It is a peaceful Sunday morning in Northern Virginia, and I woke up to freezing temperatures and a stubborn layer of snow on the ground. Having lived in Upstate New York for over a decade, I knew this was no arctic freeze. Yet I felt a nagging hankering for a hot cappuccino and drove to the nearest open coffee shop. I have the frustrating habit of being wide-awake at 5 AM regardless of whether it’s a workday or a holiday, and so the only place where I could indulge my coffee craving was a cozy cafe belonging to a popular national chain.
The cafe was festively decorated and played heartwarming Christmas music to attract seasonal revenue. Yet, the employees proudly displayed intersectional woke slogans on their uniforms. This reminded me of a classic scene in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, where Hank Rearden’s querulous socialist brother begs him for a sizable donation to support his “Friends of Global Progress” charity, then asks him to make it anonymous, since it would be embarrassing to receive funding from a “greedy capitalist.”
Woke businesses have no qualms about using traditional holidays and patriotic sentiments to make money, yet they continue to promote anti-Western causes. Similarly, the administrations of many educational institutions feel entitled to funds from the American government and taxpayers, yet they continue to engage in promoting anti-American propaganda and practices.
So I decided to forgo the woke cappuccino, since we have the right to vote with our dollars and the commercial choices we make. It is amazing how powerful these choices can be in a free-market economy. Many young men became patrons of Jeremy’s Razors after Gillette produced the ill-conceived “toxic masculinity” ad, and we all remember what happened to Bud Light’s revenue after the company’s flirtation with transgender ideology.
For the past year or so, we have enjoyed a much more fruitful political atmosphere in continuing to oppose anti-American propaganda and the cancel-culture groupthink. Regardless of how incongruous and absurd the woke movement may be, it is not going to die out on its own. We need to actively disarm it with education, facts, and reason, and with our speech, conduct, and the everyday choices we make.
Wishing my esteemed readers a Happy Chanukah, a very Merry Christmas, and a healthy, free, and prosperous 2026!
Nora D. Clinton is a Research Scholar at the Legal Insurrection Foundation. She was born and raised in Sofia, Bulgaria. She holds a PhD in Classics and has published extensively on ancient documents on stone. In 2020, she authored the popular memoir Quarantine Reflections Across Two Worlds. Nora is a co-founder of two partner charities dedicated to academic cooperation and American values. She lives in Northern Virginia with her husband and son.
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