Why the Revolution Never Ends

Michael Shellenberger and I dig up the roots of radicalism

It’s 2026, and New York City just installed a communist as its mayor. And everyone seems to have already moved on. Maybe it’s the ongoing chaos in Minnesota, maybe it’s just election fatigue, but we ignore this man at our peril.

Zohran Mamdani’s victory isn’t so much what shocks me—he’s charismatic, he ran against one of the worst candidates in recent history, and he made big campaign promises of “free this” and “free that.” Younger Americans don’t have the same allergy to socialism, communism, and all things Soviet that comes naturally to Gen Xers like myself.

After being sworn in by—of course—Senator Bernie Sanders, Mayor Mamdani launched into a full-throated attack on American values, rejecting “the frigidity of rugged individualism” in favor of “the warmth of collectivism.” As the saying goes, real collectivism has never been tried before!

When I spoke to Michael Shellenberger last month, he pointed out a different side of Mamdani. Not the polished, social media influencer spouting off “democratic socialist” clichés, but the resentful persona lurking beneath the surface.

The Darkness Behind the Smile

Mamdani’s victory speech last November wasn’t just triumphant. His smile eventually gave way to something else.

“He appeared genuinely angry at how Muslims had been treated in the United States,” said Michael Shellenberger during our recent Dad Saves America conversation. “I find that offensive.”

“We treat Muslims in the U.S. better than Muslims are treated basically anywhere in the world.”

Are there instances of discrimination or disrespect one could point to? Of course—but that doesn’t exactly explain why Mamdani would take his moment of victory to complain about opponents who “traffic in Islamophobia.”

His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is an academic specializing in “colonialism,” which is basically just a code word for Marxist gobbledygook. His globetrotting career bounced him between Uganda, the U.S., South Africa, and elsewhere, “criticizing” at every stop. For someone with so much criticism to offer every society he inhabits, he certainly has done well for himself along the way.

This is a common theme for leftist radicals—always criticizing, never satisfied, and often quite privileged.

Michael knows this type better than most. A self-described former radical leftist, he reflected on the psychology that drove him back in those days. “It’s exciting. You’re part of something important. There’s narcissism in it.”

“I am creating this future. I’m changing the world.” Well, what if I don’t want you to change my world?

I’d prefer an approach of “If you like your civilization, you can keep it.” Unfortunately for people like me, radicals don’t like our civilization, and they’re not waiting for our permission.

Are You Feeling the Revolution Yet?

The word radical comes from the Latin word for root. Although today it’s used to mean extreme, its original meaning was something closer to fundamental.

You’ve probably heard progressives say some version of “We need to address the root causes of illegal immigration/poverty/crime/etc.” Interestingly enough, they never seem to succeed in digging up those roots. Michael ironically remarked that the root cause framing of radicalism is itself “radical propaganda.”

“No, no, no, it’s not extremism. We’re just trying to get to the root of the problem.”

The word revolution has a similar double meaning. We use it to refer to an uprising against the existing power structure, but it also has a more literal, physical definition.

Technically, a revolution is a 360º orbit around a center point. If you copy-and-pasted that definition onto the other, you might get a bit confused. The goal of an uprising usually isn’t to end up exactly where you started. It’s to end up in the complete opposite direction.

If your starting assumption is that our civilization is mostly bad, then a 180º flip sounds like it’s worth a shot. It’s no wonder that progressives call just about everything racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic, etc.—they’re laying the groundwork for revolution.

Of course, the world 180º away isn’t actually a utopia. Just look at what followed the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or the Cuban Revolution, or the Iranian Revolution…

Convinced yet?

The magic of the American Revolution is that it wasn’t really a revolution at all. It was a fight to defend and strengthen American civilization against British meddling.

Based on the historical odds, the best-case scenario for a “real” revolution is that the revolutionaries are left dissatisfied and disappointed. President Mamdani will still be grumbling about Islamophobia as he moves into the White House.

Unfortunately, the revolutionaries rarely have that “Aha!” moment and realize that the revolution was pointless. They always bake in an excuse, and it usually involves demanding yet another revolution.

Michael highlighted a perfect example—when detransitioners realize that “gender-affirming care” didn’t actually improve their mental health or quality of life, the gender ideology radicals blame the “right-wing extremists and bigots,” who made it too taxing to access medical procedures or didn’t respect their new gender identities.

“The revolution failed? Time to hit the revolution button again!

Clearly we didn’t revolt hard enough the first time.”

Mass Spiritual Starvation

It’s one thing to look back at historical periods of revolutionary chaos and point out the various cause-and-effect relationships. Our explanations are usually oversimplifications, and sometimes way off-base, but we can at least find some lesson worth learning.

How about today?

Although they talk a lot about oppression, our modern American revolutionaries aren’t exactly Russian conscripts at the tail end of WWI. They often have legitimate frustrations and suffer from real problems, but nothing that stands out as revolution-worthy.

Now it’s time to get radical. Not radical in the extreme sense, but in the root cause sense. Michael argues that the roots of our revolutionary moment go far deeper than any particular political issue.

“It’s ultimately spiritual,” he told me. “It’s a disordered response to dealing with secularization, modernity, the human condition.”

Radicalism, in his view, is a substitute religion for people who’ve lost faith in God, family, and tradition. With the rates of religious deconversion and fatherlessness we’ve experienced over the past few generations, many people never were introduced to those structures in the first place.

“They don’t even recognize that they have spiritual needs,” Michael said. For them, the need for revolution is just an obvious fact—no explanation required. It’s a straightforward battle between good and evil.

That explains the messianic tone, the apocalyptic language, the refusal to compromise. It’s a spiritual crusade, not a set of policy prescriptions. In a culture that’s lost its grounding, radicalism doesn’t just feel righteous. It feels like salvation.

We can’t fight that with better slogans. We have to offer something real.

That includes truth, responsibility, meaning, and purpose. It means teaching gratitude for the good things built long ago that still serve us today. It means fixing real problems, but also waking people up to the fact that revolution isn’t just progress-on-steroids.