SHOOTING THEMSELVES IN THE FOOT
I don’t remember while growing up that businessmen were Democrats. For the most part they were Republicans. They universally stood against high taxes, big government, social welfare and too much regulation. They strongly advocated capitalism and a government that balanced budgets. They opposed Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs and the inroads of the Warren Court. They had no patience with socialism and communism which they saw as evil.
Today it seems that the founders of our most successful companies are liberals. Amazon, Starbucks, Microsoft, Apple, and Costco are but a few. It used to be that the explanation for a company founder being a Democrat was that he or she wanted to encourage regulations that eliminated competitors. Once a company got big enough they could use the political system to pass laws and other requirements that barred new companies from competing with them.
That’s unlikely to be the case today. The company founders and billionaires of today who are leftists have a different motivation. Your guess is as good as mine as to why. My theory is that it’s a result of the struggle to overcome racism in the 1960s. This social revolution that elevated blacks to full equality had a profound impact on people. Their indignation over the events in Little Rock and Birmingham turned them into liberals on this issue. Although the pendulum has swung back, to this day the issue of racism remains on the front burner. Many of us believe that this issue has been redressed, but in the schools, the media and the institutions it still burns bright. The college-educated entrepreneurs of today often become liberals before they think much about free markets and enterprise.
The sad part about all this is that the left wants to enact laws that cripple capitalism. They want to soak the rich, strip successful companies of their capital and hamstring business with planning and intervention. Rich, successful liberals are like liberals everywhere, they believe in their socialist dogma so deeply they ignore the negative results. They can’t be made to see that liberal policies are destructive and ruinous. Our country cannot persist in its greatness if the left remains so influential. As for our Silicone Valley liberals, they are providing the government the rope with which to hang them.
