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There are moments when politicians and activists explain their philosophy so perfectly that you really don’t need to add much.

New York’s socialists gave us one Monday.

A coalition representing hundreds of small grocers and bodegas — many of them immigrant- and minority-owned — has gone to court trying to stop Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s plan for five city-backed grocery stores. The business owners argue that they’re being asked to pay taxes to subsidize competitors that will enjoy government support while selling groceries below ordinary market prices. The coalition says the stores could threaten businesses that families spent decades building.

Now that’s quite a predicament for the champions of the working class.

The people objecting aren’t Goldman Sachs. bThey’re bodega owners. They’re grocers.

They’re immigrant entrepreneurs who get up every morning, open the doors, pay employees, pay taxes, pay rent, deal with New York regulations and try to make enough money to come back tomorrow.

One East Harlem businessman whose family has operated its store for 25 years now faces the prospect of a city-backed grocery operation opening nearby. He told CBS New York simply: “I’m scared to get out of the business.”

Enter the Democratic Socialists.

NYC-DSA co-chair Gustavo Gordillo was previously asked what happens if one of these government-supported stores puts a neighborhood grocer out of business.

His response was breathtaking. “If one publicly owned grocery store … is enough to put someone out of business, then maybe they shouldn’t have been in that business in the first place.”

There it is. The compassion. The concern for the little guy. The tender socialist embrace of the immigrant entrepreneur. Maybe you shouldn’t have been in business in the first place.

Imagine a conservative saying that about a struggling minority-owned store. We’d have three days of cable-news panels and a congressional hearing.

But the story gets better.

Because Gordillo, defender of the working class and dispenser of advice about who deserves to remain in business, has recently been the subject of reporting about the $1.5 million Brooklyn home where he lives — a property purchased by his parents. Separate reporting says the property has undergone extensive renovations, while Gordillo has become one of the prominent public faces of New York City’s democratic socialist movement.

Karolos jumped in at exactly the right moment during the show.

“With a $1.5 million home.”

Thank you, Karolos.

Sometimes the producer saves me several paragraphs. Socialism really is a marvelous system when Dad handles the real estate.

This is what makes the Mamdani grocery experiment more interesting than another argument over whether five supermarkets will technically lower prices.

The issue is who bears the risk. The government can subsidize the store. The government can provide favorable real estate. The government can set prices.

And if the experiment loses money? Government doesn’t miss a mortgage payment.

Government reaches into the same taxpayer’s pocket again. The private grocer across the street doesn’t have that luxury.

Mamdani argues that five stores in a city with more than a thousand grocery stores won’t harm the marketplace and says the city can simultaneously cut burdensome regulations for existing bodegas. The administration points to existing subsidized market models and argues that the plan can lower grocery costs during an affordability crisis.

Fine. Then here’s my question: If New York has already identified dozens of regulations that make life harder for small grocers, why not start by getting government off their backs?

Why do we need government to become their competitor first?

That’s the part nobody ever explains satisfactorily. Government piles rules and costs onto businesses. Businesses struggle.

Government announces that capitalism has failed. Then government opens a competing business. Brilliant.

And somehow this was not the only socialist entertainment available Monday.

Down in Texas, Democratic Senate hopeful James Talarico provided his own tour through modern progressive theology.

In clips we played, Talarico declared that “poverty is violence,” “pollution is violence” and “prison is violence,” before suggesting that imagining a world without prisons isn’t so different from imagining a world without telegrams or cassette tapes.

That analogy deserves preservation in the Smithsonian. Cassette tapes disappeared because somebody invented better technology. Prisons exist because occasionally somebody commits murder. There is a slight distinction.

Then came a montage of other statements attributed to Talarico: Jesus was a “radical feminist,” God is “non-binary,” the southern border should resemble a front porch with “a giant welcome mat,” and modern science supposedly recognizes six biological sexes.

All while running for the United States Senate.

In Texas.

Say what you will about the new progressive movement — they’re making political opposition research remarkably inexpensive. Nobody has to dig through the archives. Just hand them a microphone.

Meanwhile, Florida’s Angie Nixon continues to be the political gift that apparently has no return policy.

She opened Monday’s Rush Hour explaining that she doesn’t want to abolish prisons — only for-profit prisons — and doesn’t want to defund police, just certain surveillance technology. Nixon has also spent the past several days supplying us with positions ranging from socialism to immigration to reparations and everything in between.

I promised myself we wouldn’t turn another entire show into the Angie Nixon Hour. I almost succeeded. But what connects Nixon, Talarico and the Mamdani crowd is something larger than any one candidate.

They aren’t hiding anymore. For years, American progressives seemed almost offended when conservatives called parts of their agenda socialist.

How dare you! That’s a smear! Nobody wants socialism!

Now candidates join the Democratic Socialists of America and explain that voters shouldn’t be frightened by the label. The movement has become much more comfortable saying plainly what it wants.

And, oddly enough, I welcome that. Let’s have the argument. If you believe government should operate grocery stores, say so. If you believe America should move toward Medicare for All, say so. If you want reparations, say so. If you believe prisons belong next to cassette tapes in the historical dustbin, please — by all means — tell the voters. I want the country to hear the whole sales pitch.

Because the most useful political debates aren’t the ones in which everybody hides behind consultant-tested language. They’re the ones where somebody finally tells you what he intends to do.

Monday gave us plenty besides socialism’s adventures in retail.

We had a widening U.S.-Canada trade fight, with Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatening retaliation over tariffs and Susan Collins warning about the potential impact on Maine industries.

We also had one of my more entrepreneurial moments.

After retired NBA player Enes Kanter Freedom was removed from a WNBA game amid a confrontation, I decided America may need a new basketball league. The No BS Male-Female League.

The NBSMF.

The principle is extremely complicated, so pay attention: You can play? Come play.

When I was growing up in St. Albans, Queens, girls showed up at the basketball court who were better than half the boys waiting to get picked.

And you know what happened?

They got picked.

Nobody convened a symposium about it. Nobody wrote a manifesto. Nobody checked identity categories. We wanted to win. Some of those girls could play their anatomy off, and if that meant I got picked after Lisa, then I got picked after Lisa. Such was life.

Perhaps America could rediscover a little of that philosophy.

Can you do the job? Can you play? Can your business compete? Can your policy survive contact with reality?

Because the more government tries to arrange every result in advance, the more absurd things become.

Especially when the people lecturing the little bodega owner about competition are doing it from a house Mom and Dad bought.

There was much more in Monday’s fastest hour in American media — immigration, California, Hakeem Jeffries’ mysterious meeting with Jared Kushner, the Canada tariff war, the Olympics and several moments in which I abandoned whatever rundown had been prepared for me and went somewhere else entirely.

That’s Rush Hour.

If you only have time to read, you’ve got the argument.

But the written version can’t reproduce Karolos dropping the $1.5 million-house line at precisely the right moment, my attempt to launch a professional basketball league in real time, or those occasions when even I don’t know what I’m about to say until I’ve already said it.

For that, you’ve got to hear the show.

Rush Hour airs Monday through Friday and moves quickly through the day’s hottest political stories, breaking developments and media absurdities. It is the fastest hour in American media because there is always more happening than the legacy media has time—or desire—to explain.

And if you want my daily stack of news and commentary delivered directly to you, sign up for The Daily BS here. It is free, arrives daily and, unlike a New York Democratic event, questions are not removed for exceeding ideological capacity.