The new mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, promised in his inaugural address to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
That’s about as Orwellian a turn of phrase as you’re likely to come across. Hoosiers here in Indiana—with our historic penchant for common sense and conservative values—are not likely to accept such dangerous rhetoric. Nor is anyone else who understands why free enterprise succeeds and socialism fails.
For evidence, look at Venezuela—much in the headlines lately.
Once prosperous atop the world’s largest oil reserves, Venezuela turned deliberately toward socialism under Hugo Chávez in 1999. In the name of equality—Mamdani’s “warmth of collectivism”—the government imposed price controls, demonized private enterprise, and seized economic power.
Incentives to produce and innovate vanished. Oil revenues masked the failures temporarily, but after Chávez’s death in 2013 and Nicolás Maduro’s rise, reality hit: shortages of food and medicine, hyperinflation wiping out savings, mass emigration, eroded liberties, and alliances with adversaries such as China, Iran, and Russia.
Policies enacted as “compassionate” subsidies and controls—such as Mamdani’s free buses or rent freezes—soon proceed to distort markets, create shortages, and demand ever-increasing state coercion to “fix” the problems. That’s the pattern: from popular handouts to full-blown crisis.
Venezuela proves it. Chávez began with oil-funded social programs romanticized as caring for the people. But when mismanagement struck, the “warmth” turned to coercion—and just recently, U.S. President Donald Trump’s bold operation captured Maduro, ending a regime that devastated a once-wealthy nation.
When the state claims to know better than individuals, it runs out of other people’s money. And it runs out of tolerance for dissent.
The former Soviet Union shows the ultimate end: As a Hudson Institute essay documents, communist regimes caused nearly 100 million deaths through execution, famine, and repression.
The warmth of collectivism, indeed.
Meanwhile, what of the “rugged individualism” Mamdani dismisses as “frigid”?
It’s not selfish or cruel. It’s faith in free people to build, create, and solve problems without state permission—where dignity comes from work and contribution, not dependence. True warmth flows from voluntary community: families, churches, charities, neighbors—not government mandates.
Rugged individualism fuels American exceptionalism, in which our founders uniquely brought together, for the first time, the best ideas for self-governance, liberty, and personal responsibility. While this attribute has fallen out of favor among some coastal elites, it has remained alive and well here in Indiana. From small family farms to manufacturing facilities to high-tech startups in growing cities, Indiana has thrived because individuals are encouraged to take risks, work hard, and reap the rewards of their labor.
Civil society, meanwhile, provides real warmth far better than bureaucracy. The government’s role is to facilitate conditions in which free individuals may flourish as they obey the laws and respect the rights of their neighbors.
The future belongs to rugged individualists living in freedom—defended by leaders such as Trump. Socialism is a recipe for disaster, no matter how warmly its apologists sell it.