Penna Dexter

Newly-inaugurated New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani ran for office on a 4-point platform: rent freezes, free buses, free childcare, and city-run grocery stores.

In an essay for The Claremont Review of Books, Christopher Caldwell points out that these are the policy positions of the Democratic Socialists of America which, he says, “shows signs of turning into the main political organization of the political Left.”

These are bad ideas. There’s already a housing shortage. Mr. Caldwell says the rent freeze will lead to owners taking properties off the market. He predicts buses will become “rolling homeless shelters.” Government grocery stores will bring shortages. “Free” day care will require massive tax hikes.

It’s not just New York. Californians will vote on a proposal for a one-time wealth tax of 5 percent of the net assets of residents worth over a billion dollars. Even the governor worries such a move will exacerbate capital flight.

Who backs such ideas? Supporters of these socialist policies skew unemployed, underemployed and young.

Cultural commentator Rod Dreher points out “We have lived in America through a period in which the ideological Left has thoroughly marched through the institutions of American education, and radicalized instruction to fit its values.“

Manhattan Institute scholar Christopher Rufo studies and battles the Left. He told his podcast audience, that these are Marxist “almost Maoist ideas” He says the Left is going for “big structural change.” He warns, “That means asset seizures…the nationalization of industries, like healthcare, …ruinous levels of taxation.”

The Left acts shocked when the Right proves them wrong or defeats them in elections.. Rod Dreher’s response is: “They imposed a cultural revolution on the rest of us for most of this century and had no regard for how we thought and felt, because they were so morally certain they were on the Right side of History.”

Time will tell, they are NOT.