Once upon a time, George Will was a conservative.
I'm not sure what he is anymore after his TDS drove him to vote for Joe Biden. Even if he didn't want to vote for Donald Trump, voting for Biden seems like a denial of everything he was before. It's certainly not a conservative position.
But what he said on Friday on HBO's "Real Time" with Bill Maher was in some ways even more surprising than that.
Maher and Will were talking about Democrat NYC mayoral race nominee, Zohran Mamdani. Maher went hard against Mamdani, saying he says "the things that communists say. I mean, he wants free grocery stores, free buses." But it was Will's response that was surprising... when he said he wants Mamdani to win.
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"Every 20 years or so, we need a conspicuous, confined experiment with socialism so we can crack it up again," Will argued. He continued:
Socialists' slogan used to be, 'workers of the world, unite,' 'you have nothing to lose but your chains.' The new socialist slogan is, 'Trust us, this time it won't be a mess.' So, you know, when the post-war labor government in Britain was about to get started, one of their leading lights was a socialist named Aneurin Bevan.
He said, 'What could go wrong?' He said, 'We have a nation bedded on coal, surrounded by fish. It would take an organizational genius to have a shortage of either.'
In three years, they had a shortage of both. That's socialism.
I understand his point, that he thinks it will teach people who don't understand now.
The problem is that if Mamdani wins, it means a lot of suffering, and not just for the people in New York. Because of New York's importance, it's going to lead to more leftism infecting and hurting people. And it's silly to think it would be "confined." It's like a virus - if you let it live, it spreads.
We don't need another example of socialism's failure - we already have had plenty of examples. When it fails again and they don't give up power, then what? It's real people, it's not just an esoteric "experiment" without consequences. Mamdani and others would argue away the bad results as the fault of someone else, just as we saw Biden do. People on the left will believe it, just as they fall for whatever pablum the left pushes now.
Wanting Mamdani to win is similar to voting for Biden rather than Trump - a bad idea all around and not well thought out.
We have to fight radical leftism's rise whenever it rears its ugly head.
Editor’s Note: Zohran Mamdani is an avowed Democratic Socialist and has a real chance to become the next mayor of New York City.
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