Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., makes an objection to a Republican argument as the House Oversight and Reform Committee considers whether to hold Attorney General William Barr and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross in contempt for failing to turn over subpoenaed documents related to the Trump administration’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, June 12, 2019. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Our long national nightmare with the precepts of socialism — in this case that whole thing about civil unrest to affect change — doesn’t appear to be ending any time soon as New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has apparently given the downtrodden no other choice but to riot.

I’m not sure mandating riots is rhetorically what she meant to say, but, given her love policy proclivities, it may just be a Freudian slip of the tongue.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said this week during an appearance on Ebro in the Morning that marginalized communities have “no choice but to riot.”

“Once you have a group that is marginalized … once someone doesn’t have access to clean water, they have no choice but to riot,” Ocasio-Cortez said about a half-hour into the 55-minute interview.

Her remarks came during a discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but Ocasio-Cortez clarified that she was talking about marginalized groups more generally.

“I’m not even talking about Palestinians,” she said. “I’m talking about communities in poverty in the United States; I’m talking about Latin America; I’m talking about all over the world.”

Of course what Ms. AOC fails to mention — and possibly realize — is that marginalized communities absolutely have choices available to them besides rioting. She might look to Venezuela for proof of that. Despite change being slow to come there, they’re ready when Maduro finally accepts his reign is over precisely because they didn’t riot. They put plans in place.

Or even Israel post World War II (that one’s likely to be hard for her). They worked with allied nations to build a country in their ancestral homeland without destroying the region through rioting.

Or even this country say around the late 1700s; because whatever you may think of the Revolutionary War, it was a methodical undertaking and governing documents were drafted before the fighting began.

Of course explaining to Ms. AOC how irresponsible it is for a person in a position of leadership to offer only the hopelessness of riot as an answer to marginalization would likely fall on deaf ears. She’s been so steeped in revolutionary rhetoric it just falls out of her as an antidote to political unrest.

But the cheek it takes for someone sitting in a cushy job to tell other people to risk life and limb through rioting rather than choosing some of the other options available to them (what happened to this love of migration she mostly professes?), is pretty stunning.

None of this is to suggest there aren’t people in the world facing circumstances where it looks like rioting might be their only option. And maybe sometimes it is. But Ms. AOC has more resources to help people — she’s a sitting U.S. Congresswoman for pete’s sake — than simply encouraging them to put themselves in harm’s way for the good of the revolution.

But then perhaps making those suggestions is her own way of rioting.