{"id":21919,"date":"2025-09-21T08:29:41","date_gmt":"2025-09-21T12:29:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?p=21919"},"modified":"2025-09-21T14:04:43","modified_gmt":"2025-09-21T18:04:43","slug":"n-y-post-blame-thoreau-for-saphead-leftists-like-mamdani","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/21\/n-y-post-blame-thoreau-for-saphead-leftists-like-mamdani\/","title":{"rendered":"N.Y. Post: Blame Thoreau for Saphead Leftists Like Mamdani"},"content":{"rendered":"

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nypost.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Blame Thoreau for saphead leftists like Zohran Mamdani<\/a><\/h1>\n
James Bovard<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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New York City is on the verge of electing a self-proclaimed \u201cdemocratic socialist,\u201d Zohran Mamdani, as mayor. How did so many New Yorkers become so clueless about how the world works?<\/p>\n

Some of the blame goes back to Henry David Thoreau, a colicky 19th-century philosopher whose popularity revived with the hippies and leftists in the 1960s.<\/p>\n

Since the dawn of the counterculture, colleges have sainted him as a moral visionary.<\/p>\n

Thoreau\u2019s 1849 essay on civil disobedience showed a lofty disdain for politicians, but many of his other values risk paving the road to serfdom.<\/p>\n

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Mamdani and Thoreau share a squirrely sanctimony.\u00a0Mamdani has caught hell for pretending to be working class \u2014 despite his privileged<\/a> silver-spoon upbringing.<\/p>\n

Thoreau boasted that he took \u201cthe vantage ground of what we should call voluntary poverty\u201d during his time living at Walden Pond in 1840s Massachusetts.<\/p>\n

But Thoreau\u2019s poverty was a kabuki performance. His cabin was a mere 20-minute stroll from his mother\u2019s dinner table, where he often took repast.<\/p>\n

As a testy 2015 New Yorker<\/a> piece on Thoreau noted, \u201csubsistence living\u201d is \u201ca condition attractive chiefly to those not obliged to endure it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mamdani believes politicians should not permit anyone to be a billionaire.<\/p>\n

Thoreau didn\u2019t take a campaign position on billionaires, but he did proclaim: \u201cThe luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0The primary evidence for the counterbalancing was in the moral dogmas popular among Massachusetts transcendentalists in Thoreau\u2019s time.<\/p>\n

Thoreau had brazen contempt for affluence \u2014 another trait that fits plenty of contemporary leftist templates.\u00a0He bewailed that Americans were being \u201cruined by luxury and heedless expense\u201d and proclaimed the \u201conly cure\u201d is \u201cin a rigid economy, a stern and more than Spartan simplicity of life and elevation of purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n

At that time, the average house in the United States had about 1,000 square feet and was occupied by 5.5 people, according to the Census Bureau.<\/p>\n

Houses had no indoor plumbing, central heating or electricity. Regardless, Thoreau summoned people to repent their shameless self-indulgences.<\/p>\n

\"Man
Mamdani clearly hasn\u2019t spent any time in Communist grocery stores. @ zohrankmamdani\/Instagram<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Nowadays, many environmental zealots have the same contempt for affluence, idolizing the medieval era when humanity respected Mother Nature by having lives that were \u201cnasty, brutish, and short,\u201d as philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote long ago.<\/p>\n

Thoreau\u2019s original sin \u2014 the same for many leftists nowadays \u2014 is his contempt for voluntary exchange among private citizens.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He proclaimed in \u201cWalden\u201d that \u201ctrade curses everything it handles.\u201d Thoreau derided \u201cthe immorality of trade,\u201d as if society became poorer every time two parties made a mutually profitable agreement.<\/p>\n

Except, of course, when Thoreau was the one profiting. He boasted he grew 7 miles of rows of beans at Walden. His memoir would have been more candid if he added a postscript to his jeremiad: \u201cTrade is a great evil, and hey, buddy, ya wanna buy some beans?\u201d\u00a0Thoreau sold his surplus beans and bought rice, pork, molasses, apples and farming supplies. Do people lose part of their soul when they swap beans for bacon or what?<\/p>\n

The alternative to voluntary private exchanges is for officialdom to decree all prices and values<\/strong>.\u00a0Zohran Mamdani proposes creating government-run grocery stores because \u201cgrocery prices are out of control.\u201d\u00a0Hatred of capitalism is the only \u201cevidence\u201d to justify government taking over the food supply.<\/p>\n

I recall visiting East Berlin grocery stores in the 1980s. Communist shoppers could purchase any fruit or vegetable they wanted \u2014 as long as they only wanted apples, cabbage or potatoes.\u00a0<\/strong>Government-run grocery stores in other American cities have been fiascos<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mamdani favors government ownership of energy resources and touts more subsidies for public transit as practically the panacea for climate change.<\/p>\n

Thoreau would have dissented on that score thanks to his visceral hatred of railroads (and much of modern life in the 1800s).\u00a0 Thoreau mystically proclaimed there is a \u201cuniversal law, which no man can ever outwit,\u201d that guaranteed it would always be cheaper to walk than to take the train.\u00a0Wrong, dude. A day\u2019s wages in the 1840s was roughly the same as the fare for 30 miles rail travel. Nowadays, for $2.90, you can travel 31 miles<\/a> from 207th Street in Manhattan to Far Rockaway in Queens.\u00a0But saving the Earth isn\u2019t included in the fare.<\/p>\n

Thoreau famously declared, \u201cThe mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.\u201d\u00a0Did Thoreau presume people were \u201cdesperate\u201d because they preferred to drink, smoke and boink instead of philosophize like he did?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Similarly, Mamdani recently declared that 75% of New York City residents are \u201ctrapped in a state of anxiety.\u201d\u00a0And the only hope to make them worry-free is for politicians to seize vastly more power over their daily lives, right?<\/p>\n

Letting the mayor dictate that rents never increase could cure anxiety just like the $30-an-hour minimum wage Mamdani favors.\u00a0And if those policies utterly wreck the local economy, the victims can grow their own beans like Thoreau did.<\/p>\n

If Thoreau was sometimes blinded by his own halo, at least he didn\u2019t directly imperil humanity.\u00a0But the same trait prevails among leftist politicians who feel a sacred moral duty to forcibly impose reckless righteous policies.<\/strong><\/p>\n

If Mamdani\u2019s policies ruin legions of New Yorkers, maybe city bureaucrats could create a list of vacant ponds like Walden where refugees can flee.<\/p>\n

James Bovard is the author of 11 books, including \u201cLost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty.<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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nypost.com Blame Thoreau for saphead leftists like Zohran Mamdani James Bovard New York City is on the verge of electing a self-proclaimed \u201cdemocratic socialist,\u201d Zohran Mamdani, as mayor. How did so many New Yorkers become so clueless about how the world works? Some of the blame goes back to Henry David Thoreau, a colicky 19th-century […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[4655,4656,4654,761,221,1093,4657],"class_list":["post-21919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-boinking","tag-hippies","tag-mamdani","tag-new-york-city","tag-philosophy","tag-thoreau","tag-waldenrailroads"],"yoast_head":"\nN.Y. 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Post: Blame Thoreau for Saphead Leftists Like Mamdani"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/","name":"James Bovard","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/79550830ad81c14be529a2c37469974f","name":"Jim","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/d95466cfd0934e38803c5035629df727ae4ec1f3f96c6883c05b5c52e2044505?s=96&d=mm&r=r","caption":"Jim"},"description":"Bovard's homepage is at http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com He can be contacted at jim@jimbovard.com James Bovard is the author of ten books. The Wall Street Journal called Bovard \"the roving inspector general of the modern state\" and Washington Post columnist George Will called him a \"one-man truth squad.\" His 1994 book, Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty, received the Free Press Association\u2019s Mencken Award as Book of the Year. His Terrorism & Tyranny won the Lysander Spooner \"Best Book on Liberty in 2003\" award. He received the Thomas Szasz Award for Civil Liberties work, awarded by the Center for Independent Thought and the Freedom Fund Award from the Firearms Civil Rights Defense Fund of the National Rifle Association. Bovard\u2019s writings have been publicly denounced by FBI director Louis Freeh, the Secretary of Agriculture, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Postmaster General, and the chiefs of the U.S. International Trade Commission, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, as well as by many congressmen and other malcontents.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jimbovard.com","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jim.bovard","https:\/\/x.com\/jimbovard"],"url":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/author\/admin\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21919"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21919\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21925,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21919\/revisions\/21925"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimbovard.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}