Opinion: U.S. Businesses Must Help the American People Save Democracy
By Ambassador David L. Carden
The Republicans are waging a war on American democracy. They realize their political objectives depend upon establishing minority rule, knowing as they do that their party hasn’t won the popular vote in a presidential election since 2004. This situation is unlikely to change given the country’s demographics and the Republicans’ present policies. Some U.S. businesses understand that the Republicans are attempting to undermine the political and economic pluralism that has made the country successful. They understand that, should the Republicans win, it will weaken the United States both at home and abroad. They also understand that what the Republicans are doing is bad for business. Some are pushing back. More need to do so.
The Republicans’ war on democracy includes many well-publicized tactics, including extreme gerrymandering, restricting voting rights, attacking the right to privacy, banning books, asserting America no longer discriminates against minorities, dissolving the separation of church and state, and denying educational and other institutions the opportunity to address historical inequality. But the least well-known front in the Republicans’ war is their effort to silence U.S. businesses that are defying their policies. Republicans are pressuring businesses to make a tough choice: either prioritize the rights and wellbeing of their employees and customers, or safeguard their immediate economic interests by complying with Republican demands.
The Republican attack on U.S. businesses takes many forms:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis punishing Disney for speaking out against his “Don’t Say Gay” law;
Georgia Republicans voting to end Delta Airlines’ jet-fuel tax breaks for criticizing legislation promoting voter-suppression;
West Virginia withdrawing money from the world’s largest asset manager because its position on climate change allegedly poses an economic risk to the state;
Texas passing a law barring its agencies and investment funds from doing business with companies that will not invest in fossil fuels and firearms;
U.S. Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee advocating for stripping Major League Baseball of its antitrust exemption for pulling the All-Star game from Georgia after the state restricted voting rights;
Former U.S. President Donald Trump calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola for similarly speaking out against restricted voting rights in Georgia, and of Goodyear for opposing his agenda;
The chairman of the Dallas Republican Party calling for the cancellation of tax breaks for American Airlines and Dell Computers for opposing restrictions on voting rights;
U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell threatening “serious consequences” if corporations act like a “woke alternative government” in responding to his party’s policies and politics;
U.S. Senator Ted Cruz calling for an investigation of Bud Lite because it featured a transgender American in an advertising campaign;
and MAGA movement members campaigning against Target for selling LBGTQ-friendly merchandise.
The Republican war on democracy and U.S. business is, at its core, a war on political and economic pluralism. Political pluralism posits that power should be shared by a multiplicity of small groups; that all Americans should be given the access and opportunity to organize and assemble in the pursuit of their political objectives; and that the country’s political institutions and discourse should abide by a socially-accepted set of rules. Economic pluralism is the basis of the “American Dream,” which is understood to mean a shared potential for upward economic mobility. Political and economic pluralism are at the heart of America’s ideology. They also have legitimized and reinforced American leadership around the world.
The United States Constitution could not be clearer concerning the importance of political and economic pluralism. Individual rights and liberties—including the right to vote, and the freedom of speech and religion—are central to the architecture of American life. But so too is the pursuit of wealth, a concept embodied in the Declaration of Independence as the “pursuit of happiness.”
U.S. businesses have benefited from pluralism. Their employees and customers are diverse in race, ethnicity, religion, generation, and sexual orientation. These firms have succeeded because their diversity yields the teamwork, creativity, and collaboration necessary to invent, innovate, design, and provide quality products and services. Created in the melting pot of the country’s diversity and commitment to pluralism, U.S. business have given the United States a competitive economic advantage both at home and around the world, facilitating the interconnections necessary for diplomacy to work and reinforcing U.S. leadership abroad. And, when things have gone wrong, the country’s political and economic pluralism have given Americans reason to fight to preserve what they have created.
Given the importance of political and economic pluralism at home and abroad, it may seem puzzling that Republicans are waging war on U.S. business. It is especially confusing because the Republican attack is focused on preventing businesses from exercising their First Amendment rights, which the conservative majority of the U.S. Supreme Court recently reaffirmed in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010). But the formerly “pro-business” Republicans now fear how U.S. businesses oppose their antidemocratic strategy. Some are even calling for legislation to overrule Citizens United.
Republicans are right to be concerned U.S. business will choose to protect their workers and reject their attack on democracy. Sixty percent of U.S. adults say that they won’t work for companies that don’t speak out against racial injustice. Over seventy percent say they trust employers to “do what is right when it comes to responding to racism and racial injustice.” The American people realize what the Republicans do not: the United States has succeeded because of its pluralism.
But unfortunately, these statistics do not necessarily mean Republicans will lose their war on democracy. They have had an important ally in the Supreme Court, whose conservative majority was appointed by Republican presidents who did not win the popular vote. The Supreme Court has weakened the Voting Rights Act, tolerated extreme gerrymandering, and supported the Republicans’ “Christian agenda,” an increasingly important component of the Republican strategy. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor observed in her recent dissent in Carson v. Makin (2022), “this Court continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.” This attack on the separation of church and state poses a grave threat to the rights established by the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Consider the following: at the time the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights were adopted, many individual states had an established religion, a practice that endured until 1833. It wasn’t until 1925, in Gitlow v. New York (1925), that the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states not to violate the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court subsequently used the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the First Amendment right to privacy. But the Supreme Court nullified this use of the Fourteenth Amendment when it reversed Roe v. Wade (1973) in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022). The Dobbs decision presents the danger that Gitlow could also be overruled, opening the door for the states to adopt an official religion. It also would provide an avenue for states to the deny other rights to privacy embodied in past Supreme Court rulings, including contraception and same sex marriage.
If you think these reversals are fanciful, consider the 2013 bill that North Carolina Republicans proposed providing the state would not “recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate…the state from making laws respecting establishment of religion.” More recently, in 2016, the newly-elected Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Representative Mike Johnson, claimed “we don’t live in a democracy” but a “biblical republic.” He has made clear his opposition to a plethora of privacy rights—including those related to sexual preference, same-sex marriage, contraception, and no-fault divorce—and has advocated for a total ban on abortion.
The Republican attack on America’s political and economic pluralism is a crisis for both U.S. businesses and all those that depend upon U.S. leadership abroad. Here are some things U.S. businesses can do to help the American people save democracy:
Educate employees about the historic economic benefits of political and economic pluralism;
Do not advertise with media companies that fail to report accurately on the Republicans’ antidemocratic agenda or with media companies that traffic in electoral conspiracy theories;
Stop funding candidates who support the exclusion and marginalization of any Americans, including candidates who do not uphold election results;
Recruit and hire more Americans that belong to the groups that the Republicans are attempting to marginalize;
Sponsor youth programs and schools committed to creating an environment of inclusiveness and tolerance;
Account for the long-term social, economic, and environmental costs that businesses will suffer by prioritizing short-term tax avoidance;
Promote the American dream by adopting fair compensation policies;
Make decisions designed to create a sustainable, healthy future for all Americans.
The Republicans don’t want U.S. businesses to interfere with their political agenda. Rather, they want their war on U.S. democracy to be a private matter between the American people and their “elected” representatives. But there’s nothing private about what the Republicans are doing. Their war is a war on the very foundation of the United States. U.S. business needs to get in the fight and help the American people preserve the democracy that has made their country, and its businesses, successful.
David L. Carden served as the first resident U.S. ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. He is the author of Mapping ASEAN: Achieving Peace, Prosperity, and Sustainability in Southeast Asia and has written for Foreign Policy, Politico, the SAIS Review of International Affairs, the Guardian, the South China Morning Post, and Strategic Review, among others. He also is a mediator and serves on the Board of the Weinstein International Foundation, which promotes the use of mediation around the world.
“American Federal Government” is by Thomas Hawk and is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
