So, let me set the background, here.  The Huffington Post decided last week to run a hit piece (the lack of link is deliberate, and meant as an insult) on the LIBRE Initiative, which is a Spanish-language activist group that is also big on small-government conservatism (full disclosure: my friend/former RedState colleague Brian Faughnan happens to works for them). This sort of thing infuriates the (largely white) progressive leadership cadre, mostly because said leadership cadre has written for themselves a wonderful narrative where they’ve selflessly taken up the White Enlightened Man’s Person’s Burden to ward and foster and nurture all those disadvantaged Persons of Color.

FOREVER.  THERE CAN BE NO ESCAPE FROM THEIR LOVE. EMBRACE STASIS AS YOUR DESTINY. SO MOTE IT BE!

…Yeah, sorry about that. Anyway, LIBRE kind of steps on that narrative: hence, the hit piece.  Yesterday, LIBRE’s Executive Director Daniel Garza hit back.  This HuffPo piece I’ll link to:

…there are some who believe that all Latinos must hold liberal views, or that you’re not authentically Latino if you are a conservative. In recent years people like Henry Cuellar, Susana Martinez, Ted Cruz and others have been criticized — often by anglos — for not being sufficiently Hispanic, simply because of their personal beliefs.

The staff and volunteers of the LIBRE Initiative experience this every day, as critics who profess to have the best interests of the Latino community at heart — including People For the American Way — argue that a pro-economic liberty organization can’t be trusted to deliver aid to kids arriving at the border, or to provide medical checkups to needy families, or provide children backpacks, notebooks, and haircuts as they go back to school. Some of the staunchest self-professed defenders of Hispanics say we can’t care as they do because we put more faith than they do in individuals and less in government.

This is not only wrong; it’s un-American.

I really, really hope that people bristled at that last sentence, there.  Daniel went on to mention some of the things that LIBRE does, which were all very much mainstream outreach things: helping people pass driver’s tests, English-language classes, health and back-to-school clinics. These are all things that should not be particularly partisan, but that certain elements on the Left want to make partisan… and done exclusively by their side. The idea that somebody could be providing this assistance and in the process say Oh, by the way: you’ve noticed too how badly Obamacare serves Spanish-speakers? What? You thought that you were the only one getting hammered by that? Not at all! Hey, let me tell you about this meeting… angers progressive activists, largely because they fear the ideological competition.

After all, who wants to work to convert other people to your views?  It’s ever so much easier to simply have the field all to yourself. A win by default is still a win.

Moe Lane (crosspost)