By Douglas V. Gibbs
Collectivism lives and breathes in the Democratic Party. Zohran Mamdani praises the “warmth of collectivism.” Hillary Clinton offered “It takes a village.” Barack Obama gave us “You didn’t build that” and “We are our brother’s keeper.” Joe Biden repeats “We’re in this together” and “This is about the collective good.” Bernie Sanders insists “Nobody makes it alone” and urges America to “move away from a society in which everyone is out for themselves.” Elizabeth Warren adds, “There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own.” Pete Buttigieg declares, “The era of the individual alone is over.” Cory Booker often frames policy in collective moral terms, saying, “We rise together or we fall together.” Anthony Fauci emphasizes that “Individual choices affect everyone.”
The Founding Fathers also believed in community and standing together, but they understood that true community arises naturally from free individuals, not from state‑directed conformity. The delegates of the former English colonies knew they needed to “hang together, or surely hang separately,” as Benjamin Franklin famously put it. And while “We the People” and E pluribus unum (“Out of many, one”) are treasured parts of our national heritage, they are not synonymous with the collectivism promoted by the modern Democratic Party.
As a constitutionalist, I love my community. Working together is both rewarding and essential to the American experience. If a dish is to be prepared properly, a team of chefs must work in harmony, but the success of that dish depends on unity around a proven recipe, not on each chef chasing personal whims. In the same way, a community of sovereign individuals with distinct cultures, churches, trades, opinions, and backgrounds can unite as one republic under the United States Constitution without surrendering their liberty to collectivist ideology.
Unity in America’s foundational system is the product of liberty, not a substitute for it. The Founding Fathers believed in unity by consent, not absorption.
Modern collectivism seeks not only to reverse what the Founders built, but to counterfeit it. Where E pluribus unum means “out of many, one,” their model flips it to ex uno, plures – out of one, many. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party advances a worldview in which central authority defines which identities are acceptable. Individuals cannot simply be individuals; they must be sorted, labeled, and managed.
Unity, in this system, is not voluntary. It is enforced through policy, speech codes, and mandatory compliance. Differences are tolerated only when they fall within the boundaries of the approved ideology. Instead of a liberty‑based system where free people choose to unite under the Constitution, modern collectivism manufactures diversity while imposing uniformity.
The Founders created a republic grounded in the consent of the governed, a bottom‑up order. Modern collectivism replaces that with a top‑down collective enforced through coercion. Where the Founders affirmed equality, that all are created with the same Natural Rights, collectivism substitutes equity, demanding predetermined outcomes. Where the Founders valued individual conscience, collectivism elevates the group above the person. Where the Founders limited government to specific, delegated powers, collectivism expands it into a managerial state that oversees life from cradle to grave.
The Founders trusted free people to form community. Modern collectivism distrusts free people and replaces virtue with administration. We the People was never a call to sameness. It was a declaration that liberty can produce unity without destroying the individual. The Founders never meant one belief, one ideology, one approved way to live, or one moral authority above conscience. They meant one people and one country, precisely because we are many, free, and different but choose to all live under the same system created by the U.S. Constitution. If unity must be enforced, liberty has already been lost.
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
