Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street. After winning the New York mayor race on November the 4th, Zoran Mamdani declared, We will prove there is no problem too large for government to solve and no concern too small for it to care about.
Well, that comment was, of course, exactly the opposite of something that President Reagan once said: that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I'm from the government and I'm here to help. It did, however, sound an awful lot like something another politician said. all within the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State. That was Benito Mussolini. While it might have once been problematic for an American politician to essentially sub quote a fascist dictator, many younger Americans seem ready to consider the failed ideas of the past.
For example, a recent YouGov and Economist poll found that nearly half of Americans aged 18 to 29 have a favorable view of socialism. That's the demographic, of course, that overwhelmingly turned out for Mamdani. A key factor is that the younger generation simply does not know better. This is a crisis of memory and a failure of their education. They've heard about the evils of capitalism, not about the many that were killed attempting to escape socialist regimes or why those escapes always and only went in one direction.
They've been taught to fear the impending catastrophes of climate change, but they've never heard about the mass starvations that actually happened when states attempted to control industry and agriculture. They've learned socialism is about sharing. not that that sharing is often forced at gunpoint. What they've learned is that whenever socialism failed, it was because it was done wrong, and that true socialism has never really been tried.
Well, the truth about socialism is that it is inherently immoral. Ben Shapiro put it this way a few years ago.
Socialism is bad because socialism is tyranny. Not that it's an aspect of tyranny.
Socialism itself is tyranny. The notion of socialism is that you don't own your own freedom. The reason oppression results every time socialism is tried is because it's built into the system. Oppression is not a bug of socialism, it's a feature.
Socialism is built on conceit. It's assumed that society's problems are a matter of poor management, and once the right people are in charge, then utopia will be in reach. What Hannah Arendt said about totalitarianism fits this embryonic stage of socialism. Their moral cynicism, their belief that everything is permitted, rest on the solid conviction that everything is possible. Yet they too are deceived, deceived by their impudent, conceited idea that everything can be done and their contemptuous conviction that everything that exists is merely a temporary obstacle that superior organization will certainly destroy.
⁇ Also, socialism requires that any element of society that does not submit to the state has to be stripped away, or better yet, made to be another arm of the state. All those mediating institutions that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly celebrated as drivers of American liberty and prosperity, like churches and schools and volunteer associations and families, they must devolve under socialism into basically themselves departments of government power. That's because of a belief that the state cannot fail. But it does fail, and not just because of inefficiency.
Socialism ultimately fails because it's built on a flawed anthropology.
Socialists claim to be for the people, but that always means for humanity, not really for humans. You see, according to a socialist vision, the individual receives dignity from society, not the other way around. The individual, with his or her own unique insights, perspectives, and preferences, becomes an existential threat to the grand socialist project. Within a Christian worldview, dignity is given to individuals by God, who made them in his image.
So they bring their dignity to the families, the communities, and societies around them. They're not cogs in a government-sponsored wheel, nor are they problems for the state to solve. They are, to borrow a line from JRR Tolkien, subcreators, who, when given the freedom and chance to do so, will outperform any and all mass system that seeks to control them. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr.
Timothy Padgett. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for a version of this commentary that you can download and share with others, go to breakpoint.org. Hi, breakpoint listeners. Time is running out to save up to 50% on registration for the 2026 Colson Center National Conference, happening May 29th to 31st, 2026.
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