My three-year-old son knows better than Zohran Mamdani. I do not say that he knows more than Mamdani, nor that he is smarter. Still, he knows better. For all of Mamdani’s sophistication and polish, his public remarks betray a lack of moral clarity on issues essential to good government and human flourishing — clarity that even a three-year-old can grasp. Namely, the man cruising toward victory in New York City’s 2025 mayoral election seems to lack respect for a person’s life and property.

I do not remember how the topic of Mamdani’s candidacy arose at the dinner table, nor how my son’s negative impression of him was formed. But as I pondered how to explain that Mamdani was not the sort of “bad guy” that police should lock away — how does one reduce anything so multifaceted as electoral politics down to the simplicity of “Paw Patrol”? — my son supplied the inspiration for this piece with a remark at once profound and naïve, speculative yet true.

“He thinks hitting is okay.” I know not what prompted this suggestion. Perhaps it stands out in the three-year-old mind as the quintessential belief of “bad guys” solely due to the frequency with which three-year-old boys must receive correction on this point.

On the surface, of course, such a charge is easily dismissed. If Mamdani were asked whether hitting is okay, he would likely answer, “No.” As far as I know, Mamdani has never hit anyone in his life. The comment is a random musing from a small child who doesn’t know the first thing about politics.

Upon reflection, however, I had to admit that my son’s random musing struck surprisingly close to home. The truth is that Mamdani does justify — or at least makes excuses for — some violence, including and surpassing “hitting.” Just last week, Fox News host Martha MacCallum asked Mamdani whether Hamas, the terrorist group that killed 1,200 Israelis in a single day, injured thousands, and then kidnapped and abused 250 hostages, should disarm. Mamdani evaded the question repeatedly before saying, “I don’t really have opinions about the future of Hamas.”

In other words, Mamdani would let Hamas off the hook for the crimes of October 7. It turns out that Mamdani does think hitting is okay, so long as the victims are Jews.

Of course, everyone in the public eye will inevitably give a poor interview that supplies their opponents with ammunition against them. That does not make it wise to discount a candidate’s words when their partial admission, made during a tough interview, is broadly consistent with their actions and beliefs. In Mamdani’s official biography as a New York assemblyman, he boasts that he helped to “co-found his college’s first Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.” This February, that same campus chapter staged a four-day pro-Hamas encampment that resulted in discipline for 50 students.

Next to “hitting,” the other common category of “bad guy” behavior, according to my three-year-old, is “taking.” Once again, my three-year-old knows better than Mamdani. The frontrunner gave a video address to the 2021 Young Democratic Socialists of America conference in which he urged attendees to be “unapologetic about our socialism” and avowed the goal of “seizing the means of production,” a term Karl Marx used to describe the capital or wealth of those he painted as villains.

Mamdani has sought to implement this belief — which his supporters call socialist and his critics call communist — through public policy. In his assemblyman bio, Mamdani pines for “a future where … the distribution of … dignity is not determined by the market.” If not distributed by the market, “dignity” (read: wealth) must be distributed by government officials like himself. Mamdani’s current housing plan explicitly calls for raising property taxes on “richer and whiter neighborhoods.”

Of course, to say my three-year-old son knows better than Mamdani is not to say that he behaves better. Like every fallen son of Adam, my son is led astray by his sinful heart to do what he knows is wrong. This is the condition of every three-year-old — but not every adult.

One hopes that adults have learned the self-control to reject what is wrong and choose what is right. Alas, not only do many adults do what they know is wrong, but even the very education that is supposed to train people towards virtue has now been warped to reinforce sinful desires. This human tendency is so universal that Paul could write, “Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32).

Mamdani clearly knows more than my three-year-old son. But I suggest that he now knows worse because he has received the wrong kind of education. I contend that Mamdani’s Marxist views — that is, based in critical theory — are simply sophisticated ways to rationalize and justify the sinful desires that, among three-year-olds manifest themselves as “hitting” and “taking.” (I don’t know when Mamdani adopted his radical views, but I would guess that a “Degree in Africana Studies” helped to cement them.)

“Oh, this group is historically disadvantaged because of their skin color,” we are told, or “Members of that group commit crimes because they lack opportunity.” This is all just a smokescreen to justify sinful human desires. The result is, after all the education that Mamdani has received, he now knows more than a three-year-old, yet he knows worse. In all the complexity and sophistication of critical theory, Mamdani has forgotten those foundations of all human law: “You shall not murder. … You shall not steal” (Exodus 20:13, 15). Or, as every three-year-old has to learn them: “hitting” is not okay, and neither is “taking.”