American politics once revolved around ideas — tax reform, national defense, energy independence, health care. But one side of the aisle has abandoned the work of persuasion for the theater of grievance. The modern left no longer campaigns on what it can build but on what has supposedly been done to it.
Victimhood has become the left’s organizing principle. The emotional currency of grievance has replaced the intellectual currency of ideas. That shift isn’t just cynical; it’s corrosive. It undermines the American spirit of self-reliance, accountability, and perseverance — the virtues that built this country in the first place.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
Consider New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Last month, he delivered a tearful campaign speech recalling how his “aunt stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she didn’t feel safe in her hijab.” The story went viral. Media outlets rushed to elevate it as another morality play about post-9/11 Islamophobia.
Within days, however, fact-checkers discovered that the “aunt” didn’t live in New York City — and wasn’t his aunt at all but his father’s cousin. The story collapsed, but the damage was done.
Even if the tale were true, Mamdani’s framing was an insult to truth. His version turned the “victim” of 9/11 into someone who merely felt uncomfortable. The real victims were the firefighters who ran into burning towers, the police who breathed toxic dust for months, the passengers of Flight 93 who fought back knowing they would die, the families who never saw their loved ones again. To recast that national tragedy as a story about personal unease is moral inversion.
Mamdani is no symbol of oppression. He was born in Uganda to two global elites: filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani. Educated at elite institutions, including Bowdoin College in Maine, he embodies privilege — not persecution.
He’s not alone. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has built her career on the same inversion. A graduate of Boston University, raised in a comfortable Westchester suburb, AOC is a product of the meritocracy she derides. Her father was an architect; her family owned a home. Yet her political persona depends on playing the perpetual underdog — the marginalized woman of color silenced by “the patriarchy.”
When criticized, she doesn’t answer with arguments but with emotion. Dissent becomes “hate.” Opposition becomes “bigotry.” As Newsweek once put it, “AOC’s weaponized victimhood undermines women.”
This inversion — privilege masquerading as oppression — reveals something deeper about the left’s political psychology. Victimhood now confers moral authority. The more wounded you appear, the more virtuous you become. Pain is power.
But grievance politics reshapes the citizen’s role in democracy. Instead of the proud American who builds and contributes, we get the dependent petitioner, perpetually wronged and perpetually in need of government rescue. The state becomes therapist and provider, not guardian of liberty.
That’s why so many progressive campaigns sound like group therapy sessions. The message isn’t, “Here’s how we’ll improve schools or secure the border.” It’s, “Here’s who hurt us, and here’s who must atone.” The goal isn’t reform — it’s retribution.
When politics becomes a contest of feelings, truth and accountability vanish. Success is no longer measured by safer streets, better jobs, or stronger families, but by how “seen” or “unsafe” someone feels. Emotional satisfaction replaces objective progress.
But the American promise was never about comfort. It was about courage — the willingness to build, to sacrifice, to endure. This nation doesn’t owe its strength to grievance but to grit.
Think back to 9/11. The real victims weren’t the politically convenient ones. They were the firefighters who ran toward the towers, the police who never came home, the husbands and wives who never got to say goodbye, the children who grew up without parents. To twist their sacrifice into a sermon on discomfort dishonors them.
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The contrast couldn’t be clearer. One version of politics says, “I was wronged, therefore I deserve.” The other says, “I was blessed, therefore I will serve.” The left has built a moral economy where pain is currency. Conservatives must offer a different creed — one grounded in purpose, gratitude, and resilience.
Freedom, not fairness, defines America’s promise. Adversity refines character; it doesn’t define it. As the nation nears its 250th birthday, we should remember who we are — a people forged by hardship and lifted by hope.
Let others compete for who has suffered most. We’ll compete for who can spread the most good. America’s story has never been written by its victims — only by its victors.
As New York City heads into its next mayoral election, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is doing few favors for the campaign of Zohran Mamdani — at least not for those who value coherence. Her remarks at a recent rally could serve as a Logic 101 case study in contradiction.
The problem isn’t limited to her message. The Democratic platform itself, and Mamdani’s campaign in particular, now rests on foundations so incoherent that one almost blushes to analyze them.
The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing.
Behind AOC, a man waved a sign that read: “Free Buses.” A perfect summary. She may imagine the crowds came to hear her and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) thunder against injustice, but the truth is simpler: Promise free things to people indifferent to truth, and you can fill any arena.
As a logic professor, allow me to walk through the highlights of her address. Think of it as a guided tour through the labyrinth of leftist reasoning — or rather, unreasoning.
AOC’s positions directly contradict what Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi said 30 years ago about immigration and public safety. The irony? In attacking Donald Trump, she’s also attacking them.
Her first contradiction concerns ownership. AOC claimed that New York City “belongs to the people of this country” but moments later insisted it “belongs to immigrants.” Well, which is it? Either she contradicted herself within two sentences, or she truly believes the city belongs to citizens of other nations. That would make sense only if you’re an international socialist calling on the “workers of the world” to unite.
She also called herself “a fascist’s worst nightmare” because she defends immigrants. Yet the fascists of the 1940s didn’t allow people to leave their countries. Republicans are merely asking migrants to follow the law. No fascist ever demanded less government power. Conservatives do. Fascists didn’t defend free speech; yet Elon Musk — whom AOC routinely attacks — is now a hero of speech and open debate.
Next came her invocation of the Confederacy and Jim Crow. Someone should tell her: The Confederates were Democrats. The segregationists were Democrats. The architects of slavery, redlining, and resistance to civil rights — all Democrats. Why should anyone believe the same party now represents moral progress? The left ruins the cities it governs and then blames everyone else. It’s the political version of DARVO: deny, attack, and reverse victim and offender.
Then came her favorite populist line — that her opponents are “funded by billionaires.” Public records tell a different story. Plenty of billionaires bankroll her and her fellow radicals. How does she say it with a straight face? Remember our friend with the “Free Buses” sign: He’s not there for philosophy — he’s there for freebies.
AOC then delivered a sermon on intersectionality, the academic creed of Kimberlé Crenshaw: all “oppressed” groups united by one great villain — the white, Christian, heterosexual male.
Picture a wheel: The hub is the white Protestant man, the spokes are every “marginalized” group on earth. AOC’s list was textbook: “This city was built by the Irish escaping famine, Italians fleeing fascism, Jews escaping the Holocaust, black Americans fleeing Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, Native people standing for themselves, Asian Americans coming together.”
For AOC and the radical left, grievance is the very air they breathe. Humanity divides neatly into identity blocs, locked in eternal conflict — and at the center of every injustice stands the Christian West. She closed the circle by declaring that American history is defined by “class struggle,” the dialectic Marx demanded.
AOC contradicts herself, defines ‘the American people’ as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance.
Her introduction of Bernie Sanders confirmed it. “Senator Sanders,” she said, “is the foremost leader and advocate for labor and class struggle in the United States.” At least she’s honest. Sanders is an international socialist — otherwise known as a communist — and AOC’s crowd now wears that label proudly.
But a 1990s-era Hillary Clinton would instantly see the contradiction: You can’t be both pro-American worker and pro-open borders. Clinton was a national socialist (minus the genocidal agenda); Sanders and AOC are international socialists. The alternative to both isn’t fascism — which is also a species of national socialism — but the American republic: constitutional rule, checks and balances, a Bill of Rights, and a government that protects its citizens from threats foreign and domestic.
For those wondering whether any theology slipped into AOC’s secular revival meeting — it did, but only in parody.
In older times, an evil spirit could be tested by whether it could quote scripture correctly. By that standard, AOC’s spirit fails. She told the crowd we must “accept our neighbor as ourselves.” Not love — accept. The difference is enormous.
To love your neighbor is to will his good. To “accept” your neighbor, in AOC’s lexicon, is to affirm whatever destructive path he chooses. When a neighbor wants to mutilate his body for a sexual fetish, love warns him against harm. AOC’s “acceptance” cheers him on. Her mercy kills.
The Christian calls sinners to repentance and faith in Christ. The radical left calls that “hate speech.”
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By now, any logic student would have learned the lesson: AOC contradicts herself, defines “the American people” as everyone but American citizens, and divides humanity into tribes of grievance. Her creed depends on intersectionality — a doctrine that scapegoats not just white men, but all Christians who refuse to bow before the new secular orthodoxy.
If that student left disappointed by the quality of public rhetoric, he’d still leave wiser. Over the gates of hell, Dante wrote: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.” Over the platform of the radical left, one might inscribe a similar warning: Let none who expect coherence enter here.
The modern left doesn’t appeal to reason. It despises reason as a tool of “European colonialism.” Instead, it appeals to envy, resentment, lust, and the eternal promise of something for nothing — free buses for all.
The American republic will not survive if its citizens trade reason for rage. To preserve it, we must expose the incoherence at the heart of the left’s new religion. Free buses to a ruined city are no substitute for freedom itself.
Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took the stage at a rally for NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani with a thunderous speech.
“We are not the crazy ones, New York City. We are not the outlandish ones, New York City. They want us to think we are crazy. We are sane,” AOC boomed.
“Jews escaping Holocaust, black Americans fleeing slavery and Jim Crow, Latinos seeking a better life, native people standing for themselves, Asian-Americans coming together in Queens, in Brooklyn, in the Bronx, in Manhattan, in Staten Island, in this country,” she yelled.
BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales can’t help but laugh, though she is well aware of the disaster that looms in New York City.
“There’s no way that anyone else gets elected as the mayor of New York City, and this guy is going out there telling fake stories about his aunt. So, we’re supposed to believe, what, that it was the Muslims that we really actually should feel sorry for after 9/11?” Gonzales says, referring to Mamdani’s recent statement that his hijab-wearing aunt was a victim in the aftermath of 9/11.
BlazeTV contributor Matthew Marsden is also concerned, saying that we not only have a “communist infiltration in the United States,” but an Islamic one.
And Mamdani is using the term “Islamaphobic” against those who recognize what’s happening.
“It really has been fascinating to watch him try to use this Islamophobia term. I would say, I will agree with him in part. I do agree. I am actually very scared of Islam,” Gonzales says.
“I just don’t agree that it is unreasonable, which would be the phobia part. ... I am afraid. I just don’t think that it’s some sort irrational fear, is the thing,” she adds.
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At a packed rally in Queens on Sunday, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani reinforced his far-left vision for remaking America’s largest city.
Among his proposals: government-run grocery stores, free public transportation, 200,000 government-built apartments, universal childcare, and a rent freeze for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments.
Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.
The price tag for Mamdani’s most ambitious ideas comes to nearly $7 billion a year — more than the city’s entire police budget.
Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, shared the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), two of the country’s best-known socialist stars. Both praised Mamdani as the future of progressive politics.
Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani claims he can fund his agenda by taxing the rich and targeting corporations. He wants to raise the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and increase the city’s income tax by two percentage points for anyone earning $1 million or more.
Those ideas have energized his base and helped him surge in the polls. Yet his lead is not secure. Critics from both parties warn that Mamdani’s high-tax, high-spending platform would drive wealthy residents and businesses out of New York, worsening the city’s economic and fiscal problems.
But Mamdani’s biggest obstacle isn’t fiscal — it’s philosophical.
Even in deep-blue New York, voters hesitate to hand power to a democratic socialist. Socialism’s record is clear: It limits freedom, crushes economies, and breeds instability.
To ease those fears, Mamdani’s campaign has begun to reframe socialism as a path to freedom rather than its enemy. At his rally over the weekend, he told the crowd: “No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. ... It is government’s job to deliver that dignity.” Then he added, “Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.”
In Mamdani’s view, freedom comes from the state guaranteeing life’s essentials — food, housing, transportation, childcare. To provide those things, government must seize and redistribute private wealth. Mamdani calls this process “delivering dignity,” which he equates with liberty itself.
That logic turns freedom on its head. Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.
This rhetorical sleight of hand is not new. It’s straight from the socialist and communist propaganda of the 20th century.
Article 39 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution claimed that socialism “ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens.” Fidel Castro’s 1976 Cuban Constitution promised “the freedom and full dignity of man” through a state guarantee of social services.
Even Joseph Stalin cloaked authoritarianism in the language of freedom. In a 1936 interview, he insisted that socialism was built “for the sake of real personal liberty,” arguing that “real liberty can exist only where there is no unemployment and poverty.”
Intentionally or not, Mamdani’s speeches echo those same lines. And he’s far from the first democratic socialist to do so. Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Olof Palme in Sweden, and Aneurin Bevan in Britain all used similar arguments to justify state expansion in the name of “freedom.”
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That’s no coincidence. Mamdani is a student of socialist history, and his rhetoric mirrors the Marxist premise that true liberty requires the abolition of private property. In his 1844 essay “Private Property and Communism,” Karl Marx wrote, “The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities.”
Every socialist movement since has repeated that creed, always promising “real freedom” while consolidating control over wealth, work, and speech.
History shows what those promises yield: less freedom, not more. The more government collectivizes decision-making, the less room individuals have to think, speak, or prosper.
New York City has enormous problems, but reviving the century’s old, failed ideas of socialism won’t solve them. If anything, they’ll accelerate decline.
The city’s revival depends on the principles that built it into a global capital in the first place — limited government, free markets, low taxes, and the liberty to rise through one’s own effort.
If Mamdani truly wants to bring dignity and freedom to New Yorkers, he should reject the hollow slogans of socialism and embrace the real promise of liberty that made America — and New York — great.
Republicans are not up against moderate Democrats who share basic assumptions about America's institutions and principles. Republicans are up against full-blown socialists.
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