On January 1, New York City’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, delivered an inauguration speech that was instantly celebrated for its soaring language about the “warmth of collectivism.”

But drowned out by the applause was one sentence that deserves scrutiny. Mamdani warned that those who are “fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty.”

It’s the sort of sentence that probably earns nods in graduate seminars. But what does it even mean?

That politeness is a trick. That civility is, by definition, suspect.

Certainly, this idea has currency in academic circles, but hearing it from the mayor of America’s largest city is something else entirely.

At a moment when the quality of political discourse is at an all-time low, the notion that we have too much civility borders on the absurd. If anything, the country is starving for it.

But the worldview Mamdani promotes is familiar to anyone who has followed higher education over the past decade.

Your Rundown for Friday, January 16, 2026...

Free Speech = Violence?

Respectful debate, once considered an American ideal, is increasingly framed as a mechanism for oppression.

According to a December survey from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), around 90% of undergraduates agree that “words can be violence.”

About one-third of respondents say physical violence can sometimes be justified to stop speech they find harmful.

Mamdani’s inauguration address marks a turning point because this way of thinking is no longer confined to classrooms. It has arrived in City Hall.

And once free speech is redefined as violence, robust debate stops.

But history offers a counterexample that feels almost impossible in today’s cultural climate.

In 1988, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, a case that pitted two enemies against each other: Larry Flynt, Hustler’s publisher, and Rev. Jerry Falwell, leader of the Moral Majority.

Flynt had run a grotesque parody targeting Falwell. Falwell sued for emotional distress and initially won in lower courts. Most advisers urged Flynt to settle. Instead, Flynt kept appealing.

He ultimately spent about $3 million — $8.16 million in 2026 dollars — taking the case to the Supreme Court because Flynt believed the First Amendment demanded it.

In a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, the court ruled that even “gross and repugnant” parody of public figures is protected speech.

The justices further warned if bruised feelings were enough to silence speech, free expression would collapse under the weight of endless lawsuits.

What followed is the part contemporaries can’t quite process.

Flynt and Falwell later appeared together on Larry King Live. Falwell hugged the man he had spent years denouncing as a moral cancer.

Over time, they debated on college campuses, argued fiercely and — against all odds — became friends.

They never agreed on religion, sex or politics. Flynt skewered Falwell’s ideas. Falwell never stopped trying to save Flynt’s soul. But they talked, regularly, in public and in private.

A colleague of mine dismisses this relationship as transactional — just two “a**holes,” he says, motivated by greed and power. There might be some truth to that. Human motives are rarely straightforward.

But don’t dismiss the larger point. Tolerance requires the very thing Mamdani condemns: the grammar of civility.

Not politeness as pretense, but civility as the shared rulebook that allows opponents to vehemently disagree without resorting to censorship or violence.

The answer to bad-faith politeness is more rigorous debate, not enforced silence. Larry and Jerry — of all people — understood that distinction. It would be reassuring if Mayor Mamdani did too.

Market Rundown for Friday, January 16, 2026

S&P 500 futures are up 0.15% to 6,995.

Oil’s up 1%, just under $60 for a barrel of WTI.

Gold’s down 0.60% to $4,596.20 per ounce.

And Bitcoin’s up 0.10% to $95,400.