OPINION:
Toyota Motor Corp., facing backlash about forced Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training as well as its sponsorship of pro-LGBTQ events, is reeling in the woke and changing its mind about participating in measures pushed by the leftist advocacy group, the Human Rights Campaign.
Another DEI agenda bites the dust.
This is a slow, growing trend in corporate America — the executives who once saw diversity and transgender rights and Marxist-type missions as their key to modern day profiteering are seeing the errors of their way and stepping back from the anti-capitalistic walks. And the return to free market sanity is due largely to a conservative activist named Robby Starbuck, a former Hollywood music director and one-time congressional candidate, who has taken his voice and harnessed it to pressure companies that have gone woke to go, well, un-woke.
Capitalism is supposed to be about profit, not politics, after all.
But it’s this new brand of Great Reset capitalism that’s got all the U.S. companies in a tizzy.
The World Economic Forum has been shoving into existence a new style of capitalism, defined as stakeholder capitalism, where companies exist to yes, make money, but more than that, to advance the social justice cause of the day. Forget the shareholders, the WEF says; think of the stakeholders, the Great Reset model argues — with stakeholders defined as anyone who claims an interest in the company, from Black Lives Matter to LGBTQs to China’s CCP. That’s not American capitalism. That’s the global government’s way. It’s business-by-collective, which is to say is business-by-bureaucrats — which is to say it’s the mindset Barack Obama brought into popular American consciousness by scorning capitalists and entrepreneurs with his “you didn’t build that” mantras.
Enough.
Enough of the madness.
A free market is based on individual achievement, individual ingenuity, individual blood, sweat and tears, combined with a government that keeps the regulations reeled in enough to allow the citizens to decide whether products and services are successes or failures, a la buying or disdaining to buy. The government doesn’t build that.
Finally, corporate America seems to be listening to reason once again.
“Starbuck is both riding a wave of right-wing hostility to DEI programs and corporate advocacy on issues like climate change and LGBTQ rights, and advancing the opposition himself. He has channelled energy on the right to target specific brans popular with politically conservative customers — Harley-Davidson, Tractor Supply Co. and John Deere — and relentlessly drawn attention online to their past publicly-stated policies,” CNN wrote.
He’s winning the war against wokeism.
Call it the power of one.
Toyota is the latest to told its DEI hand.
The company is no longer going to participate in the Human Rights Campaign Corporate Equality Index and “best places to work” surveys that measure a company’s adherence to DEI and pro-LGBTQ agendas.
“Toyota Rolls Back DEI, Prioritizes Employees’ Professional Development,” NTD wrote.
This is as it should be. Smart companies invest in their employees. But the smartest companies invest in their employees in ways that benefit all employees, based on competency scales and pursuits of excellence, and not in divisive manners that focus on skin colors, sexual preferences, political and social views, and the like. A few months back, Ford found similarly.
“We are mindful that our employees and customers hold a wide range of beliefs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley wrote in an internal email that was shared with USA Today by Starbuck in August. “The external and legal environment related to political and social issues continues to evolve.”
Yes. Let the destruction of DEI continue.
Lowe’s home improvement has walked back its DEI. So, too, the maker of Jack Daniel’s whiskey. Zoom and Snap, Google and Meta and other tech companies all cut their DEI programs. Others? Molson Coors; Microsoft — somewhat; and don’t forget about the colleges like UNC Charlotte and more.
“Three More States Drop DEI Programs at Their Public Universities,” the Goldwater Institute reported in May, about George Mason University and Virginia Commonwealth University, as well as the University of North Carolina. That’s good news because out of college come America’s next business leaders. Teaching them in the proper free market way to go is crucial to maintaining a healthy, thriving, prosperous U.S. economy.
It’s not that business leaders shouldn’t be concerned with equal treatment of employees, and fairness in the work place, and even social programs and agendas. It’s not that business executives shouldn’t repurpose some of their profits toward charitable endeavors or even political causes that advance their personal beliefs. But corporations should never lose sight of their core function — to make money.
Businesses are not quasi-governing agencies.
Business owners should never be in positions of dictating policy — of corrupting the Constitution with their policies — of forcing citizens to abide their personal policies else be shut out of the purchase window — of becoming the oligarchs who subvert the democratic-republic and in essence, rule the people.
There’s government. There’s the business world. And the less the two meet, the better for Americans’ freedoms.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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