J.D. Tuccille: Americans have only bad choices in the midterms

Article content

Housing, too. Cea Weaver, New York City’s director of the Office to Protect Tenants, claims that “private property including and kind of ESPECIALLY homeownership is a weapon of white supremacy.”

Article content

Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a socialist, clearly has no objection to such views in his administration. He vowed to “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

Article content

Tellingly, President Trump and Mayor Mamdani, while representing opposing political parties, enjoy something of a mutual admiration society. In a demonstration of horseshoe theory, the two met last year at the White House and showed few signs of discord. “Trump and Mamdani answered questions from reporters, both striking a remarkably cordial tone, with the president indicating he agreed with many of the mayor-elect’s ideas,” The Hill reported. This week, the two met again at the mayor’s invitation and Trump voiced his hopes for Mamdani to be a “great one.”

Article content

Perhaps those most at risk of suffering the heavy hand of government under either of the major parties are Jews. Renewed hostility to the world’s most traditional group of scapegoats is well-entrenched in the Democratic Party with a rebranding as “anti-Zionism,” but it’s also creeping unrevised into the GOP.

Article content

Article content

“(T)oo many Democrats are noticeably and shamefully silent when antisemitism comes from the far left,” Josh Gottheimer, a member of Congress from New Jersey, warned in May.

Article content

“For many Jewish Democrats, the Democratic Party is just the latest institution that welcomed us and is turning hostile,” agreed Howard Wolfson, a prominent Democratic strategist, when asked about the problem by Axios.

Article content

With regard to the Republican Party, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz cautioned in March that “I have seen more antisemitism in the last 18 months on the right than at any point in my lifetime.” He added that the ancient hatred is “gaining real purchase, especially with young people.”

Article content

Bigotry, it should be noted, is a negation of the individualism at the core of the liberalism (in the old sense, not the current nanny-knows-best usage) on which modern western civilization is founded. To treat people as members of a group and to despise them for a collective identity is to reject the value of individuals on which our liberty and prosperity is built. Both major U.S. political parties, in favoring “public goods” over private choices and touting the “warmth of collectivism” leave the door open for the revival of prejudices we had hoped were dead and buried.

Article content

Article content

“A true liberal … believes that, as much as possible, no one should push people around, standing over them with a gun or a fist to force them to do his will,” the economist Deirdre McCloskey wrote in her 2019 book, Why Liberalism Works.

Article content

But the country’s main political parties both reject that concept and insist they do Americans a favour by advocating for an order where the dictates of the collective, as interpreted and enforced by the state, prevail over individual liberty. It’s true that the rot isn’t as deep in the U.S. as it is in many peer countries, where authoritarian parties of the right and left reject markets and individualism. But it’s bad enough.

Article content

As the midterms approach, those of us who refuse to be controlled have few good options.

Article content

National Post

Article content