Zohran Mamdani wants America to choose between socialism and selfish secular individualism. But true, Christian conservatism offers a better way: the rugged individual who stands firm in conviction, who loves God and neighbor, who builds, defends, and conserves, and who knows some things are worth dying for because they were first worth living for.
This article is a lightly edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
In his opening address as the first Islamic Socialist Mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani didn’t hide his convictions. He said that he was elected as a democratic socialist and that he will govern as a democratic socialist and that he would revive the era of big government. Even in his victory speech last November, he stated clearly that he makes no apology for being a Muslim or a democratic socialist.
Mamdani also said that there is no problem too big for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about. This is no surprise to anyone who followed his campaign where he promised city-run grocery stores, fare-free buses, universal free childcare, and a major tax hike on millionaires and businesses. Mamdani’s appointments have already made news headlines for radical statements on redistribution policies that even target whites along the lines of intersectionality, and all of these socialist policy measures would affect them disproportionately.
The most important part of Mamdani’s speech came when he said that he will draw the city close together and replace the “frigidity of rugged individualism” with the “warmth of collectivism.”
He painted rugged individualism as cold, selfish, and un-American.
Really? Tell that to the pioneers who settled America, forged new trails, tamed a wilderness, built and united a continent. Tell that to the heroes of Valley Forge, Tripoli, Gettysburg, San Juan Hill, and Omaha Beach. Tell that to the great inventors, dreamers, and entrepreneurs who by their ingenuity built trains, planes, and automobiles, created a vast system of networks, and made America into one of the most prosperous and industrious nations in human history.
Socialism didn’t produce any of that. Collectivism didn’t land build the Ford Model T or put Neil Armstrong on the moon. Free men with individual initiative, property rights, and freedom to succeed or fail on their own merit built America.
What we just heard from Mamdani was a worldview declaration from the mayor of America’s largest city. And millions of Americans, particularly the youngest generation, are buying what he’s selling without understanding the devastating consequences.
Socialism is making significant inroads in American politics precisely because people speak favorably about it without thinking about the total destruction it brings to their lives — the end of private property, the dignity of work, and the rights of the individual.
Once you forfeit private property, you forfeit everything. Once the state controls the means of production, the state controls you. Once collective ownership replaces individual responsibility, there is no check left against tyranny.
The Psalmist asked: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The answer depends entirely on what foundations we’re willing to defend. Right now, too many Americans are confused about what we’re actually defending. They’ve been presented with a false choice: embrace Mamdani’s warm collectivism or retreat into cold rugged individualism. Accept socialism or resign yourself to Ayn Rand’s atomized self.
But that’s a false choice. These are not our only options, and conservatives must reject both socialism and a kind of libertarian individualism that jettisons truth and morality for utilitarianism and moral relativism.
But that’s not the kind of rugged individualism conservatives champion or prize. Rugged individuals look more like Davy Crockett, standing on principle and willing to buck his own political party — not because he was a libertarian but because he believed in absolute truth over compromise. Crockett went to Texas because he loved freedom and he had principles.
He died at the Alamo alongside Colonel Travis, James Bowie, and 200 other patriots defending freedom. Rugged individualism is rooted in something entirely different from libertarian atomism. It’s rooted in the sacred order of things — in loves and loyalties to God, family, nation, and the permanent things worth dying for.
This is what Mamdani and every socialist refuses to understand. It is also a problem on the right today: Conservatism is not libertarianism.
Conservatives don’t just believe in horizontal relationships between individuals. We believe the most important relationships start vertically —the relationship between God and man, parent and child, the Creator and His people. Conservatism believes in the priority of sacred loves and loyalties and hierarchy: marriage before career, family before state, church before politics. There is belonging for each individual, and we recognize what God said from the beginning — it is not good for man to be alone.
But here’s what socialism gets catastrophically wrong: Community cannot be manufactured by government decree. You cannot create genuine human flourishing by abolishing private property and centralizing power in the state.
The warmth Mamdani promises is the warmth of the crowd pressing in with nowhere to escape and an entire city on fire — not the warmth of genuine care or community built on voluntary association. Socialism doesn’t create belonging; it creates conformity or death. It doesn’t foster responsibility; it breeds dependency or destitution. It doesn’t preserve freedom; it extinguishes the faith by which all freedom is possible.
The choice before us isn’t between libertarianism or socialism. The choice is between freedom and slavery, good and evil, right and wrong.
True conservatism offers something better: the rugged individual who stands firm in conviction, who loves God and neighbor, who builds, defends, and conserves, who knows some things are worth dying for because they were first worth living for.
That’s not libertarianism. That’s conservatism. And that’s courage rooted in conviction. And that kind of rugged individualism is truly American.
If you like this article and other content that helps you apply a biblical worldview to today’s politics and culture, consider making a donation here.
