By Douglas V. Gibbs
The Devil always appears as an angel of light.
On the steps of New York City Hall, Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivered an inauguration speech wrapped in soft velvet of idealism, but the ideological steel beneath it was unmistakable. His words were polished, poetic, and perfectly engineered to sound compassionate; the same way every collectivist movement in history has introduced itself.
Mamdani declared, “We will build a city where prosperity is shared, not hoarded.”
To the untrained ear, it sounds noble. But anyone who has studied the rhetoric of Marx, Lenin, Castro, or Chávez recognizes the formula:
- Redefine prosperity as a collective asset.
- Redefine individual success as theft.
- Redefine government power as moral necessity.
This is the linguistic sleight‑of‑hand that has always preceded the erosion of liberty.
He continued, “Housing is a human right, and we will democratize it.”
“Democratize” is a word that sounds empowering but from the mouths of socialists historically means centralization, regulation, and the slow suffocation of private property. It’s the same vocabulary that turned once‑vibrant cities and countries in history into bureaucratic wastelands.
Then came the crescendo: “We will build a city where dignity is guaranteed.”
Guaranteed? By whom? Government bureaucracy?
Guaranteed at what cost? Taxing the rich? As the song, “I’d Love to Change the World” by Ten Years After (1971) goes, “Tax the rich, feed the poor, Till there are no rich no more.” Then, the inevitable question becomes, “Then what?”
Guaranteed through what mechanism? In the end it always becomes through government force.
This is the classic utopian promise: a world where government becomes the arbiter of dignity, fairness, and morality. And once government claims the power to guarantee dignity, it inevitably claims the power to define it, apply it, and enforce it. What follows is mismanagement, corruption, a loss of innovation and industry, shortages and rationing, violence, poverty, and ultimately death.
New York may be the stage, but the script is nothing new. We’ve seen this ideological drift metastasize in Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco on a smaller scale, and lead to the deaths of hundreds of millions on a global scale when countries adopt the same path. Understand, this is not just leftism. This is not just the rantings of a Democratic Socialist with the best of intentions. Zohran Mamdani is proclaiming that communism will rule New York City. He will make it happen despite any obstacles from outside the city. And he is willing to follow the same hellish path every other historical leader who used the language of “equity” have gone down. The policies that Mamdani is proclaiming as a new and bold path for New York City are tried and failed policies that opened up cities and countries throughout history to catastrophic consequences that punished productivity, rewarded dependency, hollowed out the middle class and led those societies to unparalleled poverty and ultimately massive death.
Despite calls that this is only New York City’s problem, understand that when a cancer forms, it threatens the entire body. Mamdani’s inauguration was not just a local ceremony. It was a national signal. Mamdani’s speech was a declaration that the same collectivist ideas that have failed everywhere around the world throughout history once they’ve been tried are once again being marketed as moral imperatives – but this time, right here in America in a major American city.
And like any cancer, if ignored, it can spread.
The reality is as clear as the horrific images we have seen from history: Communism never arrives wearing a hammer and sickle. It arrives wearing compassion. It arrives promising fairness. It arrives insisting that government-guided socialism can fix what capitalism supposedly broke. The rhetoric is always beautiful. The results are always catastrophic.
From a constitutional perspective, Mamdani’s speech was a direct challenge to the principles that built this country:
- Individual liberty
- Individual God-Given Natural Rights
- Private property
- Limited government
- Free Market
- Personal responsibility
When a mayor speaks as if government is the source of dignity, prosperity, and fairness, he is not merely offering policy; he is redefining the relationship between the citizen and the state. That is the ideological pivot point where republics falter, and democracy becomes socialist collectivism.
Bad ideas do not remain contained if a virtuous informed people do nothing to stop them. Cancer spreads, and as Americans we must pay attention to where these tumors begin to grow, and then take action to surgically remove them. If left unchecked, especially when it comes to us who understand the Constitution, history, and the cost of freedom, we know that the ideology being spewed by Mamdani takes down civilizations, and destroys liberty. Therefore, we must:
- Speak boldly
- Get involved in the public square
- Write clearly
- Challenge false narratives
- Defend the principles that made this nation exceptional
- And do so by the means God has given us, be it written, verbal, by our actions, or even pursuing public office.
We must be fully aware that the battle is not in New York City alone.
The battle is a part of a much larger war where the language of collectivism is being repackaged as compassion.
And if we do not confront it now, we will confront its consequences later.
If we don’t cut out the cancer early, here’s what will happen:
- Private Enterprise in New York will be strangled, and a mass exodus of corporate money will follow.
- As the local markets begin to fail, bureaucratic control will increase.
- As bureaucratic control increases, more businesses, and wealthy individuals will flee New York City.
- As the money begins to dry up, the free bus rides will be reduced, the government grocery stores (if not already haunted by empty shelves) will fail and face closures, hospital services will begin to collapse, shortages will become chronic, basic care or services will become inaccessible, and a reduction in competence will ensue as the most skilled residents depart from the region for better opportunities.
- Centers of production or services will close their doors as they become regulated into oblivion. If not for outside sources contributing, the rationing and hunger within the city would begin killing people.
- Prices in New York City will elevate to levels that residents cannot afford.
- Rent control will result in owners of properties losing their properties or abandoning them. The advent of empty structures will begin to increase. Many of those buildings will become swarmed by homeless, drug-users, and the criminal element. Violence and crime will increase and become a dominant characteristic of the city. With prices exceeding salaries, residents will begin to barter or use black market channels to receive what little is left for them to procure in the markets.
- Due to mismanagement, city services will be crippled, and crime will increase due to a shortage in police, or the refusal of police services to be anything other than social services officers. Frustrated, city personnel in vital services will quit and leave the area, leaving New York City without significant police, fire or other emergency services.
- The remaining professionals and those who can afford to leave will flee as those who remain become further pushed into poverty. Equity will be achieved in the sense of equal misery, with Mamdani and his cronies living in an elite status and blaming their collapse on conservatives, large corporations, and the failure of the rest of the country to follow their example. When corruption and mismanagement begins to be revealed as we are seeing in Minnesota, they will point fingers, deny responsibility, and launch lawsuits against those who accuse them of impropriety. The media will blame Corporate America, Trump, or his successors in the Republican Party.
I am not a prognosticator. I simply have seen this play out over and over and over in cities and countries in history many times. Socialism always fails, no matter the scale. The only reason New York City won’t collapse into complete despair like the Soviet Union, Cuba, or Venezuela is because it is a city in the United States, and the rest of the country is not following it into its death spiral. But, like California, New York’s collapse will not be resolved until it all hits rock bottom, and even then I am not so sure a light will be at the end of the tunnel within our lifetimes. While politicians will seek to bail out the city with federal money, the situation won’t turn around until the city is pulled from its own rubble by a return to free market principles, a reduction in the centralization of power, and a return to law and order.
Hopefully, the collapse of New York City will serve as a lesson to the rest of America who have the fantastical belief that socialism is somehow a path to utopia.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” – C.S. Lewis
— Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary
