Mamdani’s false Tolerance Boulevard ends in darkness



Everybody knows the real victims of 9/11 weren’t the 3,000 murdered Americans or their grieving families. No, according to the new progressive hierarchy, it’s Zohran Mamdani’s second cousin — thrice removed, four times hijabed — who claims she was once offended on the subway. Allegedly.

So if you’re keeping score at home in the “words are violence” sweepstakes, here’s the latest update: Something that probably never happened is righteous if it helps an Islamic socialist become mayor of America’s largest city. Meanwhile, Virginia’s Democratic candidate for attorney general gets a pass for fantasizing about the murder of a Republican lawmaker and his family.

Nothing new under the sun. Just another civilization sprinting toward its chosen darkness, proud all the way.

You’d think New Yorkers might have enough self-respect not to be played so easily — especially when it comes to one of the most fateful days in American history. But no. Apparently Loki was right. They were made to be ruled — and by the very people who treat the ashes of Ground Zero as a holiday display.

I’d wager real money that at least one family member of a 9/11 victim will vote for Mamdani next week. Loki, it seems, must have read John Calvin at some point in his multiverse journey: When God wants to punish a rebellious people, He gives them wicked rulers.

The worldview beneath the wreckage

We can’t outrun our worldview. Because worldview is destiny. When a people deny reality, they descend into madness. That’s what’s happening to those voting for Mamdani. They are largely godless, and once you reject the author of reality, you’re on a short, steep slide toward hell.

Hell, for its part, knows how to work with human nature. The devil discovered long ago that our fallen desire to shake a fist at God rivals even his own. That’s how you get from watching the Twin Towers fall to, just 25 years later, electing a man who shares the same ideology as one of the hijackers.

Not secretly. Not reluctantly. These voters are proud of it. They’ll call friends and family “racists” and “Nazis” for disagreeing. Such is the will to power when you reject God: The world must be turned upside down and morality twisted into a hall of mirrors.

When even Ayn Rand saw the abyss

Ayn Rand, no friend of Christianity, at least saw the problem. In an interview late in life, she told Phil Donahue that without some objective truth in the universe, nothing else made sense. Why do we reason instead of acting on instinct like animals? Rand recognized, however dimly, that a world without truth collapses into nihilism.

But that clarity is rare. Rand was a unicorn. Most people in her camp never do the math. They end up voting for their captors, praising their murderers, and calling it freedom.

The short version is simple: If you’re not in Christ’s camp, you belong to chaos. There are no neutral parties. Hell is happy to let you think otherwise — right up to the moment the darkness slams the door shut.

The believer’s tension — and the city’s choice

Every true believer wrestles with the tension between judgment and mercy. We are commanded to love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength — and to love our neighbor as ourselves. You can’t be “nicer than God,” but you must strive to let mercy triumph over judgment whenever you can.

RELATED: Zohran Mamdani’s Soviet dream for New York City

Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

New York doesn’t care. The city long ago chose the darkness, which knows no such tension. Evil allows the illusion of tolerance until the moment comes to plant its flag.

By all means, take one more stroll down Tolerance Boulevard, Big Apple, and see where it ends. You’ll find it’s a one-way street to annihilation.

The math checks out

New York has made its peace with godlessness. First it worshiped the idol of corporate power. Then it voted for Sandinista Bill de Blasio’s Marxism. Now it’s ready to give the false god of Islam a chance to shatter its soul completely. The math checks out every time.

Nothing new under the sun. Just another civilization sprinting toward its chosen darkness, proud all the way.

God help us all.

Zohran Mamdani’s Soviet dream for New York City



At a packed rally in Queens on Sunday, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani reinforced his far-left vision for remaking America’s largest city.

Among his proposals: government-run grocery stores, free public transportation, 200,000 government-built apartments, universal childcare, and a rent freeze for the city’s one million rent-stabilized apartments.

Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

The price tag for Mamdani’s most ambitious ideas comes to nearly $7 billion a year — more than the city’s entire police budget.

Mamdani, a self-described democratic socialist, shared the stage with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), two of the country’s best-known socialist stars. Both praised Mamdani as the future of progressive politics.

Like Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, Mamdani claims he can fund his agenda by taxing the rich and targeting corporations. He wants to raise the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and increase the city’s income tax by two percentage points for anyone earning $1 million or more.

Those ideas have energized his base and helped him surge in the polls. Yet his lead is not secure. Critics from both parties warn that Mamdani’s high-tax, high-spending platform would drive wealthy residents and businesses out of New York, worsening the city’s economic and fiscal problems.

But Mamdani’s biggest obstacle isn’t fiscal — it’s philosophical.

Even in deep-blue New York, voters hesitate to hand power to a democratic socialist. Socialism’s record is clear: It limits freedom, crushes economies, and breeds instability.

To ease those fears, Mamdani’s campaign has begun to reframe socialism as a path to freedom rather than its enemy. At his rally over the weekend, he told the crowd: “No New Yorker should ever be priced out of anything they need to survive. ... It is government’s job to deliver that dignity.” Then he added, “Dignity, my friends, is another way of saying freedom.”

In Mamdani’s view, freedom comes from the state guaranteeing life’s essentials — food, housing, transportation, childcare. To provide those things, government must seize and redistribute private wealth. Mamdani calls this process “delivering dignity,” which he equates with liberty itself.

That logic turns freedom on its head. Only a socialist could argue that taking away people’s property rights and centralizing power enhances individual freedom.

This rhetorical sleight of hand is not new. It’s straight from the socialist and communist propaganda of the 20th century.

Article 39 of the 1936 Soviet Constitution claimed that socialism “ensures enlargement of the rights and freedoms of citizens.” Fidel Castro’s 1976 Cuban Constitution promised “the freedom and full dignity of man” through a state guarantee of social services.

Even Joseph Stalin cloaked authoritarianism in the language of freedom. In a 1936 interview, he insisted that socialism was built “for the sake of real personal liberty,” arguing that “real liberty can exist only where there is no unemployment and poverty.”

Intentionally or not, Mamdani’s speeches echo those same lines. And he’s far from the first democratic socialist to do so. Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Olof Palme in Sweden, and Aneurin Bevan in Britain all used similar arguments to justify state expansion in the name of “freedom.”

RELATED:Why Zohran Mamdani will be ‘one of the most catastrophic mayors ever’

Photo by Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images via Getty Images

That’s no coincidence. Mamdani is a student of socialist history, and his rhetoric mirrors the Marxist premise that true liberty requires the abolition of private property. In his 1844 essay “Private Property and Communism,” Karl Marx wrote, “The abolition of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities.”

Every socialist movement since has repeated that creed, always promising “real freedom” while consolidating control over wealth, work, and speech.

History shows what those promises yield: less freedom, not more. The more government collectivizes decision-making, the less room individuals have to think, speak, or prosper.

New York City has enormous problems, but reviving the century’s old, failed ideas of socialism won’t solve them. If anything, they’ll accelerate decline.

The city’s revival depends on the principles that built it into a global capital in the first place — limited government, free markets, low taxes, and the liberty to rise through one’s own effort.

If Mamdani truly wants to bring dignity and freedom to New Yorkers, he should reject the hollow slogans of socialism and embrace the real promise of liberty that made America — and New York — great.

Art or ‘sickie’ shrine? NYC’s giant phallic pink leg is creeping people out



Back in April, New York City unveiled a behemoth of a statue in the middle of Times Square called “Grounded in the Stars.” Standing at 12 feet tall, the bronze sculpture depicts an average-looking, overweight, anonymous black woman dressed in casual clothing standing with hands on hips. The artist, Thomas J. Price, said it was designed to challenge traditional norms regarding who deserves monumentalizing, forcing a confrontation with the supposed systemic erasure of marginalized bodies and identities.

In other words, it’s a woke, finger-wagging lecture in the form of a looming bronze woman.

And a lot of people hated it. The statue sparked a firestorm of criticism and mockery from people of all races, some of whom demanded the statue’s immediate removal.

But New York City just can’t seem to get the message that its denizens are sick of looking at bad art. That very same month, it debuted a 10-foot fountain in the form of a pink foot and leg covered in red-lipped mouths with tongues sticking out, giving the impression of infection or disease. The artist, Mika Rottenberg, designed the grotesque structure as an “irreverent take on the tradition of classical fountains.”

When Rick Burgess, BlazeTV host of “The Rick Burgess Show” and “Strange Encounters,” recently traveled to the Big Apple to visit his son, he was fortunate enough to avoid this bubblegum-pink monstrosity, but his content producer, Chris Adler, wasn’t so lucky.

On a trip to NYC for his wedding anniversary, Adler and his wife encountered the “big pink foot.” He plays a video of the fountain for Rick and the panel.

Rick immediately notices something strange about the shape of the leg.

“It’s so important to look at the toes,” he says, joking about the phallic shape of the shin, where the rounded top shoots out water. “I noticed a lot of people from the Pride parade begin to gather around it like it was a god.”

“I guess they didn't notice the foot,” he laughs. “I hate to disappoint you; it's a leg.”

“There’s some sickies out there,” says Adler.

To hear more of the panel’s conversation and see a video of the fountain, watch the clip above.

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NYC removes the city's last public pay phone, marking the end of an era



It’s the end of an era: The last standing public pay phone in New York City was removed from a street in Times Square on Monday.

City officials bid a public farewell to the iconic, coin-operated phone booth as a crane operator tore it from its place in the sidewalk at Seventh Avenue and West 50th Street Monday morning.

The New York Post reported that the phone booth’s removal marks the completion of New York City’s nearly decade-long attempt to replace pay phones with LinkNYC kiosks, which provide people on the streets with free wi-fi and domestic calling services, enable them to charge their mobile devices, allow people to place 911 and 311 calls, and other amenities.

Mark Levine, the president of the borough of Manhattan, who was present at the last pay phone’s removal, said that he hopes its replacement will bring more equitable technology access for New Yorkers. He also admitted the removal of the longtime fixture was bittersweet.

“I won’t miss all the dead dial tones, but gotta say I felt a twinge of nostalgia seeing it go,” he said.

Under former Mayor Bill de Blasio, in 2014 the mayor’s office put out a request for proposals for what to replace pay phones with. The mayor’s office noted that the goal was to replace the archaic technology with new infrastructure that offered free 24/7 public WIFI.

The CityBridge company's proposal to build a LinkNYC system was chosen the same year the request was sent out, and the city government began swapping pay phones for the new LinkNYC stations in 2016.

Most of the city’s old pay phones were sent to the scrapyard by 2020, and more than 7,500 of the public pay phones have been replaced with about 2,000 LinkNYC kiosks at this time.

The pay phone removed from Midtown will be sent to the Museum of the City of New York as a relic of the days before cell phones became widely used. It will be featured in the exhibit “Analog City: NYC B.C. (Before Computers)” that opened this past Friday.

The removed pay phone was the last-city owned public pay phone in New York City. A few private pay phones on public property still exist and are still in operation. Four enclosed phone booths have also been permanently saved from removal along West End Avenue on the Upper West Side.

CNBC reported that City Commissioner Matthew Fraser said, “Just like we transitioned from the horse and buggy to the automobile and from automobile to the airplane, the digital evolution has progressed from pay phones to high-speed wi-fi kiosks to meet the demands of our rapidly changing daily communication needs.”

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