There’s a dangerous sleight of hand happening in public discourse: people violate the Constitution, trample the rights of others, and when consequences follow, they suddenly cloak themselves in constitutional language and call it “protest.” That isn’t principled dissent. It’s bad faith.
The Constitution is not a prop. It’s a contract. And contracts don’t work if one side insists on all the protections while ignoring all the limits.
Rights Don’t Cancel Other Rights
Take a recent, illustrative example: activists entering a church during a worship service, interrupting it, refusing to leave when asked, and repeatedly invoking their “right to protest.” That argument collapses immediately under even basic constitutional literacy.
The First Amendment protects the free exercise of religion. It protects peaceable assembly. It does not grant one group the authority to invade private property, disrupt religious worship, or nullify the rights of others because they believe their cause is more important.
You don’t get to shout “First Amendment” while actively violating someone else’s First Amendment rights. That’s not how liberty works.
Trespass Isn’t Protest, and Coercion Isn’t Speech
This pattern isn’t isolated. Blocking highways, trapping people in traffic, interfering with emergency services, harassing uninvolved civilians, and occupying private property without consent are all being laundered under the word “protest.”
At that point, the term becomes meaningless.
Protest is persuasion.
Obstruction is coercion.
Once your tactic relies on force, intimidation, or the denial of other people’s freedoms, you have exited the realm of protected expression. Calling it protest doesn’t make it so. It just makes the abuse easier to excuse.
Selective Outrage Is Obvious and Discrediting
It’s also impossible to ignore the double standard. Certain spaces are treated as fair game, churches in particular, while other places of worship would rightly be considered off-limits by the very same people. Anyone denying this isn’t being serious.
You don’t advance civil rights by deciding which civil liberties matter based on who you agree with. That mindset doesn’t produce justice. It produces resentment and division.
Civil Disobedience Requires Accountability
History is often invoked here, and usually incorrectly. Real civil disobedience never pretended to be consequence-free. Those who broke unjust laws did so openly and accepted punishment to expose the injustice itself.
What we’re seeing now is different. This is not “I will suffer to show the law is wrong.”
It’s “I will break the law and claim oppression when enforcement occurs.”
That isn’t courage. It’s entitlement.
When Leaders Incite, the Stakes Change
What makes this moment especially dangerous is the behavior of political leaders and media figures who excuse, encourage, or rationalize this conduct. The same voices who labeled rhetoric on January 6th as incitement now flirt openly with confrontation, even suggesting resistance to federal agents.
That crosses a red line.
You cannot spend years warning that words are violence, then turn around and play footsie with street-level escalation. You cannot warn endlessly about “threats to democracy” while actively eroding respect for law, boundaries, and institutional legitimacy.
And let’s be honest about incentives: the people making these suggestions are surrounded by armed security, armored vehicles, and safe exits. They believe they’ll be insulated from the chaos they encourage. History suggests otherwise.
This Is Not a Call to Violence, It’s a Warning Against It
None of this is an argument for civil war. Quite the opposite.
We don’t want to keep nudging the line of what’s acceptable until one day there’s no way back. Despite what the media implies, the country is not on the verge of spontaneous combustion. In fact, the U.S. has seen significant drops in violent crime. Panic narratives serve clicks, not truth.
But erosion works slowly, then suddenly.
When laws are enforced selectively, when institutions signal favoritism, when political violence is winked at depending on who commits it, people stop believing the system is real. Trust collapses. And when trust is gone, restraint follows.
You Don’t Get Constitutional Protection for Undermining Constitutional Order
You are free to oppose immigration policy.
You are free to protest government agencies.
You are free to argue the law is unjust.
What you are not free to do is:
violate private property,
harass uninvolved civilians,
obstruct movement,
suppress religious practice, and then demand immunity by citing the very document you’re violating.
If you believe institutions are abusing their power, act against the institutions. Don’t terrorize worshippers, commuters, or families trying to live their lives.
If you want the protection of the Constitution, you have to respect the limits it imposes. Otherwise, don’t call it protest.
Call it what it is: lawbreaking dressed up as virtue.
MicG
Life after door kicking. 
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