Every July 20, our family celebrates our Americaversary, the day my mother and I arrived in America. My father, grandmother and great-aunt had been let out of the Soviet Union ahead of us so when we arrived on July 20, 1978, they awaited our arrival. 

We were free, and we were so happy, but the reality of what was going on in America at that time couldn’t be avoided. Jimmy Carter was president and would soon give what would be known as his "malaise" speech. Our new home of New York was in chaos. Crime was spiraling out of control and the previous summer’s blackout, called "the night of terror" because of the out-of-control crime, had exposed some deep rot across the city.

The times were worrying, but our family loved and appreciated the freedom. My parents tell stories about being able to say what they wanted for the first time in their lives. My grandmother and her sister had never imagined practicing our Jewish faith without fear. 

But the city and the country were in real crisis and even in our new American honeymoon phase it was hard not to notice.

WILL ZOHRAN MAMDANI PROTECT ALL NEW YORKERS? HE OWES THE JEWISH COMMUNITY AN ANSWER

Ronald Reagan would be elected two years later, and the country would begin a steady ascent. New York’s turnaround would take a little longer. When Rudy Giuliani became mayor in 1994, 1,561 were murdered in NYC that year, on average over four murders a day. The city was a cesspool. 

I was graduating high school that year and remember a lawless city where no one paid for the subway, drugs were everywhere and there were simply no rules.

Our family eventually left New York City in the COVID years because of the city’s once again steep decline. We had to go, for our children, and the main question we would get is how we held out as long as we did. The truth was, the eight Giuliani years were a marvel of good government in New York, and they were followed by 12 excellent years of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoralty. 

NEW YORK'S SOCIALIST NIGHTMARE IS JUST BEGINNING BUT THERE'S STILL A WAY OUT

The NYC blackout of 2003 was nothing like the one from 1977. This time the main story was a city coming together and helping each other. The city had changed for the better. Even after Bill DeBlasio was elected, it took awhile to undo the good policies of those 20 years. In DeBlasio’s first term he mostly coasted on the accomplishments of those who had done the work before him. New York seemed unbreakable.

But policies matter and so many bad ideas have harmed New York in the last few years. Not prosecuting criminals has led to widespread quality of life crimes. Marijuana legalization means that the whole city smells like weed all the time and other drug use is happening out in the open too. Some of the best public schools in the city were forced to remove their "screens" for admission, such as grades or attendance, and operate on a lottery basis, with predictable results. 

Now Zohran Mamdani, a self-described socialist, is in pole position to be New York’s next mayor. His policy ideas are everything bad pushed over the last decade but on steroids. His grasp of policies is tenuous, such as when he suggested government run grocery stores could lower prices by buying product in bulk. Only someone with extremely limited knowledge of any business could imagine all supermarkets aren’t already currently doing this. 

LEFT, LEFTER AND LEFTIST: DEMOCRATS COULD BE DEFINED BY RADICAL, BIG CITY MAYORS

But the very idea of government-run stores is a bad one. I come from a country that tried this and it led to widespread food shortages. The Mamdanis of the world never quite know how to reach the utopia they aim for and the rest of us suffer because of it. 

His comments about taxing White people are also very familiar. The socialist cause relies heavily on the idea that there is a class of people out there hoarding more than their "fair share." The cause needs an enemy and Mamdani is ready to turn New Yorkers against each other just like his socialist counterparts had done in places like the USSR. 

Then there’s Mamdani’s support for the "Globalize the Intifada" message. This is seen as targeting Jews, and it does of course, but globalizing the intifada means destroying Western civilization. It specifically means bringing "the uprising" to our doors in America. 

In the four years of the second Intifada against Israel, thousands of people died in suicide bombings and shootings. It wasn’t just Jews. Plenty of Christians and Muslims were killed too. 

A suicide bomber never stops to ask religion of the people he’s about to murder. This is what Mamdani will be globalizing. 

Americans should fear socialism and socialists. The philosophy is at odds with our free country and the equality it pushes never materializes and has failed every single time it’s been tried. America is great because of the ideas that make America great. 

With Donald Trump’s November election, we’re in an optimistic age similar to the one my family lived through a few years after our arrival. But the lesson of the bad times should be that everything can be undone and broken if we let it. 

We have a miracle of a country here, but we have to appreciate it and protect it from bad ideas and bad people who seek to destroy it.