Talk about the nanny state. Marxist Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to play babysitter to the children of New York City. He announced a “Parents’ Night Out” taking place on Aug. 16. Kids can be dropped off at rec centers around the city for government-supervised games, activities (including “media education programs”) and a free dinner while parents go do, well, whatever.
Many conservatives found this idea ridiculous and even revolting, but a few folks on the right thought the proposition might be a good, pro-family policy. After all, parents do need babysitters now and then, and this is not (yet) a big expenditure — spots are limited and parents have to register ahead of time.
But you should never trust socialists with your kids. It is understandable that conservatives working on family policy would want to encourage the left to think in more pro-family ways. However, they need to be careful not to become cheap dates, impressed by small-scale PR moves while ignoring enormous damage elsewhere. In this case, a few hours of community center babysitting doesn’t make up for New York rent costs being now higher than ever, a problem Mamdani’s economically illiterate policies will only worsen.
Although this government program may be nothing more than a one-off PR stunt, it is still worth considering why most conservatives are wary about it. Mamdani may have the occasional good idea, such as trying to deregulate ice cream sales (if only the rest of his economic policies followed suit), but this is not among them.
For starters, this program could easily become one more fraud-filled boondoggle. From hospices to day cares to high-speed rail, the left oversees an ocean of grift and waste. Why would this be different if it becomes a regular part of the city budget? Just look at how New York City’s public schools are run: even The Atlantic admitted they spend astronomical amounts per student for mediocre results.
On the subject of schools, conservatives have worked for decades to weaken the government school monopoly — and we’re winning. After fighting for families to have options other than handing their kids to the government, why would we cheer a socialist offering new ways for the government to oversee children?
Trusting your kids to Marxists, who have always sought to deconstruct the family and the church and to replace them with government programs, is a bad idea. Yes, parents sometimes need babysitters (date nights are good for marriages), but government isn’t the way, especially a government run by Mamdani and his buddies.
The platform of the Democratic Socialists of America is insane, the sort of dorm-room communist fantasy that has bloodily failed everywhere it has been tried. DSA leaders such as Mamdani hate America and our constitutional government, hate law and order, hate Jews, and love mass-murdering communist dictators.
Do we really trust these people not to turn their Big Apple babysitting scheme into some sort of revolutionary indoctrination program? This is, after all the same crowd that brought us drag queen story hour.
That brings us to the most alarming part of this program — which is that these people enable sexual predators. This is not some scare-mongering right-wing hypothetical. Indeed, it hits very close to home here in Northern Virginia where, among other incidents, the local school district infamously covered up a rape that was committed by a skirt-wearing boy in the girls’ bathroom.
Loudoun County continues to allow males into female school bathrooms and locker rooms. Meanwhile, authorities in next-door Fairfax and Arlington Counties allowed a convicted pedophile who claimed to be transgender to hang out in female locker rooms, leering at and exposing himself to little girls.
The left always sides with men who insist they have a “right” to enter private female spaces. They have literally made a federal case (indeed, more than one) out of a supposed “male right” to wander naked in female spaces.
This is also the policy of Mamdani’s New York City. Regardless of whether the babysitting night supervisor is a purple-haired, genderfluid DSA minion or an older normie just trying to make it to a pension, a man who claims to be transgender will be allowed into the female bathrooms and locker rooms.
The more the Marxist mayor fiddles with NYC parks and rec, the less parents should trust him. Whatever the theoretical merits of community center babysitting, the program is in practice inseparable from those running it. For conservatives this should be a simple gut check — don’t let the DSA take your baby away.
