Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stomestreet. Back on July 3rd, during his comments to commemorate America's 250th anniversary, New York City Mayor Zeran Mamdani contrasted what he called conventional wisdom about so-called American exceptionalism with his own belief that America is exceptional because, and I quote, here nothing is fixed into place. The approach is similar to how President Barack Obama would often craft his public addresses, borrowing vocabulary, but then using a new dictionary, reappropriating ideas from the American tradition with a progressive twist. In Momdani's telling of the story, American exceptionalism is without foundation, no permanent truths, no enduring principles, no fixed understanding of human nature.
In contrast to the founders' understanding of people being flawed yet capable of virtue, a progressive vision of history is built on the idea of ceaseless change. And somehow, every change is for the better because humans are progressing according to some long arc of history. Politically, this aligns with the idea of the Constitution as being a living document, a vessel with no absolute principles, but only new meaning that's constantly being poured into it. Francis Schaefer described that kind of moral vision as having both feet firmly planted in mid-air. Mongdani also announced a new tax, a surcharge, on those with non-primary residences in New York City.
His office then published a long list of all who would qualify for such attacks, despite the long history of violence by those committed to socialist ideology. The assassination of the United Healthcare CEO in New York City by confessed killer Luigi Mangioni and everyone who celebrated it should have been enough to reconsider that plan. Of course, a central plank of socialism's economic agenda is that the state should own the means of production. In the socialist view, the state's ultimately responsible to ensure what Mamdani has now redefined as American exceptionalism. And his proposal for government-owned grocery stores naturally follows.
As Dr. Eric Patterson wrote recently on a breakpoint commentary, remember Marx said that control of the economy was the first step toward control of everything. It's noteworthy that democratic socialists attack private property, an innovative business environment, and often call freedoms of religion and conscience smokescreens for superstition and intolerance of their progressive agenda. ⁇ Ironically, it was American Communists who first coined the phrase American exceptionalism out of frustration that America proved so resistant to Communist takeover, and Stalin popularized the phrase as a way to accuse America of believing this heresy that it was somehow exceptional and exempt from the historical inevitability of the Communist Revolution. There is no universally agreed upon definition, but if America is indeed exceptional, it's not because of some self-perceived superiority or because Americans are somehow exempt from human frailty and fallenness.
Rather, it's because the combination, certain founding principles, the priority of religious liberty, the flourishing of pre-political institutions, and a robust civic culture somehow better reflect the potential and the perils of the human condition. The young energetic faces of the DSA and all of their supporters reject these aspects of America's founding, its covenantal purpose, and its role as a model for freedom. Instead, they reimagine America out of an envy for those they believe have unfairly advanced. Time will tell how powerful the movement will be. In the meantime, Americans should be doing their homework, studying the history of socialism.
Abraham Lincoln once said, if we could first know where we are and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do and how to do it. Christians, of all people, have the worldview resources to best assess where we have been in the moment we're now in. The biblical framing of the human condition provides not only insight in what to do next and how to do it. But more importantly, the hope that has been secured for us in the work of Jesus Christ. For the Colson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint.
Today I want to say thanks to Stephen Jolene of Linden, Washington. Thanks for being a Cornerstone Monthly partner of the Colson Center. You helped make this episode of Breakpoint possible. Today's episode was co-authored by Andrew Carico. If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download podcasts.
And for more resources or to share this commentary with more people, go to breakpoint.org. Hi, I'm Deb from Fort Collins, Colorado. I'm a cornerstone partner because the Coulson Center is a beacon of light in a dark cultural time. I love being challenged and equipped to engage every part of life from a Christian worldview. Join me and more than a thousand others in becoming a Cornerstone partner today at colsoncenter.org/slash cornerstone.
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