Tractor Supply Company’s recent 180 on DEI and ESG policies instituted by a CEO hired from Macy’s in 2020 was a welcome sign for conservatives upset with the leftist politicization of corporate America. And there are other signs that fanatical corporate devotion to leftist policies surrounding climate, crime, and Trans ideology are starting to retreat almost as quickly as they exploded into boardrooms in the wake of George Floyd’s overdose.
In his 2013 book, The Great Degeneration, author Niall Ferguson looked at the decline of religious and civic affiliation in America – a previously unique cultural marker that Ferguson posited had played an enormous role in the ascendance of the United States – and pondered what would come next. What would happen when Americans were increasingly cast adrift from the institutional connections and ties that bound us together. Post 2016, we got our answer: secular leftism.
Secular leftism is as much a religion as Christianity, with about as many denominations, and the tolerance for other faiths of radical Islam. It’s also deeply unpopular, attracting a small, loud coterie of elites including Ivy League grads, government bureaucrats bent on accumulating power, and radicalized street warriors LARPing pre-WW2 Germany’s Brown Shirt assault brigades. But much as the Inquisition turned against the Catholic Church, religious leftist totalitarianism is turning against the left.
Public pressure and high-profile failures have shareholders at a number of companies pushing back against DEI and ESG-aligned boardrooms, voting in favor of eliminating or scaling back the bureaucratic programs that have exploded throughout industry in recent years. As they should. Much like with government, DEI and ESG are responsible for massively increasing management costs, while hampering the ability to produce quality results. Boeing went all-in on DEI, and we’ve seen the results. Starbucks opened their bathrooms to homeless drug addicts, and soon started closing stores. Bud Light stepped on Dylan Mulvaney’s crank, and lost their spot atop the water-beer heap.
But what all the coverage of these issues has been missing – even on the right – is the counter demands of the anti-DEI/ESG set: we have none. People opposed to the religious left’s takeover of corporate America aren’t demanding that companies suddenly start promoting conservative ideals, funding conservative causes, or forcing employees through conservative struggle sessions. We’re just asking them to sell us stuff without proselytizing. Make products, sell products. That’s it.
The fight to return rational impartiality to corporate America won’t be short or easy – the Ivy League acolytes in every corporation aren’t going to go down without a fight. But it’s a fight the right can and absolutely should engage and win.
Note: the opinions expressed herein are those of Sam Stone only and not his co-host Chuck Warren or Breaking Battlegrounds’ staff.
