Leftist “compassion” has reached a point where it no longer even pretends to be tethered to outcomes. It is a slogan masquerading as morality, and nowhere is that clearer than in the policies that allow the most vulnerable people in society to die in plain sight while officials congratulate themselves for being humane.
In New York City, under Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “no forced removal” policy, that abstraction has taken on a body count. During the current cold snap, 18 people have died of exposure on the streets. The most recent was found Saturday morning in the Bronx, as temperatures plunged well below zero with wind chill. No name was released. No life story was told. Just another person left outdoors in conditions that would kill anyone without shelter, adequate clothing, and care.
This is what modern progressive governance calls compassion.
The logic is circular and devastatingly simple: forcing someone off the street is considered cruel, so the state declines to intervene—even when the alternative is freezing to death, overdosing in an alley, or slowly deteriorating under untreated mental illness. What is framed as respect for autonomy functions in practice as abandonment. The policy does not restore dignity; it removes responsibility from those in power while leaving the consequences to fall entirely on people least capable of bearing them.
The same pattern repeats elsewhere. Anchorage, Alaska—a city where winter temperatures routinely drop into double digits below zero—recorded 45 outdoor deaths in 2025 among people with no fixed address. That number is only slightly lower than the grim record set in the two previous years.
In a place where exposure is a predictable and lethal threat, allowing large homeless encampments to persist is not compassion. It is negligence, dressed up in the language of empathy. In Anchorage, it is compounded by the reality that these encampments also attract wildlife, turning human misery into a public safety hazard.
What ties these cities together is not climate or geography, but ideology. The prevailing belief is that intervention is inherently oppressive, even when the individuals in question are clearly incapable of making decisions that keep them alive. Addiction, severe mental illness, and chronic homelessness are treated as lifestyle choices rather than conditions requiring decisive action. The result is paralysis at the top and suffering at the bottom.
Real compassion would be measured by outcomes, not intentions. It would mean removing people from deadly conditions, even over their objections, and placing them somewhere safe. It would mean shelters, facilities, or temporary barracks if necessary—places where people can be fed, warmed, detoxed, and treated. It would mean prioritizing life over ideology.
Instead, cities are choosing to let people sleep on sidewalks, defecate in public spaces, and die in the cold, all while insisting this is kindness. At best, it is neglect. At worst, it is cruelty rationalized by politics. And the bodies left behind are the proof..
