What a news cycle we're having.
In just the past week, we've had exposure of massive fraud in the state of Minnesota, the U.S. military's removal of Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, widespread protests across Iran calling for the end of the Islamic regime, and the swearing in of New York City's new socialist mayor Zohran Mamdani.
These seemingly unrelated items have one important thing in common, and that is that they reveal even more about the American left, its disdain for liberty and the rule of law, and its love affair with authoritarian collectivism.
YouTuber Nick Shirley and his research partner David Hoch exposed more than $100 million in fraud being perpetrated by Somalis in Minneapolis charging the state for empty child care centers, fake adult care facilities, and healthcare transportation services that provide no health care transportation.
Democrats went ballistic. Not, mind you, over the theft of taxpayer dollars, nor the corresponding impact on social services to Minnesota residents with actual needs.
No, what really upset the left — including the reliably worthless legacy media — was the fact that a young man armed with just a mic and a phone camera was able to blow the story wide open.
Despite their efforts to discredit Shirley, the conflagration has been too large to contain. Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., has been forced to end his reelection campaign. (If the latest buzz is accurate, he'll be lucky if that's the worst of the consequences; more information is coming out indicating that Walz' office had been apprised of the fraud but did nothing.)
And citizen journalists in other states are now conducting similar investigations.
Right on cue, here came the protesters, holding signs to allege "racism" and show their support — not for beleaguered Minnesota taxpayers but for the Somalis accused of fraud.
That brings us to the left's reaction to the U.S. military's deft extraction of Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela. Maduro is a thug who has terrorized his own people and used the country as a launching pad for narco-terrorism.
Warrants for his arrests have been pending in New York, and the Biden administration issued a $25 million reward for his capture.
Notwithstanding the bipartisan consensus about Maduro, leftists decided to take to the streets to protest on his behalf.
In most instances, those who are damaged by the left's ideologies aren't in the same frame as the virtue-signaling protesters themselves, so it's easier for them to pretend to care, and harder for the average person to see the disconnect and deception.
Not this time.
In almost simultaneous split-screen, we could see the indoctrinated and appallingly ill-informed marchers in their sullen formations, denouncing the removal of dictator Maduro, purportedly "in solidarity" with the Venezuelan people, while a quick change of the channel or internet search revealed throngs of actual Venezuelans weeping with joy at the news that Maduro was gone.
These celebrations were taking place not only in the streets of Caracas but in every country where the eight million-plus Venezuelans have fled since socialist Hugo Chavez took power in 1999: Colombia, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and the United States.
Maduro and his predecessor Chavez took what was the wealthiest country in South America, nationalized its industries, confiscated private property and imposed socialist policies, utterly destroying its economy (which I wrote about 10 years ago).
The Chavez/Maduro regimes bled the country dry and left the population with neither food nor medicines nor any other basic life essentials. Venezuelans who didn't flee the country were reduced to abject poverty, prostitution, eating zoo animals and foraging from garbage trucks.
And civil rights?
There were none.
Political opponents were thrown in prison.
Elections were meaningless.
Maduro lost the 2024 presidential election but refused to leave office.
Minnesota and Venezuela demonstrate that leftist protesters claiming to support the "rule of law" and "the people" care no more about international law or the citizens of foreign countries than they do domestic law or our own countrymen here.
Oh, but there's more.
Zohran Mamdani, the new mayor of New York City, was sworn in on Jan. 1.
An avowed socialist, Mamdani promised New Yorkers in his inaugural address that he would "replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."
Such "warmth" would no doubt come as a surprise to the 100 million-plus people who died under collectivist regimes in the 20th century.
Mamdani's tenant housing czar, Cea Weaver, is under fire for social media posts in which she calls home ownership a form of "white supremacy," endorses a "no more white men in office platform," and advocates for government confiscation of property, shrinking the value of real estate, impoverishing "the 'white' middle class," and electing "more communists."
Those positions are not only unconstitutional and un-American, they have produced poverty and economic devastation everywhere they've been tried.
Weaver is a Bryn Mawr graduate; is that what passes for an education at our most prestigious (and most expensive) colleges and universities? (Hint: Apparently.)
And then there's Iran, where millions of citizens have been in the streets, day and night for more than a week, demanding the downfall of the Islamic regime, the restoration of the Pahlavi monarchy and civil rights for Iranian citizens. These are monumental events —what do we hear about that from the traditional media or left-wing activists?
Crickets.
All of which tells you everything you need to know about the performative fraud of the left: They purport to care about "the people," but defend thieves and criminals, and support dictators and authoritarian regimes that deny citizens basic human rights and necessities of life.
Their ideologies and sense of self-importance are much more important to them than the suffering inflicted by the policies they espouse on the "people" they pretend to care about.
As Mamdani bragged, they elevate the "collective" over the individual.
But they ignore that "people" is simply an aggregation of individuals, because individuals are just a hindrance to collectivism.
Professor Laura Hollis is an attorney and university professor who has taught courses in law and business for more than 30 years. Her legal publications have appeared in the Temple Law Review, Cardozo Law Review and the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy. As a nationally syndicated columnist her work has been featured in dozens of print and online publications. Read reports from Professor Hollis — More Here.