In his classic Broadway play “I like New York”, wrote Cole Porter:
“I like New York, I like this city
I like the city air, I like to drink it
The more I see New York, the more I think about it
I like the sight and the sound and even the smell of it.”
Porter’s playful ode to the enduring appeal of New York City premiered in the Broadway show The New Yorkers 1930, at the end of New York’s booming development in the “Roaring Twenties” and at the beginning of the Great Depression. It became a classic of the American songbook, recorded by everyone from Judy Garland to Bobby Short.
As the story of the song reminds us, New Yorkers are some of the most resilient people on the planet. Our city has indeed weathered the Great Depression, 9/11, the financial crisis, COVID-19, and countless other challenges. Our ability to bounce back is remarkable, but we need relief from the rampant crime, failing quality of life, and high cost of living that are driving taxpayers away in droves. The lawlessness imposed on us by progressive politicians in Albany and the City Council has permeated every aspect of daily life in this city.
Porter’s brief and breezy Broadway tune also alludes to New York’s unique popularity as a destination for immigrants and tourists:
“I like to go to Battery Park and watch the ships coming in.
I often ask myself: “Why should it
That they should come from far away across the sea?’
I guess it’s because they all agree with me
“You happen to like New York”
The deep, stubborn love for New York City expressed in Porter’s lyrics still exists for many of us, despite the city’s recent decline.
Tourism is faltering as New York regains its reputation as a threatening city from decades past. Broadway has still not recovered from the pandemic. Pedestrian traffic in Times Square is still down compared to before the pandemic. Serious crimes are not a crowd puller, machete attacks make international headlines, while tourists and theatergoers largely replaced by illegal immigrantsThis has nothing to do with the legal immigration that enabled immigrants to build New York in Porter’s time.
But people from all over the world still want to come and live here. Our restaurants, museums, shops, public transport and our cultural scene have been the envy of the world for generations. And it can be again if we govern according to one principle: If we don’t have public safety, we have nothing.
No amount of funding or planning will ever make a difference if we don’t have a unthreatening city. To get the city that never sleeps moving again, it’s time to put an end to lawlessness. It’s not like we don’t know how to do it. Thanks to measures like broken windowsthis has been done before.
New York City has always been a symbol of the best of everything, but progressives’ disdain for the city’s time-honored excellence has made it very hard for middle-class taxpayers to live here.
Unlike Mr. Porter and myself, the radical progressives whose policies have ruined this city do not like New York. They are working to turn it into something unrecognizable. You don’t love a place you want to destroy from the ground up.
Progressives show their hatred for our city by legalizing or even advocating behaviors that undermine society and degrade the human person, including prostitution, shoplifting, drug utilize, and vandalism. They do everything they can to take away the cars and trucks necessary to a booming city, disrupt commerce, encourage rioting, let repeat offenders go, abolish prisons and police altogether, flood us with illegal immigrants about whom nothing is known (except that they are dependent on the state), and replace life in New York with a mundane third-world experience. The “stench” of this summer is a acrid bouquet of marijuana, urine, and feces.
Progressives know that Marxism must germinate in misery and cannot take root in a pleasant city with cheerful, successful people. So their mission is to make that city and that country unbearable. That is the atmosphere that can persuade gigantic numbers of otherwise clear-thinking voters to try a system that has already proven a fatal failure throughout history.
Like Mr. Porter, I like New York. I lived in Florida for a few years before eagerly returning to the Empire State. I get teased a lot for moving in the wrong direction. But I’m far from an apologist for this city, because it has become uninhabitable for law-abiding citizens and will be beyond saving if we don’t change something soon.
My wife and I visited Central Park last weekend for the first time in ages, before dining on excellent oysters and cheeseburgers at PJ Clarke’s and watching a movie at one of the best theaters in the country, the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX. It was a wonderful day filled with unique New York City perks that remind you why you pay so much to live here. But we didn’t feel comfortable for a moment in the park or on the streets, aware of the recent rise in crime in the world-famous green space and throughout the city.
Even our time-honored New York liberals, the kind of people you see with NPR tote bags with the NY Times sticking out, seem baffled by the chaos but can’t bear to cross party lines.
What can be done? If you live here and like New York, get involved in getting Republican or reasonable Democratic candidates elected in the coming local election cycles. Apply the William F. Buckley standard and vote for “the right, most viable candidate Who could win.” Whether it’s elections for state legislative seats or city elections, both have a bigger impact on our quality of life than the White House. Help make phone calls, attend a fundraiser, or volunteer to knock on doors for candidates who, like Cole Porter, “love this city.”
Kevin J. Ryan is a New York-based political communications expert, writer, and photographer. He has worked for the New York City Council, numerous political campaigns, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, St. John’s University, and more.
