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‘Rugged Individualism’ Leads to Community
The most fertile soil for collectivism is isolation.
During his inaugural address, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said, “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
Many people have skewered the second part of that statement—and rightfully so. For those who’ve endured it, the warmth of collectivism feels like hell on earth.
In the last century, communist regimes slaughtered more than 150 million people. Hundreds of millions more have suffered through scarcity and oppression. Collectivist regimes struggle to keep the lights on and produce enough toilet paper. So much for warmth.
But the first part of Mamdani’s statement deserves scrutiny as well. Merriam-Webster defines rugged individualism as “emphasizing personal liberty and independence, self-reliance, resourcefulness, self-direction of the individual, and free competition in enterprise.” Even if they wouldn’t use the term, this encapsulates the general beliefs of most Republicans and conservatives.
Mamdani implied that those of us who believe in these things suffer from a lack of human attachment. He implied we freeze others out, ignoring their needs. Presumably, he thinks this is done to pad our bank accounts.
As a supporter of rugged individualism, Mamdani’s caricature is utterly foreign to me.
I’m a husband and father of seven children. Life is full of bustle, not seclusion. There are music lessons, sports, speech classes, and church. My wife and I essentially run an unlicensed restaurant, laundromat, and taxi service. There are a lot of wonderful things about having a big family, but it’s not exactly a financial bonanza.
While the number of children I have is an outlier, my experience isn’t.
Republicans aged 25-64 are 15 percentage points more likely to be married than their Democratic peers. Republicans are 11 percentage points more likely than Democrats to be in a “very happy” marriage. In 2024, Gallup found a significant partisan marriage gap remained even after adjusting for demographic factors.
Conservatives who are childless and under 50 are more than three times as likely as liberals to say they definitely want children. Unsurprisingly, red states have significantly more babies than blue states.
The popular perception is that growing older makes people more conservative. That may be true, but strong evidence suggests that getting married and having children play a major role.
It’s the collectivists in the Democrat Party who desperately need people to remain as individuals. A 2024 Pew report found that 72% of never-married women lean Democrat. But among married women, it’s just 45%. Half of married women lean Republican.
A significant increase in marriage rates would be an existential threat to the modern Democrat Party.
Perhaps you can see the paradox. Adherents to rugged individualism are more likely to form familial units and have children.
Here’s why. Conservatives use personal liberty—not to isolate—but to create and join communities.
The most fundamental is marriage, which has major benefits. As Brad Wilcox notes in his book “Get Married,” married couples are happier and better off financially than singles. Strong marriages are good for society, too, because children do best when raised by their married parents.
There’s a long tradition of Americans freely joining together for other purposes, too. Alexis de Tocqueville remarked on our country’s many associations in his classic 1835 book “Democracy in America.”
“Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite,” he wrote. “Not only do they have commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but they also have a thousand other kinds: religious, moral, grave, futile, very general and very particular, immense and very small.” Don’t buy into Mamdani’s false dichotomy between individualism and collectivism. The voluntary associations formed by free individuals are far preferable to the coercion of communists.
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