Need further evidence that the Left’s game plan for advancing its ideas hinges on dividing society into groups and pitting them against one another? Then look no further than today’s news that left-leaning Hispanic groups have launched a campaign singling out senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio as “traitors” to their “culture.”
Cruz’s and Rubio’s opposition to raising the minimum wage, amnestying illegal immigrants, and a host of other pet issues of the Left means they’re “anti-Latino,” according to the campaign’s organizers.
The push against the two Cuban-American senators, which will include “radio and online ads, social media posts and public discussions with Hispanic leaders in swing states,” was announced at a gathering of these leftist groups in Las Vegas, Nev. Socialist Dolores Huerta, a sympathizer of Cuba’s Communist leaders who now works for Norman Lear’s People for the American Way, stayed true to Marxist form by telling the rally that Cruz and Rubio are “sellouts” and “traitors” who “are turning their backs on the Latino community.” Street organizing is surely not for the mealymouthed.
RELATED: Rubio and Cruz Atop the GOP
This effort is so blatantly outrageous it might serve a purpose. It should make it clear, for the umpteenth time, that the next president — whoever he or she is — must prioritize dismantling the entire framework of identity politics.
The process can start with ending racial preferences, euphemistically known as affirmative action. The Supreme Court can deal a deathblow to this subversive inducement for Americans to subdivide into groups by deciding in the Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin case that the government never has a compelling interest in making decisions based on race. Racial discrimination is always wrong.
#share#But putting all of the chips on the Supreme Court doesn’t always work out, as conservatives should know by now. Policy debates, and especially policy-making, matter. With that in mind, let’s examine two of the issues these groups have targeted Cruz and Rubio over: the minimum wage and immigration:
‐Raising the minimum wage would disproportionately hurt immigrants from Latin America and their descendants, as they are more likely to hold the entry-level jobs that pay lower wages. These jobs afford those who hold them the necessary training in the skills that they will require to climb the ladder of success. Raising the pay for these jobs above their value added will only make these employment opportunities disappear. Researchers have found that the 2007–09 federal minimum-wage increase lowered the incomes of affected workers by $150 a month.
‐Immigration just never makes it to No. 1 on any poll of which issues actually matter most to those Americans that the Census Bureau identifies as Hispanic. According to Pew, illegal immigration comes in fourth out of five, behind education (92 percent), jobs and the economy (91 percent), and health care (86 percent). Illegal immigration, at 73 percent, barely edges out the Middle East of all things (66 percent) as an issue that is extremely or very important. The same poll said that a whopping 60 percent of Hispanic registered voters would vote for a candidate who disagreed with them on illegal immigration.
RELATED: Cruz vs. Rubio — A Better GOP Race
These issues are American issues, to be decided by all the people of the United States, and in the national interest of the country. To pretend that they are only “Latino issues” as Huerta, La Raza, and other self-appointed activist groups constantly do, only reveals why they want society to be balkanized, and group differences to be permanent — namely, because the entire framework has been created to serve the interests of the Left.
#related#Clusters such as “Hispanics” (or “Asians,” “Native Americans,” etc.) are attempts to turn into monoliths distinct groups with differing cultural indicators, oftentimes groups that do not even share a common language. These “subordinate” groups then can lead a “counter-hegemony” against the “dominant” group — that is, be used to carry out the leftist dream of transforming America.
Much blather has been poured on what constitutes a Hispanic racially, ethnically, or culturally. But Huerta herself has been very clear, telling the Latin Post earlier this year: “It’s not a question of your surname or the language that you can speak; it’s a question about what values you hold.”
Americans of all hues, religions, and geographic provenances may have very good reasons to support or oppose a policy, but a servile obeisance to identity politics and the leftist status quo is certainly not one of them.