Protest Culture Is Annoying and Un-American

David Harsanyi
Fri, 23 Jan 2026 12:45:46 -0800
Opinion

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) likes to argue that the "whole point" of protesting is to make people "uncomfortable."

Debate. Dissent. Running highly misleading political ads on TV. These are all part of our great tradition of political discourse. In this as in so much else, the Democratic darling is incorrect. Taking to the streets to disrupt the lives of average citizens is a leftist ideal, not an American one. It's antithetical to the highest virtue of republicanism, namely minding your own business.

But decades ago, American leftists began conflating "activism" with patriotism, and millions of young people were convinced that protesting was an expression of good citizenry. These days, caring is often given more reverence than wisdom, knowledge or achievement, let alone patriotic activities like working, getting married and raising kids.
Updated: Fri Jan 23, 2026

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) likes to argue that the "whole point" of protesting is to make people "uncomfortable."

Debate. Dissent. Running highly misleading political ads on TV. These are all part of our great tradition of political discourse. In this as in so much else, the Democratic darling is incorrect. Taking to the streets to disrupt the lives of average citizens is a leftist ideal, not an American one. It's antithetical to the highest virtue of republicanism, namely minding your own business.

But decades ago, American leftists began conflating "activism" with patriotism, and millions of young people were convinced that protesting was an expression of good citizenry. These days, caring is often given more reverence than wisdom, knowledge or achievement, let alone patriotic activities like working, getting married and raising kids.

An equally intolerable and parallel notion has also sprung up: it says the rest of us have a patriotic duty to admire anyone who's "making a difference" or engaged in "participatory democracy," no matter how insufferable or wrong they are. And protesters are almost always insufferable and wrong. Every loudmouth ignoramus with an opinion has a First Amendment right. You're not special.

Yet modern left-wing protesters believe their passion and anger imbue them with moral license to demand things and speak over their fellow citizens.

Just watch the video of those self-righteous "activists" disrupting church services in St. Paul the other day, or global warming cultists shutting down traffic in major cities, or college students using their heckler's veto to disrupt speeches and debates.

Then again, most of these efforts aren't organic or spontaneous expressions of political anger anymore. They are well-funded and well-managed by organizations that see political benefit in creating chaos and turning our country into a revolutionary battleground. From Lenin to Alinsky, forced confrontation has been a tactic of Marxist activism.

Every bully, of course, sees themselves as the embodiment of Martin Luther King Jr., though most of them lack dignity and a worthy cause. It's amusing hearing these self-aggrandizing activists treat protests as great acts of bravery. But wake up: You're not actually living in a fascist state.

Those marching against the clerics in Iran risk their lives. As did those who marched in Tiananmen Square in 1989, who rose up against the communists during the Prague Spring of 1968 or engaged in civil disobedience against the Stamp Act in 1765.

You can be as passionate as you like here in these United States, but our laws governing the border and immigration, and ICE itself, were all democratically instituted.

You're free to vote in the next election.

Failing to get your preferred legislation passed isn't repression, and you're not Gandhi.

Though it's heartening for the rest of us to know that most protests are merely performative acts with little political consequence.

Demonstrations are rarely a barometer of public sentiment.

In the Left's hagiographic rendering of the 1960s, peace-loving demonstrators took to the streets and ended the Vietnam War.

In the real world, Richard Nixon, who won a historic landslide victory in 1972 against peacenik George McGovern, ended the conflict. Anti-war protesters couldn't stop the Iraq War, either. Or any American war, for that matter. Tea Partiers couldn't stop Obamacare. "Occupy Wall Street" was unable to overturn the laws governing basic economics. P—-yhat marchers embarrassed themselves, but they didn't stop Trump from occupying the White House — any more than Jan. 6 marchers and rioters did Joe Biden. And the anti-ICE nuts disrupting church services who accuse parishioners of being "white supremacists" will likely have similar luck.

That's good news.

The "right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances" is our inheritance. It guarantees anyone can march without worrying about punishment or reprisals from the state. Though it shouldn't escape our attention that many of the same progressives who treat public demonstration as the purest form of "democracy" advocate for censoring views they find dangerous and regularly conflate speech with "violence."

Democratic socialists nearly always shed the adjective as soon as they gain power.

Let's face it, though, most unhinged activists you see ranting and raving act like children. And children have trouble comprehending the distinction between things you can do and things you should do. You can cosplay Islamic revolutionaries on campus. What you should do is read some books about the Middle East.

But nothing in a free country compels the rest of us to celebrate spoiled adults making a spectacle of themselves — or to treat them as anything but nuisances.