So much fuss in the past several weeks has been about the Georgia election bill. Naturally, given the legacy media’s editorializing of the false premise that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp’s signed measure restricts voting rights, the leftist mob has sought to put pressure on corporations to denounce S.B. 202.
Thus, Major League Baseball cratered. The MLB announced last Friday the relocation of its All-Star Game, which was scheduled in July at Truist Park, where the Atlanta Braves play. The game will now take place in Denver, Colorado, at Coors Field, the Rockies’ home field.
Other corporations bowed down to the mob as well, including Delta Air Lines, JPMorgan Chase, ViacomCBS, Citigroup, Cisco, UPS, and Merck. The hashtag #BoycottCocaCola trended on Twitter last week, culminating in CEO James Quincey virtue-signaling about how the bill is “unacceptable.”
“It is a step backwards, and it does not promote principles we have stood for in Georgia around broad access to voting and voter convenience, about ensuring election integrity,” the beverage executive said.
“What we do is we raise the specter of voter fraud and now we restrict legal voters, eligible voters with the ability to cast ballots,” claimed Merck Chairman and CEO Ken Frazier. “And that’s what’s wrong with this bill — because democracy depends on every voter in this country having free and fair access to vote without discrimination and without undue hindrance.”
All of the bumper sticker aphorisms about democracy and election integrity are in response to a bill that mandates voter identification for absentee ballots and prohibits partisan actors from passing out gifts to voters in line at the polls, among other provisions that should be uncontroversial.
It is truly appalling the degree to which the left sees election security as oppressive or racist nowadays. While these corporations are within their rights to take political positions, conservatives ought to take a page from the left’s playbook and announce the boycott of organizations that 1) callously reject ordered liberty and 2) are willing to appease the far-left at all costs.
It’s time for the right to get tough — and to stop supporting groups that do not support them.
Consider the Chicken Sandwich Wars
For years, the left has understood it can affect the culture through boycotting. Regardless of flawed motives and immoral outbursts, Democrats have done this much more effectively than the right. Case and point: fast-food chain Chick-fil-A.
The left has exhaustingly fomented over Chick-fil-A’s stance as a Christian organization. After vocal leftists claimed they would stop eating at Chick-fil-A in 2012 — despite the business booming regardless long after president Dan Cathy came out against gay marriage — in due time, the company gave in to the mob from a public relations standpoint.
While conservatives took a stand for Chick-fil-A, and the chain reported a “record-setting day” of sales after then-Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee called in a Facebook post for “Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day,” Cathy caved in 2013 and deleted his tweet over the Supreme Court’s ruling on same-sex marriage.
“He realized his views didn’t necessarily represent the views of all customers, restaurant owners and employees and didn’t want to distract them from providing a great restaurant experience,” the company said in a statement.
Years later, after continued leftist complaining over Chick-fil-A funding groups that both define marriage as between a man and a woman, as well as its backing of pro-life groups, the company announced in 2019 it was changing course to prove fealty to its secular, woke overlords. It was pretty pathetic, but it is an important lesson.
Those on the right recognize Chick-fil-A dropped the ball by capitulating, but we must also recognize that the strategy of the obsessive radicals worked. More importantly, Chick-fil-A never lost money, or was actually boycotted to its detriment.
Yet, pressure from activists still forced the company to change course. The lesson is that if the right could both boycott and be ardent in its rhetoric, change will come. Companies are in operation to make money, after all. If conservatives remind them of this, they will crater.
It’s Time to Play Offense
The left is already engaged in a culture war for ideological domination of every American institution, so there is no other choice than for the right to join the fight as well. What does this entail? Well, former President Donald Trump certainly channeled the proper mindset. It’s time to get on the offensive.
“Never submit, never give up!” Trump said in a statement. “It is finally time for Republicans and Conservatives to fight back — we have more people than they do — by far! We can play the game better than them.”
In addition to boycotting the organizations that have voiced disapproval over the Georgia election security measure, conservatives need to take a firm stance against the Big Tech oligarchs that want nothing more than to muzzle their mouths shut. Conservatives also need to keep calling out the hundreds of companies that defended the Black Lives Matter and Antifa rioting and looting over the summer, including Adidas, American Airlines, Ben & Jerry’s, BMW, Dell, Foot Locker, and many others. Any company that supports lawlessness and disorder should not receive your paycheck.
Any company that is openly supportive of the killing of the unborn and funds Planned Parenthood should be boycotted. This includes hundreds of companies, such as Craiglist, Dockers, Allstate, Aetna, United Airlines, Patagonia, Liberty Mutual, and others. Here is a recent list provided by Family Council. It might seem burdensome to retreat from products that have defined your livelihood in America’s materialistic society, but if the left is threatening to boycott goods, we cannot just sit around and twiddle our thumbs with hollow statements about the free market.
What about the companies that have backed measures to restrict your Second Amendment rights? In a letter obtained by the New York Times in 2019, 145 groups called for gun control measures. Save this document, print it out, and circle the name of each company. Blow them up on social media and call your representatives to voice your complaints.
Conservatives need to make companies remember what they are here for: to provide goods and services, not be the arbiters of ideology. As America splinters off into political and cultural niches, and our nation grows more and more divided, the war for our businesses means letting them know that they will lose customers if they continue to alienate their customers.
Joining the fight, as Trump called for, means having a backbone and at least attempting to pressure the rich and powerful to confirm their positions on the issues. For far too long, the right has been content with a free market that is made up of companies that despise freedom. Conservatives have rendered capitalism to be a god — neglecting that the companies they support should also have their interests in mind, or at least not be against them.
Republicans have endlessly preached about why the free market should be external to ideology, but denying that politics plays into the culture — and culture into politics — shows that some in the GOP don’t know what time it is. In the process, we have been deceived by soulless and immoral corporations growing wealthier by the minute.
A free market is great, but what is undoubtedly not great is giving your hard-earned cash to people who support ideas and organizations fundamentally opposed to you and what you believe. It is not the 1980s, and the sun is not shining down in Washington. It is time to fight like your country depends on it — because it does.
It is time for Americans who are sick and tired of being pawns in the left’s kingdom to fight back. It is time for you to boycott corporations that hate you.
