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By Root 1045 0

patterns beyond its control, of local and state decisions whose origins were political, not ideological. But many of its wounds were ideologically self-inflicted. New York was not compelled to create a vast municipal hospital or City University system, to continue free tuition, institute open enrollment, ignore budget limitations, impose the steepest taxes in the nation, borrow beyond its means, subsidize middle-income housing, continue rigid rent control, reward municipal workers with lush pension, pay and fringe benefits, graduate kids who couldn’t read, pay too much attention to “issues” and too little to management and the delivery of services. These decisions were designed not just to win votes. They sprang as well from a genuine sense of compassion, a desire to help people. That is what the liberal tradition is about.

“New York has been the laboratory for social innovation in this country,” observes urban historian Richard Wade, a City University professor. “The welfare state was invented in this state.” Led by Governors Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, and Herbert Lehman, New York pioneered social legislation to help poor people. Inspired by a New Yorker, FDR, the federal government helped put people back to work and saved the country from the chaos of unfettered capitalism. Liberalism spurred the successful effort to replenish the South’s lagging economy, introduced Social Security, outlawed sweatshops and child labor, strengthened antitrust laws, fathered the progressive income tax and social legislation to care for the old, the sick, the infirm, the poor. The Wagner Act, named after New York Senator Robert Wagner, Sr., granted full citizenship to beleaguered labor unions. The left was in the forefront of two of the most important movements of this century: civil rights and the women’s movement. States like Texas do indeed enjoy budget surpluses and pro-business climates, but they also ignore their poor and often treat workers as indentured servants.

New York, the Statue of Liberty city, has been home for courageous immigrants fleeing oppression or poverty and seeking freedom and new opportunity. “America”—New York—“was in everybody’s mouth,” wrote Mary Antin, who immigrated here in 1891. It was, she said, “this magic land.” The streets were paved with gold. The dreams and energy of immigrants charged New York’s unique sense of compassion, built and infused the world’s capital of culture, commerce, ideas. New York’s melting pot boasts more Jews than Tel Aviv, more Irish than Dublin, more Italians than Florence. Long before FDR or the New Deal, we learned a different lesson from the one taught by our skeptical, aristocratic Founding Fathers: government could be a friend, an ally, an agent for social reform. We learned to identify with the underdog. As the West incubated an individualistic frontier spirit, New York incubated social idealism.

“I do not exaggerate when I say that New York is unique in the history of human kindness,” Mayor Koch eloquently declared in his inaugural address. “New York is not a problem. New York is a stroke of genius. From its earliest days, this city has been a lifeboat for the homeless, a larder for the hungry, a living library for the intellectually starved, a refuge not only for the oppressed but also for the creative. New York is and has been the most open city in the world and that is its greatness and that is why in large part it faces monumental problems today.… Without question, this city has made mistakes. But our mistakes have been those of the heart.”

Over the last twenty years or so, New York often thought with its heart. Suffused with a commitment to help people, when the federal or state government wouldn’t, the city reached to do the job alone. To comfort black and Hispanic immigrants from the South, it offered the most generous welfare benefits in the nation, encouraging more immigration. When private jobs began to disappear, it expanded the public payroll. When labor unions asked for more than the city could afford, they were viewed not as another special interest but