“New York is not America,” the saying goes. It however, the chaotic jungle of its politics, economics and social situation today is not fully typical of other American cities, it may only be because New York is just getting there a little bit faster. Granted that every city has its own peculiarities— New York above all. But, allowing for differences of economy, size, history, New York may well be a paradigm for the immediate future of urban America.
The problems of New York, of course, were not created by John Lindsay. But if some extraterrestrial forces had plotted to intensify them to the highest degree, no one they could have found or invented would have been more capable of doing so than Mr. Lindsay. This is not a matter of his personal genius. It is simply that he is the epitome of the liberalism that has created New York’s problems, nursed them, and brought them to full flower.
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