Individualism Versus Collectivism is on the Ballot

... in 2026... a slate of Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed candidates is on ballots... The question is no longer academic. It is on the ballot on November 3...

However, there is a different argument, rooted in older and more fundamental conflict between individualism and collectivism, that should be carefully considered by all Americans before going to the polls this year.

WHAT IS COLLECTIVISM?

... collectivism means the subjugation of the individual to a group - whether a race, a class, or a state makes no difference - for the sake of what gets called "the common good."...

That philosophy had a body count, and it is worth restating plainly because the people citing "democratic socialism" today rarely do. Collectivizing Soviet agriculture meant destroying the kulak class outright. By some estimates, six million people were murdered or starved to death...

China’s experience under Mao Zedong was worse still: as many as 65 million dead across his reign, with 30-40 million of those (roughly the population of California) starving...

"Collectivism" eventually fell out of favor in the West because it was too easily heard as a synonym for communism, which it largely was. What replaced it in polite conversation was the softer word "socialism,"...

INDIVIDUALISM

By contrast, individualism is... "habit or principle of being independent and self-reliant" and "a social theory favoring freedom of action for individuals over collective or state control." More than that, it holds that a person's life belongs to him; he has the right to live it by his own judgment, keep what he earns, and pursue values of his own choosing, free from a state claiming a prior right to any of it...

Individualism is closely aligned with human nature. It starts with the fact that people notice, invent, trade, and take responsibility as persons, not as interchangeable units of a plan...

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY EMBRACES COLLECTIVISM

None of those failures stopped the Democrat Party from drifting hard toward the European model during the Obama years... The Biden years continued the collectivism with a twist. Biden’s approach showed up less as formal nationalization than as directing private activity through the state...

AT STAKE IN NOVEMBER

Individualism/capitalism is a fundamentally different animal from the collectivist alternative being offered this fall by the DSA-influenced Democrat Party because the two systems are competing on what each believes a person is for...

That is the real choice on November 3... which theory of the individual gets a little more room to operate for the next two years, as well as control of Congress, which decides how much room either side actually has to shape America going forward...