AmFree Chamber’s CEO, Gentry Collins, published a new op-ed in the Washington Examiner on how AmFree Chamber intends to play a pivotal role shaping the future, especially around the ongoing debate our country is having over rugged individualism versus socialism. Check out a few excerpts below:
“From the early 20th century through today, societies organized around individual liberty, private enterprise, and voluntary cooperation have produced outcomes unmatched in human history. In 1900, average life expectancy in the United States hovered around 47 years. Today it exceeds 75. Extreme poverty collapsed. Literacy became universal. Technological innovation—from antibiotics to air travel to the Internet—transformed daily life not through central planning, but through competition, entrepreneurship, and personal initiative.
These gains were not accidental. They emerged because individuals were free to take risks, challenge orthodoxies, start businesses, and keep the rewards of their labor. When millions pursue their own advancement under the rule of law, society advances with them.
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It is against this backdrop that rhetoric from the New York City mayor deserves scrutiny. When Zohran Mamdani invokes ‘the warmth of collectivism’ as an alternative to American individualism, he echoes a familiar—and historically dangerous—romanticism. Collectivism always sounds compassionate in theory. In practice, it requires someone to decide whose needs come first, whose ambitions are permitted, and whose dissent must be silenced for the ‘greater good.’
America’s success did not come from forcing people into sameness. It came from allowing them to be different—unequal in outcomes, yes, but equal in rights and opportunity. Over time, that freedom became the greatest engine of upward mobility ever devised. Immigrants arrived with nothing and built lives of dignity. Workers became owners. Ideas born in garages reshaped the world.”
You can read the full piece here.