Awarding the Outsider

Obama has awarded the Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honor, to Dolores Huerta.

Ms. Huerta is a community activist (with 20 arrests), an organizer of farm protests, honorary chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, very complementary of Hugo Chavez's rule in Venezuela, a feminist and homosexual activist, an advocate of amnesty for illegal immigrants, and author of the quote "Republicans hate Latinos"' She feels the American Southwest was stolen from Mexico (to paraphrase her: "We did not cross the border, the border crossed us.)  And she is the target of reporter Matthew Vadum's line in a piece about the award for FrontPage magazine: “As the saying goes, if you give a man a fish, you feed him for a day, but if you teach a man to fish, you feed him for a lifetime. Community organizers like Huerta don’t teach anyone how to fish: they teach activists how to steal their neighbors’ fish. This is what Huerta and her ilk call social justice.”

This curious decision, where the nation's highest award is given to a woman who has very little in common with the country awarding her, could easily be misunderstood. Was it done to teach us something? Was it one of those modern "participation" awards? Is it arrogance or defiance? Is it eccentric or expansive? Is it complementary or ironic?

It was an eerie moment as she received the award from the winner of the Noble Peace Prize.