Unkillable

     It’s been said innumerable times that “you can’t kill an idea.” It’s true, even if the notion of “killing” is only metaphorically applicable to something nonliving. Ideas cannot be quenched once and for all. It doesn’t even matter whether an idea has any advocates. If it has ever existed in the mind of even one man now deceased, it could rise again.

     The world is in a flutter over the American operation to capture Nicolas Maduro and his wife and extract them from Venezuela to face trial here. Good thing? Bad thing? American overreach? Violation of “international law?” Venezuelans worldwide don’t care. They approve of President Trump’s decision to send Delta Force to collect the miscreant. I find myself in agreement with them.

     Maduro, you may recall, “inherited” the office of Maximum Leader from the late Hugo Chavez. Chavez, Venezuela’s first openly socialist president, swiftly dismantled the country upon accession to the presidency. He seized, nationalized, and suppressed. He ignored Venezuela’s constitution, took total control of the machinery of election, and essentially prohibited organized political opposition. He took the richest and most successful nation in South America and transformed it into a violent, poverty-stricken hellhole.

     Maduro took Chavez’s position and intensified his policies. Whether he did so because he sincerely held socialist convictions or because he just liked wielding power is unknown. Venezuelans starved, stole, cannibalized, and fled. Maduro never relented, no matter how severe the poverty and squalor became. But now he’s gone, and ordinary Venezuelans are openly rejoicing.

     But some people can’t – or won’t – learn from others’ bad experiences. New York City has just elected a Muslim Communist as its mayor.

     The consequences are already coming:

     New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has appointed Cea Weaver as the Director of the City Office to Protect Tenants. Presumably, a position intended to stand behind the rights of housing tenants against the property owner. However, Ms. Weaver has some remarkable views on private property and home ownership.
     In this video clip below you will notice Ms. Weaver outline how homeowners will need to modify their view on their property ownership to reflect a new municipal perspective that considers all individually owned property to be part of a new collective property viewpoint as controlled by city government.

NYC Mayor Mamdani's Tenant Director, Cea Weaver:

"We'll transition from treating property as an individual good to a collective good. Whites especially will be impacted." pic.twitter.com/RZSdCs8oEa

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) January 5, 2026

     Thought that apartment building was yours, Big Apple resident? Thought that condominium was yours? Thought that brownstone was yours? Nope. There’s no longer any private property in the Five Boroughs of New York. It’s all part of a “collective good” that will be administered by the city government.

     Watch your ass, especially if you’re white. Heap Big Tenant Protector Cea Weaver has given you notice.

     The remarkable thing about this is how unabashed Mamdani and his cohort are about it all. They’re right out front about their convictions and their policies. Are they sincere, are they playing for power, or are they just cat’s-paws for a larger, shadowy network of power-mongers? Does it matter? The consequences won’t vary with how earnest they are. New York City is about to become Pyongyang on the Hudson.

     If Nicolas Maduro is allowed to read a newspaper, he must be laughing his slats off at this development.

     I used to believe that the seductions of socialism required that its target population be ignorant of its record in power. I can’t believe that any longer. New Yorkers may be foolishly attached to the Democrat Party, but as a rule they’re neither ignorant nor stupid.

     The Russians deposed their Soviet masters. The Warsaw Pact nations did the same. At least one of them – Romania – executed its former ruler. The sole remaining bastions of Communism are Cuba and North Korea.

     And New York City.

     The events of the late Twentieth Century killed several socialist / Communist regimes. It did not kill the Communist ideology. But the Communist ideology may be about to kill New York, at one time regarded as the greatest city in the world.