New York City, New York

A False Framework Framing the Debate

When New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani says we need to abandon “rugged individualism” in favor of collectivism, most conservatives react on instinct. They defend individualism as if it were synonymous with freedom, as if America were built by atomized individuals pursuing private happiness alone.

That instinct is understandable,but it’s wrong.

The deeper problem with Mamdani’s statement is not that he criticizes radical individualism. On that point, he’s half right. The problem is that he assumes the only alternative to extreme individualism is state-enforced collectivism. And many modern conservatives, having forgotten their own history, unknowingly accept that same false framework,just from the opposite side.

The truth is older, richer, and far more demanding.

There are not two visions for society. There are three.

The Pagan Left’s Mistake: The State as Substitute for God

Mamdani’s collectivism is not communal in the historic sense. It is bureaucratic. It does not grow organically from shared moral commitments, faith, or covenant. It is imposed from above, administered by the state, and enforced through policy.

This is the core error of modern left-wing collectivism: it treats government as the primary source of meaning, obligation, and care. The state becomes the family. The state becomes the church. The state becomes the moral arbiter.

But this vision cannot produce the “warmth” it promises.

Why? Because real community cannot be coerced. Love cannot be legislated. Sacrifice cannot be compelled without becoming tyranny. When collectivism is enforced by government rather than sustained by shared faith and moral law, it inevitably hollows out the very bonds it claims to strengthen.

History has demonstrated this repeatedly. State collectivism does not create solidarity; it replaces responsibility with dependency and substitutes bureaucratic management for genuine human obligation.

Yet Mamdani’s mistake is not unique to the left.

The Pagan Right’s Mistake: The Self as God

Modern American conservatism often responds to collectivism by doubling down on radical individualism; treating personal autonomy as the highest good and government restraint as the sole measure of freedom.

But this vision, too, is deeply un-Christian and historically alien to America’s foundations.

Extreme individualism assumes the human person is self-created, self-directed, and self-justifying. It rejects obligation unless freely chosen and resents authority unless voluntarily affirmed. In practice, it produces isolation, fragmentation, and social decay.

A society of individuals without shared moral commitments does not remain free for long. It becomes ripe for precisely the kind of state intervention individualists fear,because when families, churches, and local communities collapse, government rushes in to fill the void.

This is the irony many irreligious conservatives miss: radical individualism does not protect us from collectivism. It prepares the ground for it.

What America Actually Was: Covenant, Not Coercion

America was not built by collectivists or by libertarians.

It was built by covenant people.

The Pilgrims and Puritans who shaped early New England did not organize society around state control, nor around individual autonomy. They organized it around shared religious commitments, mutual obligation, and moral law rooted in Christianity.

Their communities were tight-knit, demanding, and unapologetically ordered. Rights were inseparable from duties. Freedom was understood as the ability to live rightly, not merely to choose endlessly.

Families were strong. Churches were central. Local institutions governed daily life. Authority existed,but it was personal, proximate, and accountable.

This is why early American society could sustain both liberty and cohesion without a massive bureaucratic state. Social order did not depend on constant government intervention because it was upheld by shared belief and disciplined community.

That is the tradition both the modern left and right have abandoned.

The Real Alternative: Ordered Liberty Under God

Christianity rejects both false gods: the god of the state and the god of the self.

It teaches that human beings are made for community,but not mass society. For obligation,but not coercion. For freedom,but not autonomy without limits.

What Scripture and Christian history offer is ordered liberty:

• Liberty constrained by moral law
• Authority limited by accountability
• Community rooted in covenant, not compulsion

In this vision, government has a role,but a bounded one. It protects order and justice; it does not manufacture meaning or replace natural institutions.

Likewise, the individual matters,but not as a sovereign unto himself. Man is accountable to God, bound to family, responsible to neighbor, and situated within a moral order he did not invent.

This is the vision that once animated America,and it is the only vision capable of rebuilding our cities without destroying our souls.

Why This Matters for New York,and Beyond

The crisis of modern cities is not merely economic or political. It is spiritual.

New York does not suffer because it lacks collectivism, nor because it lacks individualism. It suffers because it has lost the institutions that once mediated between the person and the state: churches, families, moral authority, and shared belief.

You cannot fix that by empowering bureaucrats. And you cannot fix it by celebrating isolation as freedom.

The path forward is harder,but truer.

It requires Christians who refuse false choices. Who reject both secular collectivism and secular individualism. Who are willing to rebuild institutions, reclaim cities, and reassert moral order,not through force, but through faithfulness.

America does not need to choose between Mamdani’s collectivism and libertarian individualism.

It needs to remember who it was before it forgot God.

(To be added)

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