Corporate America is just as much an “enemy of the people” as the corporate media

By Chris Menahan

Will this finally make the GOPe give a damn about mass deplatforming and corporate censorship?

From Fox News:

Immigration and civil rights groups recently sent a list to the CEOs of American companies urging them not to hire Trump officials who were involved in last year’s separation of migrant children from their families.

[…] [Kirstjen] Nielsen’s name appears on a list that a cabal of immigration and civil rights groups recently sent to the CEOs of American companies, urging them not to hire Trump officials who were involved in last year’s separation of migrant children from their families.

[…] “Some of these individuals have left the administration in recent months,” the letter to the CEOs states. “Regardless of when they leave, they should not be allowed to seek refuge in your boardrooms or corner offices. Allowing them to step off the revolving door and into your welcoming arms should be a nonstarter.”

[…] The letter was signed by 41 immigration and civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has targeted Nielsen in the past.

Corporate America is just as much an “enemy of the people” as the corporate media.

I was reading an excellent article from Patrick J. Deneen on the subject the other day titled “Corporate Progressivism,” where he reviews the book, “From Tolerance to Equality: How Elites Brought America to Same-Sex Marriage by Darel E. Paul.”

Here’s an excerpt:

In 2013, the Supreme Court reversed a determination by the Internal Revenue Service that $363,053 in inheritance taxes were owed on an estate of $4.1 million. One side of the American political spectrum swooned in joy—the left. These supposed opponents of inequality were largely indifferent to the financial element of the case. They were simply cheered by the fact that United States v. Windsor held that the Defense of Marriage Act had unconstitutionally limited the definition of marriage to ­opposite-sex couples. And so avoidance of ­inheritance taxes was celebrated as an achievement for equality.

We can see a similar dynamic when it comes to corporate politicking. President Obama said of the 2010 Citizens United decision, “This ruling strikes at our democracy itself,” and “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.” Yet one searches in vain to find progressive denunciations of the role played by corporations in several recent high-profile controversies about state-level Religious Freedom Restoration Acts. The governors of Arizona, Arkansas, and Indiana all retreated from enacting these laws when threatened with capital strikes and the relocation of major sporting events. Corporations successfully ousted North Carolina’s governor after he supported legislation that required transgendered persons to use bathrooms matching their biological sex. Far from decrying such corporate interference as a corruption of democracy, the left cheered it on. Frank Bruni wrote a column in the New York Times titled “The Sunny Side of Greed” in which he said it was “fine with me” if “big corporations will soon rule the earth,” given that they were “more democratic” than politicians—at least on issues of sexuality.

These examples encapsulate one of the strangest features of contemporary progressive politics: the transformation of the egalitarian agenda from an economic program into a movement for sexual liberation. The party that once promoted the interests of the working class now ­celebrates when wealthy couples dodge the “death tax” and corporations overturn democratic verdicts—all the while holding up signs displaying the equal sign.

[…] Paul further explains how a powerful combination of institutions—the universities, corporations, and media—have shamed and silenced those who stand athwart the arc of history. Elites are able to invoke both moral and scientific arguments while subjecting any inconvenient scientific findings (such as those of Mark ­Regnerus) to a massive barrage of moral outrage framed as scientific refutation. 

[…] Paul’s book shows that these purported antagonists share a broad project of de-norming. They are particularly committed to displacing traditional arrangements of family, marriage, and child-rearing in favor of individual autonomy, self-creation, and lifestyle choice shorn of long-standing commitment. World-straddling corporations have a strong interest in fostering atomized, de-normed subjects. Because their “identities” arise primarily from appetites that can be altered through both marketing and technology, they are the ideal consumers. The ideological justification for this economic project has been long-prepared by the intellectual class, which over the last four decades has devoted itself to the project of displacing traditional norms in favor of theories of self-creation in a world governed not by tradition or natural law, but solely in accordance with the human will.

Paul’s book powerfully reveals why the progressive sexual agenda of the intellectual class and the profit motive of corporations have fully aligned. There’s both apparently limitless freedom and vast quantities of money to be gained in overcoming human nature’s final frontier: sexual complementarity and all that follows. It should be a wake-up call to those who continue to believe that capitalism is an unmitigated boon for conserving the blessings of marriage, family, and children.

The full article is well worth the read.