{"id":1922637,"date":"2023-05-02T07:56:28","date_gmt":"2023-05-02T11:56:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-conservatives-need-to-make-economics-a-moral-issue\/"},"modified":"2023-05-02T08:00:43","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T12:00:43","slug":"why-conservatives-need-to-make-economics-a-moral-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-conservatives-need-to-make-economics-a-moral-issue\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Conservatives Need To Make Economics A Moral Issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fwhy-conservatives-need-to-make-economics-a-moral-issue%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1922637&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><h2>The Left&#8217;s Campaign to Bully Private Enterprise<\/h2>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The following excerpt is taken from a speech delivered by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dailywire.com\/show\/the-michael-knowles-show\">Michael Knowles<\/a> at the Club for Growth on Saturday, April 22.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<h3>The Pope&#8217;s Defense of Economic Liberty<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">One of the most persuasive defenses of economic liberty in recent memory came from the pope \u2014 not this pope, granted, a prior pope. In his 1991 encyclical \u201c<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Centesimus Annus<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">,\u201d Pope John Paul II declared, \u201cThe free market is the most efficient instrument for utilizing resources and effectively responding to needs.\u201d His predecessor pope Leo XIII used even blunter language. He called socialism a \u201cpest,\u201d \u201ca plague,\u201d and a \u201cwicked confederacy\u201d that \u201cseeks to steal the very gospel itself.\u201d Lots of other popes followed suit. Even the relatively liberal pope John XIII warned that a Christian could not \u201csubscribe even to moderate socialism.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Left&#8217;s Desire to Destroy the Moral Order<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Today, without such clear language from defenders of the traditional moral order, society has taken its cues from the Left, which leaves nothing ambiguous about its desire to destroy that moral order. Is anyone drinking Bud Light this evening? If the stock price of Anheuser-Busch is any indication, probably not. What would possess Bud Light \u2014 a drink consumed primarily by frat bros and construction workers \u2014 to sponsor Dylan Mulvaney, a transvestite performer so offensive to standards, norms, and women that even many supporters of the LGBT movement can\u2019t stand him? Who on earth thought that was a good idea?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The official explanation is that a rogue vice president of marketing made the call. Though that\u2019s just one of the half dozen or so mutually contradictory explanations that the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/why-conservatives-need-to-make-economics-a-moral-issue\/\" title=\"Why Conservatives Need To Make Economics A Moral Issue\">incompetent crisis communications team<\/a> at Anheuser-Busch tried to promote last week. First the company stood by the sponsorship, then they didn\u2019t know about it, then they made an ad about horses (or something), then they put the marketing executive on leave. Who\u2019s knows what they\u2019ll come up with next week?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whatever the explanation, it was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-cnn-cuomo-gollust-zucker-legal-mess\/\" title=\"The CNN-Cuomo-Gollust-Zucker Legal Mess\">terrible business decision<\/a>. Anheuser-Busch lost over $6.5 billion in market cap. Bar and customer boycotts of the brand show no signs of ending. Still, Anheuser-Busch won\u2019t apologize. Even stranger, countless companies continue to sponsor Mulvaney despite the unpopularity of transgender ideology and the particular unpopularity of Mulvaney. Aritzia, Crest, Instacart, Kate Spade, KIND Snacks, KitchenAid, Rent the Runway, and several other companies still sponsor the guy. Olay decided to start sponsoring him even after the Bud Light debacle. What gives?<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Left&#8217;s Nationwide Political Campaign<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Perhaps the executives of all of those companies just happen to be uncommonly liberal. Or perhaps it has something to do with a nationwide political campaign to bully private enterprise into adopting leftist ideology without ever once having to convince the people or the people\u2019s representatives to sign off on it. Left-wing activist groups, such as the pro-trans \u201cHuman Rights Campaign,\u201d rate corporations according to their \u201cCorporate Equality Index,\u201d and one of the key ways a corporation can boost its CEI score is through advertising. Hence, the Dylan Mulvaney beer can.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The ESG Movement<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Corporate Equality Index is one of the lesser-known parts of the ESG movement of \u201cEnvironmental, Social, and Governance\u201d policies pushed by the largest asset managers to force companies to adopt a leftist agenda. If companies fall afoul of ESG enforcers then, despite ESG\u2019s unpopularity, they risk being blackballed by the world\u2019s most <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/cryptoverse-after-merge-ether-heads-for-a-20-billion-shanghai-splurge\/\" title=\"Cryptoverse: After Merge, ether heads for a  billion Shanghai splurge\">powerful institutional investors<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Larry Fink of BlackRock outlined how this political campaign works in an infamous 2018 letter to top CEOs. In the letter, which he titled \u201cA Sense of Purpose,\u201d Fink insisted that companies need to serve a \u201csocial purpose,\u201d that \u201cTo prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society.\u201d And \u201cif a company doesn\u2019t engage with the community and have a sense of purpose, it will ultimately lose the license to operate from key stakeholders.\u201d This word choice is significant because it echoes calls by World Economic Forum chairman Klaus Schwab and countless other liberal elites for corporations to serve, not shareholders but \u201cstakeholders\u201d \u2014 a slippery term that evades the clear definition and can be said to mean whatever the ideologues who promote it want it to mean.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Fight Against ESG<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ultimately, \u201cstakeholder capitalism\u201d of the kind promoted by Fink and Schwab is nothing more than a ploy to give liberal elites even greater control over the economy and to funnel corporate resources toward the oligarchs\u2019 pet projects. We should fight it tooth and nail \u2014 as conservative treasurers and comptrollers have been doing with considerable success over the last couple years. But we should also take note as to why ESG has been so successful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Conservative officeholders have justified their rejection of ESG on the grounds that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profits for their constituents as shareholders in the companies that receive public investment. All well and good in the short term. But in the long term, this kind of amoral bean-counting language is going to fail just as surely as the rest of it has.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Need for Conservative Alternatives<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the private sector, conservatives must offer alternatives to the woke corporations. We need to offer our own, anti-woke products \u2014 our own razors and chocolates. Just to name two totally arbitrary examples. We need to build our own institutions, yes. We also need to exercise just political power.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>The Importance of Economic Liberty<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Economic liberty does not mean throwing up our hands and letting liberal corporations team up with Big Government to squeeze us out of the public square. We must create and defend the political conditions in which proper economic liberty can thrive. Corporations and asset managers \u2014 particularly crooked corporations in bed with big government \u2014 should not get a free pass. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Barry Goldwater put it well in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Conscience of a Conservative<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">. He wrote, \u201cLet us henceforth make war on all monopolies \u2014 whether corporate or union. The enemy of freedom is unrestrained power, and the champions of freedom will fight against the concentration of power wherever they find it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>delivered a powerful argument in favor of economic freedom that still resonates today. And while it may come as a surprise to some, the Catholic Church has a long history of promoting free markets and entrepreneurship. So, let&#8217;s dive into this fascinating topic and explore how the Church&#8217;s teachings on economics can inform our understanding of capitalism and its role in society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":224,"featured_media":1922638,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[541],"tags":[4539,13123,4174,9089],"class_list":["post-1922637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-daily-wire","tag-conservatives","tag-economics","tag-issue","tag-moral"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/224"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1922637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1922637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1922638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1922637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1922637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1922637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}