GOOD AND HARD, FUN CITY: “New York City is About to be Governed by the Columbia University Student Body.”
William F. Buckley Jr. once quipped that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty. New York City is about to be governed by the Columbia University student body. A city that used to think of itself as grown up has just elected a mayor who seems the very embodiment of the American college student: uninformed, entitled and self-important, enjoying a regal quality of life that depends parasitically upon a civilization about which he knows nothing, yet for which he has nothing but scorn.
American college students regularly act out little psychodramas of oppression before an appreciative audience of diversity deanlets and associate vice-provosts of inclusion and belonging. Zohran Mamdani, the quintessential product of the academy, is poised to take such performative grievance to one of the biggest stages in the world. The results will not be pretty.
No they won’t (see also: New York in the de Blasio era), but: Let Them Burn It Down.
Let the left run their lab. Then, quietly and strategically, build alternatives. Offer lower taxes. Sharpen school choice. Rebuild neighborhoods. Attract employers with sensible rules. Invest in once-neglected towns that still believe in American possibility.
If Democrats want a crumbling, socialist, failing society in certain places, give them one. Let it be contained. Let it be visible. America will not fall because one city chooses differently. It will rise where people choose opportunity over ideology. That is the conservative playbook. That is our hope. And in the end, success will not be measured by who shouts the loudest. It will be measured by where people choose to live, work, and raise their kids.
Let them have their experiment. We will build the rest.
Regarding New York, Shana, they bought their tickets, they knew what they were getting into…
As for the rest of us:
State Department Issues Travel Advisory For New York City https://t.co/bHhIHN2Bid pic.twitter.com/SaN9BxSqsL
— The Babylon Bee (@TheBabylonBee) November 5, 2025