{"id":92078,"date":"2026-01-07T08:21:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-07T08:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/92078\/"},"modified":"2026-01-07T08:21:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-07T08:21:07","slug":"about-that-rugged-individualism-jonah-goldberg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/92078\/","title":{"rendered":"About That \u2018Rugged Individualism\u2019 \u2026 – Jonah Goldberg"},"content":{"rendered":"

The day before the Trump administration captured and extradited Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, many on the right (including yours truly<\/a>) had a field day mocking something the newly minted New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, said during his inaugural address. The proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America proclaimed:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The phrase \u201cwarmth of collectivism\u201d offended many of us because \u201ccollectivism\u201d is widely understood as a generic label for extreme left-wing political systems.<\/p>\n

Understandably, the following night\u2019s big news\u2014the socialist dictator of Venezuela, itself a shining example of \u201cwarm collectivism,\u201d being removed at the point of a gun(boat)\u2014quieted the ideological brouhaha.<\/p>\n

But I think it\u2019s worth returning to something else Mamdani said in his inaugural address, and in that same sentence: \u201crugged individualism.\u201d<\/p>\n

The term \u201crugged individualism\u201d was coined<\/a> by President Hoover in 1928. But we have Democrats to thank for its immortality because Democrats\u2014and democratic socialists\u2014have been running against it, and against Hoover, ever since. FDR campaigned in 1932 by denouncing Hoover\u2019s \u201cdoctrine of American individualism<\/a>\u201d and never<\/a> really stopped suggesting that Hoover and his party were fanatically anti-government, favoring \u201cdevil take the hindmost\u201d capitalism.<\/p>\n

The attacks on Hoover and conservatives generally as libertarian zealots remain ingrained in the popular, journalistic<\/a>, and academic imagination to this day. And they were unfair<\/a> from the start. A progressive Republican who\u2019d served in the Wilson administration, Hoover was never the heartless advocate of do-nothing austerity his opponents painted. Indeed, government spending during Hoover\u2019s four years in office nearly doubled<\/a> in real terms (and, yes, Republicans controlled Congress).<\/p>\n

For generations, the hard left has framed every debate as between frigid, rapacious capitalism and nurturing, warm government help. The right often offers the mirror image of the American dream and free enterprise versus sinister, un-American collectivism in one form or another.<\/p>\n

This framing fuels political dysfunction and popular distrust because it renders political combatants blind to the reality of the status quo: America is neither a free-market utopia nor a free-market dystopia. Indeed, as an actual free market fanboy myself, I cringe when people call Trump a champion of unfettered capitalism. State capitalism<\/a>, maybe. But protectionism and industrial policy is not the capitalism of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.<\/p>\n

The suggestion that capitalism in America has no fetters is hard to square with the existence of a vast apparatus of regulatory agencies\u2014FCC, SEC, EPA, OSHA, FHA, etc.\u2014or the fact that roughly half<\/a> of all federal spending goes to entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.<\/p>\n

It is flatly preposterous to look at New York City in 2026\u2014or in 1986, or even 1936\u2014and see devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism at work. The city budget Mamdani inherited spends<\/a> $19.26 billion on public assistance. That money sits atop billions more in state and federal spending. There is a vast network of social workers, health and safety inspectors, sanitation workers, and educators among its more than 300,000 employees. Maybe they don\u2019t have enough. But that\u2019s not a regime of \u201crugged individualism\u201d either.<\/p>\n

Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the Mamdani ceremony last week, repeated his refrain about the need for the rich to pay their \u201cfair share.\u201d In 2022, millionaires in New York City made up less than 1 percent of tax filers, yet they paid<\/a> 40 percent of city income taxes. Is that a \u201cfair share\u201d? People can disagree, but it ain\u2019t nothing.<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s bad that the top 10 percent of American tax filers make nearly half<\/a> of the income in America\u2014and provide three-quarters of the income tax revenues. Maybe it\u2019s good that the average wage earner will receive more<\/a> in entitlements than they paid in. Maybe it\u2019s right that the poorest 20 percent of Americans receive roughly<\/a> $6 from the government for every dollar they pay in taxes. Perhaps we should be ashamed that we spend less<\/a> than France on social welfare programs but more than Switzerland and the Netherlands. Reasonable people will differ.<\/p>\n

But that\u2019s the point. Talking about an America that doesn\u2019t exist is unreasonable. It makes it harder to offer reasonable proposals for government action in any ideological direction. If people believe that the status quo is Wild West capitalism, then even attempts to cut red tape or reform public assistance sound cruel and unnecessary. And if the existing safety net counts as \u201crugged individualism\u201d to politicians like Mamdani, you can\u2019t\u2014or at least I can\u2019t\u2014blame critics for fearing his vision of \u201cwarm collectivism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The day before the Trump administration captured and extradited Venezuelan dictator Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, many on the right (including…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":92079,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[5057,30065,19777,2517,9,24,55,54,56,299,43533,5565,1211,2780,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-92078","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-bernie-sanders","9":"tag-capitalism","10":"tag-government-spending","11":"tag-medicare","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-new-york-city-headlines","15":"tag-new-york-city-news","16":"tag-ny","17":"tag-opinion","18":"tag-progressivism","19":"tag-social-security","20":"tag-socialism","21":"tag-taxes","22":"tag-zohran-mamdani"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92078","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92078"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92078\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92079"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92078"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92078"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92078"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}