I'm sure most of you still think that I'm an odd one to be writing about the state of America's urban areas. If you've been reading my work, you know I had a mostly rural youth, and while I lived and worked in urban areas for many years, now I'm back where I belong, in a house out in the woods. We have our issues out here in the boonies as well; every place does. But all in all, most of us stick together, look out for one another, and get by pretty well.
So why am I concerned about America's cities? Simple. Throughout America's history, the cities have been vital parts of the American culture, the American way of life, and of American prosperity. For many years, America's great cities were the world's great cities: San Francisco, Chicago, and New York, just to name a few. But these cities are now falling apart; under decades of Democrat rule, under decades of incompetent leadership, they have fallen far and fast, to the point where they may be beyond the point of no return.
This recent election, one that saw an unabashed socialist elected as mayor of New York, yielded some other interesting results, those having to do with college-educated voters. Now, full disclosure: I'm college-educated, with a bachelor's degree in biology and an MBA in technology management. My wife is likewise educated, with a bachelor's in animal science and an MBA in healthcare administration. I think we're both pretty smart people, and I think the way we vote reflects that. Then again, one of the smartest people I've ever known was my father, who had only a high school diploma, received in 1940, but he could and did intelligently discuss topics ranging from Greek philosophers to cosmology.
There's more to intelligence than education, and if the voters of New York City showed us anything in this recent election, it's that, as the Issues & Insight editorial board recently wrote:
Among other things, the exit polls show that Zohran Mamdani’s victory came entirely because of the support he got from those who were college educated – 57% of whom voted for the inexperienced radical socialist immigrant born with a silver spoon in his mouth.
Just 42% of those without a college education were foolish enough to want this wrecking ball running their city.
What’s even more interesting is that the more time spent in school, the higher the support for Mamdani. Just 40% of high school graduates voted for him, compared with 41% of those who dropped out of college, 46% of those with an associate’s degree, and 57% of those with a bachelor’s or better.
Why is this? Well, whatever else this outcome is, it shouldn't be surprising. College-educated voters trend to the left of the non-college-educated; this isn't new. They also vote in higher numbers. It's not an overwhelming difference, but it's there, and it's enough to swing elections.
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Why, then, would these supposedly educationally attained people vote for leftist politicians?
My mother, also an extremely intelligent person with a high-school education (1944), had a derisive term she would apply to certain people of our acquaintance who had education but little in the way of good sense: She called them "educated idiots." This certainly is a phenomenon that obtains, maybe more so today than in her time. Our universities not only crank out graduates with a leavening of Ethnic Underwater Dog-Polishing Studies degrees, but also serve as leftist indoctrination centers. That is, in fact, a problem across the education range, from K-12 to graduate schools.
They get away with it, in part, because college-educated people also, on the margin, have higher incomes. That allows them to shelter themselves, at least to some extent, from the effects of the very bad policies they vote for. They can live in secure buildings, in better neighborhoods, and can better absorb the higher taxes and costs that leftist governments bring.
As evidence, we can cast our optics back to the election that put Zohran Mamdani in Gracie Mansion, and note that while he captured a majority of the college-educated vote, he didn't approach half the vote of people earning under $50,000 per annum, or of those who thought that the Big Apple's economy was struggling. The editorial continued:
Also interesting is the fact that Mamdani failed to win a majority of the vote among those earning less than $50,000 – the people his messages were supposedly directed at – but got 52% of those making more than $50,000.
Mamdani also failed to capture the vote of those who think New York’s economy isn’t doing so well – just 46% of those who said the economy is poor voted for Mamdani. They know better than to think that tax hikes, rent freezes, free buses, and Soviet-style grocery stores will help them.
In other words, Mamdani’s support came from well-educated voters who live in an economic bubble – the people least likely to suffer the ill-effects of Mamdani’s policies.
So, what's the right answer to this? Well, it's not easy, but this is what needs to happen: Education will remain as it is, largely a multi-level leftist indoctrination center, until the left's long march through this institution ends. Conservative people, people of real-world experience and the good sense that breeds, need to be involved. They need to run for school board seats. They need to be on university boards of regents. They need to get involved as alumni when and where they can. That's how the left achieved this state of affairs, the one that exists now. That's how we take it back.
Here in our corner of the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, on the same day that New York chose a communist mayor, we elected to the school board candidate, a Republican candidate, who championed traditional education on the basics. That's how this gets done. At our local level, and your local level, and at everyone's local level. The right needs to start its own long march through the institutions, and every step along the way will be contested.
But we, remember, are the people who get things done. We are the people who know how things work best. And we are the people who will always be around, after the socialist jurisdictions crash and burn under the weight of their own stupid policies.
[Editor's Note: This article was edited for clarity post-publication.]
