For decades, Democrats and progressives have sought to claim human rights as their own. They depicted conservatives as Cold War-obsessed, uninterested in either freedom or democracy. For many liberals, the Cuban Revolution was about human rights. So too were the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. Every Latin American dictator was a Republican friend; every revolutionary was an inspiration for change.

Too often, conservatives refused to engage. That ended when President Ronald Reagan appointed Elliott Abrams and Paul Wolfowitz, respectively, to the Latin America and East Asia bureaus at the State Department. Both took on leftist groups that used the language of progressivism but sought autocracy. Both tied liberty to economic freedom. And, under the tenures of both, tens of millions of people won freedom.