I happened to spend New Year’s Eve in the year 2000 and January 1st of 2001 in New York City. On the first morning of the actual new millennium (not the falsely celebrated one in 2000), I took the dizzying elevator up to the top of the Empire State Building and admired the iconic skyline. I wanted to commemorate the moment and had my photo taken with the Twin Towers in the background.
It was a time of innocence, when no one knew what would befall the free world nine months and ten days later. New York was bustling, invigorating, and safe under Giuliani, and so symbolically American that people on both sides of the political spectrum could revel in a genuinely good time together on New Year’s Eve at Times Square.
Fast-forward to December 31, 2023. My family and I were enjoying a festive drink at home in anticipation of 2024 and switching through the TV channels. We watched Paul Anka sing “Imagine” at Times Square. I have always instinctively disliked the lyrics of “Imagine,” despite the phenomenal musical talent of John Lennon and the Beatles, whom I adored in my youth.
Authors like Melanie Phillips have pointed out the fallacy of the message promoted by “Imagine.” Kathleen Hayes explains:
“Imagine there’s no countries | It isn’t hard to do | Nothing to kill or die for | And no religion too.”
What could be wrong with John Lennon’s “Imagine” — a song many of us listened to endlessly in high school — and his dream of a peaceful “brotherhood of man”? Everything, says Melanie Phillips in her brilliant new book “The Builder’s Stone: How Jews and Christians Built the West — and Why Only They Can Save It.”
There are things worth dying and, terrible as it is to contemplate, killing for. A society that no longer believes this is spiritually empty and threatened with collapse. Lennon’s anthem isn’t just saccharine (as those high schoolers often decide when they get older) but, in a sense, the perfect expression of what’s wrong today in the West.
Imagine my shock — no pun intended — when Paul Anka continued his performance with an adapted version of Sinatra’s magnificently emblematic song, in which “My Way” became “Our Way.” I knew that Anka had been the one who, mesmerized by the original French song “Comme d’habitude,” had composed the English lyrics of “My Way” especially for Sinatra. “My Way” is an archetypal American song, which evokes in my mind random images of cowboys, rangers, and the Marlboro man. I love its unapologetic and courageous individualistic message. Instead, Anka sang a collectivist version of the song, reflecting the new ideology of the Obama and Biden eras.
This new ideology reared its ugly head in Mamdani’s inaugural ceremony several days ago. Bromides such as “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism” have an emetic effect on anyone who has experienced that “warmth” amid power, heat, and food shortages. Just think of the communal apartments in the Soviet Union and other countries, where several families were forced to share a minuscule space, robbed of their privacy and dignity. Compared to this, I considered myself rather fortunate, since my family inhabited a one-bedroom apartment in Sofia, and I shared the bedroom with my grandparents, while my parents slept in the living room.
But back to Mamdani’s “collectivist warmth.” Socialist ideologues are adept language manipulators who ensnare innocent young minds with the false allure of a warm and fuzzy picture of a utopian brotherhood of men. However, they omit a crucial distinction that has to do with freedom and individual rights. Kindness, charity, and cooperation are good things when they are voluntary. People in frigid climates naturally help each other when someone gets stuck in the snow. However, if the government forces individuals to cooperate, donate, and sacrifice, then there is no virtue in such acts, since there is no free will behind them. Moreover, when the economy becomes centrally controlled and taxation skyrockets, there will be no wealth left to distribute but only, in Churchill’s memorable words, “the equal sharing of misery.”
Mamdani’s first actions affirmed his image as an “intersectional” promoter of “woke jihad.” He revoked various orders by the previous mayor that protected the Jewish community. He also swore on the Koran at his inauguration, an act that the leftist media heralded as a “historic” achievement. I find this deeply disturbing. It is one thing to be tolerant of different religions and treat all individuals as equal before the law, as countries like the United States and Israel do. It is very different, however, to treat antithetical ideologies and values as equal to ours and insert them into our political and social institutions.
Judeo-Christian and American values treat men and women of all races as created in the image of God and possessing equal inherent worth and rights. Islam and socialism do not. It is one thing to swear on the Bible in a U.S. court or another government institution. It is altogether another to swear on the Koran, which sends an unmistakable message about Mamdani’s allegiances and agenda.
Abe Greenwald provides a vivid illustration of what he calls “the woke jihad.”
In April [of 2024], a long-haired flower child on the campus of Princeton University was captured on camera. The picture, posted on social media, shows him sitting on his guitar case, guitar in hand, ready to play. Spread on the grass before him, completing this otherwise faithful portrait of hippiedom, is not a peace sign or a tie-dyed bedsheet but the flag of the terrorist organization Hezbollah. Look closer, and you’ll spot the keffiyeh around his neck. But what is incongruous about the picture — the pairing of hippie garb and jihadist imagery — is nothing of the sort in real life. This tree-hugging terrorist supporter is the moronic face of a harmonious marriage.
And an old Bulgarian proverb says: “He is not crazy who eats the pie but the one who gives it to him.” Those who elected Mamdani are as much at fault as those behind the movement that he represents. I have but a flicker of hope that many misguided voters will soon experience buyer’s remorse. I long to see New York City as the glorious symbol of Americanism that it once was when I ascended to the top of the Empire State Building on January 1, 2001.
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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