After winning the New York City mayoral race on Nov. 4, Zohran Mamdani declared, “We will prove that there is no problem too large for government to solve, and no concern too small for it to care about.”
This pledge by the state’s first ever self-proclaimed socialist mayor was exactly the opposite of what President Ronald Reagan famously said some 40 years ago: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.”
Mamdani’s declaration did, however, sound similar to what another politician once said: “All within the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state.” That was Benito Mussolini, the radical socialist newspaper editor who became dictator of Italy and ally of Adolf Hitler during World War II.
The truth about socialism is that it is inherently immoral. In fact, socialism ultimately fails because it is built on flawed anthropology. Socialists claim to be for “the people,” but they’re always for “humanity” and never for humans. According to a socialist vision, the individual receives dignity from society, not the other way around. The individual, with his or her unique insights and perspectives, becomes an existential threat to the grand socialist project. In a Christian worldview, dignity was given to individuals by God, who made us in His image. “I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well,” the psalmist declares (Psalm 139:14).
A Biblical worldview recognizes that individuals bring dignity to families, communities, and societies. We are not cogs in a government-sponsored wheel, nor are we problems for the state to solve.
When government controls food supply and distribution, employment and housing, citizens lose the ability to provide for themselves without bureaucrats’ permission. Consequently, the government can enslave its citizenry. It can seize your paycheck, your apartment, or your next meal. People who depend on the state for survival live at the will and convenience of their master. World history is littered with the incomprehensible death and destruction perpetrated by socialist regimes that gutted civilizations of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The Bible teaches that taking responsibility for one’s well-being and that of their family are godly virtues. From God’s commission to Adam in the Garden of Eden to tend the land (Genesis 2:15) to Paul’s admonition, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10), we see the Biblical priority for personal initiative and hard work by those who are physically and mentally able.
Jesus’ command to “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21), teaches us that we are to be law-abiding citizens so long as we don’t violate God’s law. And while we are subject to the governing authorities (Romans 13:1), our supreme allegiance is to our Lord: “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29).
This recognition that God—not government—is sufficient for meeting our needs was the impetus for the founding of the United States and is enshrined in many of our country’s founding documents.
Yet on July 3, while commemorating America’s 250th anniversary, Mamdani contrasted what he called “conventional wisdom” about “American exceptionalism” with his belief that America is exceptional because “here, nothing is fixed into place.” The approach is similar to how President Barack Obama often crafted public addresses, borrowing vocabulary but using a new dictionary—reappropriating ideas from the American tradition but with a progressive twist.
In Mamdani’s telling of the story, American exceptionalism is foundationless, with no permanent truths, enduring principles or fixed understanding of human nature. In contrast to the Founding Fathers’ understanding of people as flawed yet capable of virtue, a progressive vision of history is built on the law of ceaseless change. 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 “living,” a vessel with no absolute principles but only new meaning being poured into it. Twentieth-century American philosopher and pastor Francis Schaeffer described this kind of moral vision as having “both feet firmly planted in midair.”
Of course, a central plank of socialism’s economic agenda is that the state should own the means of production. The state is ultimately responsible for ensuring what Mamdani has redefined as American exceptionalism. His proposal for government-owned grocery stores naturally follows.
Ironically, it was American Communists who first coined the phrase “American exceptionalism,” out of frustration that America proved so resistant to Communist takeover. Stalin popularized the phrase as a way to accuse America of believing that it was somehow “exceptional” and exempt from the “historical inevitability” of the Communist Revolution.
If America is exceptional, it is not because of some self-perceived superiority or because Americans are somehow exempt from human frailty and fallenness. Rather, it is because the combination of certain founding principles, the priority of religious liberty, the flourishing of pre-political institutions, and a robust civic culture better reflect the potential and perils of the human condition.
And America can once again be that “city on a hill” if her people would make King David’s declaration their own: “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God” (Psalm 20:7).
