“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

—New New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his speech yesterday to too many ignorant voters who have no idea what he’s talking about and what they are in for.

Choosing that “Bananas” clip from the Ethics Alarms Hollywood clip archive was too easy; not only is it one of my favorites, but other pundits and social media wags has already made the connection to Woody’s Allen’s fictional South American country of San Marcos. And Mamdani’s open embrace of communism in that sentence was, indeed, bananas. I am sorely tempted to just leave the post at that: it’s res ipsa loguitur. It speaks for itself.

Yet it doesn’t speak for itself: that’s the scary part. That is what our education system’s collapse into incompetence and indoctrination has brought us. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” wrote George Santayana in his 1905 book, “The Life of Reason.” The average American not nearing retirement age is likely to say, upon hearing Mamdani’s seductive threat, “Collectivism! Sounds good to me!” as well as “Who’s Santayana?”

I have alluded several times to my one, fortuitous one-on-one conversation with futurist Herman Kahn in the Eighties. He’s forgotten now (“Who’s Herman Kahn?”), but was then regarded as the smartest man in America. I know I’ve certainly never met anyone smarter. Herman told me that he had realized that societies periodically forget everything they have learned over the years, decades, centuries and millennia. People take things for granted because “it’s always been this way,” then forget why traditions, policies, laws and values exist. They decide, “Let’s try this,” forgetting that “this” had already been tried, often many times, with disastrous results.

So they dive into the “new” idea, and chaos reigns. People die, nations fail. Then the bad ideas and horrific mistakes re-teach the lessons that once were accepted as obvious. Kahn also noted that some of the forgotten lessons are re-learned too late to save society from permanent harm. The Sixties, which is the earlier period of “The Great Stupid” we were discussing that day, gave us socially acceptable promiscuous sex, the acceptance of baby-killing as birth control, the resulting normalization of children born out of wedlock, and the scourge of recreational drug use. The latest “Great Stupid” has made our cities try eliminating the police. It has given us open borders. It has caused parents to encourage their children to switch genders if they, you know, felt like it. You can easily add more to that list.

Now large swathes of the population don’t recall what “collectivism” brought to the societies of Russia, Cuba, China, Cambodia and other victims of its “warmth.” The world had seemingly learned that hard lesson of history in 1989, when the Communist states in the Soviet Union began falling like big, red dominoes. A few years later, my late wife and I spent two weeks in Moscow to adopt a baby boy, and saw the squalor that was the reality of Russia outside of the few blocks the regimes there allowed to be shown on television. The contrast with what we were used to in the United States was stunning. I remember Grace and I passing dozens of people in rags living on the streets, warmed by bonfires, and touring the sad, crumbling orphanages and pensioners’ homes where Russia warehoused its abandoned children (who were almost never adopted by locals because they were so poor) and military veterans. I turned to Grace and exclaimed, “We grew up being terrified of this place? It’s a Third World country! They weren’t rivals! It was pure illusion.”

Yet yesterday, Mayor Mamdani’s passionate endorsement of that failed philosophy and government system won cheers and applause. Morons. And we allowed them to be made into morons.

In 2012, the late Rush Limbaugh, a clear thinker if often an undiplomatic one, said on his show that the “progressive’ argument… assumes there must be someone or some few who do have all the knowledge and information. We just have to find, train, and hire them to run the government’s agencies. Friedrich Hayek called this collectivism’s ‘fatal conceit.’ The idea that a few bureaucrats know what’s best for all of society, or possess more information about human wants and needs than millions of free individuals interacting in a free market is both false and arrogant. It has guided collectivists for two centuries down the road to serfdom — and the road is littered with their wrecked utopias.”

“Who’s Rush Limbaugh?” “Who’s Friedrich Hayek?” “Who’s Josef Stalin?” Also “Who’s Thomas Paine?” “Who’s John Chisholm?” “Who’s Davy Crockett?” Who’s Teddy Roosevelt”? “Who’s Thomas Edison”?

The Great Stupid has entered a new chapter in New York City, and what is going to happen is not in doubt. The only question is how much damage will be done before the Mad Left re-learns the lessons of the past, and the public holds it responsible.

ADDED (1/3): I regret to report that my otherwise distinguished, wise, intelligent but Trump Deranged retired lawyer Facebook friend re-posted with approval Mamdami’s whole speech, and described it as “a breath of fresh air” as if collectivism isn’t the stalest, most choking “air” imaginable. He really did, No, I’m not kidding. A learned, intelligent man publicly approved of that huckster’s irresponsible Marxist crap. Wow.

I excerpted this post and adapted it into as restrained and respectful a reply as I could. (I left out “Morons!)