Our nation’s 250th anniversary is a time of celebration and fireworks, picnics and tall ships and family.
So of course Mayor Zohran Mamdani turned it into a lecture blasting America.
Mamdani retold the history of the United States Friday morning as an unending parade of horrors, an unwelcoming autocracy ruled by the wealthy and powerful.
Even the mass migration into Ellis Island is turned into a parable of the oppressed.
“They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand,” Mamdani said.
Scores of immigrants succeeded here not because of the freedom to start your own business, pursue your own ideas, and forge your own path.
No, it was “despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence.”
Sitting at George Washington’s desk, Mamdani said that when he looks at America, he sees “monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections,” “masked agents terrorizing our streets” and elections sold “to the highest bidder.”
Mamdani mentions he’s an immigrant himself, but completely ignores the fact that this country, which he says is so unwelcoming, made him the youngest mayor in the history of its largest city.
“Patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time,” Mamdani said.
Which is true. But the problem with Mamdani’s speech, and that of the 1619 project and college professors across the country, is that the United States is presented as only flaws.
The mayor had plenty to say about what’s wrong with the nation, but very little about what’s right. You can state, as Mamdani did, that we continue to strive for perfection, but it’s an empty promise if you pretend nothing has changed in our history and that the United States today is a dystopian force for evil.
A younger generation has been told again and again that we are irredeemable, and have taken the message to heart. You see it in the polls. You see it in the politics.
It’s July 4, 250 years after our Declaration of Independence, in a nation of prosperity, love, family and hope. Let’s celebrate with gratitude.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
