Every few years, a politician tries to rehabilitate a word that history has already judged.
On inauguration day, New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said he wanted to replace what he called “the frigidity of rugged individualism” with “the warmth of collectivism.”
Which is an interesting way to describe an idea that has given us breadlines, ration cards, black markets, and—when things get really bad—people eating the zoo animals.
But I digress…
Collectivism has been tried many times, in many places, by people who were absolutely certain this time would be different. And yet the pattern is almost boring in its consistency. First come the speeches about fairness and shared sacrifice. Then come the controls. Then come the shortages. And finally, the realization that when everyone owns everything together, then no one actually owns anything at all—not even themselves.
But the rhetoric is always lovely in the beginning. Poetic, even.
“Warmth.”
“Community.”
“Togetherness.”
Honestly, it feels a lot like kindergarten. All we need is one of those big rugs with the alphabet on it, and we can just spend our days sitting around singing and sharing snacks together.
Speaking of snacks, it’s funny how all these nice, cozy words only get thrown around before the shelves are empty. Weird how all the good feelings go away once promises become policy.
Something, something voting your way into socialism but having to shoot your way out…
What’s especially evil about Mamdani’s framing is the implication that individualism is somehow harsh or antisocial.
As if respecting a person’s right to their own life, labor, and property is some kind of moral failing while centralized control enforced by the state is the compassionate alternative.
It’s worth remembering what rugged individualism actually produced: innovation, abundance, charity, upward mobility, and the most prosperous society the world has ever seen. People cooperating voluntarily, trading freely, helping one another not because they were ordered to, but because they chose to.
It takes a special kind of envy to hate that.
Of course once collectivism becomes the guiding philosophy (once enough suckers fall for it) the next steps are always predictable. In New York, it’s already showing up in the crackdown on landlords and the growing casualness with which the claim is made by those in power that if someone owns property or has accumulated wealth, they must have taken it from someone else.
This lady seems nice:
There’s a line attributed to Ayn Rand that’s worth repeating here: “The smallest minority on earth is the individual.” I agree with her. And I’ll add that if the individual’s rights aren’t protected, then no minority is safe.
That’s the real danger of collectivism. Not that it promises kindness, but that it requires the individual to be sacrificed for the abstraction of “the group.” And once you accept that premise, there’s no limiting principle left.
This is exactly why we spend so much time teaching kids about these ideas early—before slogans get the chance to replace critical thought.
The Tuttle Twins and the Search for Atlas is based on Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and helps teach kids why protecting individual rights isn’t selfish, and why societies built on voluntary cooperation work better than those built on force. It shows kids that prosperity doesn’t come from taking and redistributing, but from creating, trading, and respecting clear rules that apply to everyone.
The good news is that at the end of the day, all we really have to do to stop people like Mamdani is to talk with our kids often, and tell them the truth. History has already run the experiment on collectivism. The results are in, and no amount of poetic language has ever changed the outcome.
When people understand that early, they’re much harder to fool later with comforting language that hides destructive policies.
Collectivism doesn’t fail due to bad intentions. It fails because it misunderstands human nature.
And once you see that clearly, the poetry stops working.
—Connor
