Inmates Running the Asylum
12th February 2026
“The inmates are running the asylum.”
There’s an expression we’ve all heard, particularly in more recent times. According to TheFreeDictionary.com, it means the following: The people least capable of running a group or organization are now in charge. Said especially when the result is total chaos or calamity. Example: the Biden administration.
Okay, that last sentence wasn’t in the dictionary, but it could have been. In any case, inmates running the asylum is something that could fairly be said about many of our cities, states and institutions these days. (See, Minneapolis, California, public education, science, medicine, sports, Hollywood, et al.)
And then there’s New York City, one of the biggest “asylums” of all. It just elected as mayor a guy who is in love with the most miserable, failed and murderous ideology in history: collectivism. But neither he nor the people who elected him are much impressed by historical statistics that tallied up something in the neighborhood of one hundred million corpses that were the cost of his beloved collectivization. Those were just the proverbial “cracked eggs” necessary to make the proverbial “omelet.”
And we can be sure that a misguided collectivist like Zohran Mamdani is not going to make wise personnel choices regarding the governance of the city he has so foolishly been put in charge of. Case in point: Mamdani has appointed Stanley Richards, an ex-con, to run the city’s — guess what? — Department of Correction. So . . . inmate running the asylum.
“Stanley will make history in this role as the first-ever formerly incarcerated person to serve as commissioner,” said the mayor. “I will turn to Stanley as we work to build a city where justice is at the heart of our corrections system.”
So, another historical first! Yay! But when he uses the word “justice,” what exactly does he mean? Well, of course, he means “social justice,” and there’s your cracked-egg recipe for disaster.