide, or fight, DJT chose fight, fight, fight. He’s been incredible so far. Happy new year…
Are the young Marxist-Socialists of today even aware of the history of socialist collectivism? Did they ever learn about the more than 22,000,000 Russians killed by Stalin, the Holodomor genocide caused by Marxist-socialist collectivization of farming and food production that resulted in the starvation deaths of 7,000,000 Ukrainians 1932-1933? The deaths on the one way forever trip to the gulag? Have they ever heard of, much less read, Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn? Are today’s Marxist-Socialists even aware of the estimated 88,000,000 Chinese (it has been estimated to be more) that were killed by Chinese communists, including an estimated 15-55 million that died of starvation during the Great Chinese Famine 1959-1962, a result of the failure of the farming collectivist policies established by Mao Zedong? How about the genocide by the Marxist Khmer Rouge between 1975-1979 that resulted in the deaths of 3,000,000 Cambodians, then a quarter of the population of Cambodia? Even not being a history major (science and medicine instead) I know of these events. Mayor Mandami and AOC were not even born at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre of Chinese students by the Chinese Communist Party, Mayor Katie Wilson was barely 7 years old.
I think Mandami’s “warmth of collectivism” will be the ambient temperature experienced by those New Yorkers who are fortunate to have relocated to Florida before the Exit Tax and Wealth Taxes become law.
I wonder that no journalist asks trust fund socialists like Mamdani whether they plan to lobby the corporations in which they have investment to divest themselves of all their stock holdings to distribute to the indigent. Whether his principles do not require divesting himself of his wealth to share with those in need.
Etc., etc., and so forth.
Those who luxuriate in the benefits of capitalism while extolling the virtues of socialism, letting alone putting those “warm” freedom-trouncing policies into place, need to explain the disconnect.
A rich socialist is lying to you. Period.
Elon Musk is promoting a basic universal income for the proletariat .. . once the robots take over.
My husband was born on Staten Island and he worked down at the site of the 9/11 attack and had to escape through the dust to a ferry to Staten Island that day. He later moved to Brooklyn and continued to work in downtown Manhattan until the biden administration when he realized that the property value of his condo was falling with each month of the autopen administration. We finally moved back to northern NY where I have family. We have watched from afar as the city he loved has become an unsafe, expensive, cesspool at the hands of far left dems but now he is dreading watching his home city fall to pieces under this incompetent radical islamist communist. He never believed me when I told him of the virulent dislike/hatred that upstate NY has for NYC but he is coming around to our understanding that the complete collapse of the city is probably the only way to save it. Like the Orkin man tenting a house to kill all the termites inside, the parasites of NYC need realize that there is no longer a free ride from their communist indoctrinators and that NYC needs the death of socialism in clear view of the nation to understand just what a mess in which they find themselves.