The gangster way
Many of us have grown tired of the hypocritical virtue-signaling of woke corporations. Much of that fatigue comes from an awareness of the craven motives behind all the genuflecting; more specifically, the assumption by corporate leaders that disseminating woke propaganda will appease their young employees (freshly indoctrinated at woke colleges) and keep them out of the crosshairs of woke activists always looking for new targets.
The woke conversions occur within such organizations because, as with most things woke, a tiny but noisy minority is able to intimidate a much larger, non-woke majority. It is assumed that there will be no price paid for going woke, and certain costs and risks associated with not doing so.
Although most people might be put off by indoctrination, a bet is made that they will keep buying the same soft drinks and watching the same television programs and going to the same sporting events they always have, that you truly can go woke without going broke.
The woke win in such situations, and have their sensibilities consequently catered to and thus emboldened, because they care more than the nonwoke do, or at least are seen that way by feckless, easily intimidated corporate CEOs and professional sports commissioners.
The only way to reverse the woke trend in such settings is to find a way to reverse those cost-benefit perceptions and make woke conversion potentially riskier.
Unfortunately, the way that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has found is the wrong way.
The bill that DeSantis signed into law revoking Disney’s “independent special district” in response to the company’s criticism of Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” law amounts to little more than a thinly veiled bill of attainder, an effort to punish Disney for taking a political position that DeSantis and Florida Republicans don’t like. Put differently, they are using governmental power to punish Disney for exercising the constitutional right to free speech, precisely that which the First Amendment forbids.
Conservatives who have rushed to DeSantis’ defense (what some are calling “Fight Club Conservatives,” because of their Trump-like willingness to mix it up with the left, first principles notwithstanding) claim that what he has done will finally impose a price for woke corporate behavior, that Disney will be made a useful example of.
But when Josh Hammer of Newsweek, consistent with those claims, applauds DeSantis for “wield[ing] political power in muscular fashion to reward friends and punish enemies within the confines of the rule of law,” he conveniently forgets that the rule of law exists first and foremost to prevent those holding governmental power from wielding it to reward friends and punish enemies.
As National Review editor Phil Klein notes, “Using the state as a vehicle to reward friends and punish enemies is something that conservatives once excoriated, for good reason, as Gangster Government. Government policy toward individuals and businesses should be neutral to whether or not those in government agree or disagree with a given person or entity. Conservatives cheering on the idea of the government splitting the populace into friends and enemies should also recognize that there are times when they will end up as enemies of the state.”
In short, the rule of law (and crucial constitutional expressions thereof, such as the First Amendment) constrains governments from punishing entities for their political expression, however unpopular or provocative (or however much, like Disney, they might deserve it).
Normal people don’t take politics into account when buying tickets to a ballgame or deciding where to go on vacation or what potato chips to drop in the grocery cart, and that is how it should be. But when companies wade into politics in an unapologetic, in-your-face manner, it becomes difficult to not respond in some way, however reluctantly.
Thankfully, there is a more effective response available than that which DeSantis has resorted to, one which also has the virtue of being less corrosive of classical liberal principles: Hit them where it hurts most.
Corporations like Disney don’t exist to engage in political causes or even to make the world a better place more broadly (as with Adam Smith’s butchers, brewers, and bakers, any contributions to that effect are purely unintended); they exist to make money and would cease to exist if they didn’t. And it is that logic, that “bottom line,” which puts consumers in control of their fate and behavior.
So if you don’t like the NFL plastering Black Lives Matter slogans around their stadiums, don’t buy tickets to the games or watch them on TV. And if Disney goes woke and seeks to indoctrinate your kids with trans ideology, pull the plug on Disney+ and go somewhere other than Disney World for vacation.
The politicization of life comes overwhelmingly from the political left (“the personal is the political”) and the vast majority of noxious corporate political intrusions invariably occur on behalf of woke/identity-politics causes.
Most of us non-woke folk have an interest in discouraging this tendency (if only because of the incivility and polarization and “cancel culture” that flows from it), but use of the state to punish those we disagree with, as a vehicle for the pursuit of grudges rather than the general welfare, belongs in banana republics, not ours.