Big Business Facilitating Violation of Liberties – with Michael Ross: Michael Ross from Alliance Defending Freedom is with us today to talk about the growing trend of Big Business and Government Collusion. This is a form of fascism creeping into our government. What does this mean for the future of our country, and what can we do about it?

Air Date: 06/20/2023

Guest: Michael Ross from Alliance Defending Freedom

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

Alliance Defending Freedom

Viewpoint Diversity Score

 

Transcription:

Rick Green
Welcome to intersection of faith and the culture, it’s WallBuilders where we take on the hot topics of the day from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective. Thanks so much for joining us, be sure to visit the website WallBuilders.com today, where you can make your one time or monthly contribution, come alongside us and that way it helps us to reach more people. Also want to encourage you to visit Patriot Academy today so that you can check out the Leadership Congress, for coaches. Now, you don’t have to have been a coach yet, you can sign up right now as a coach for free, sign up as a constitution coach for free at PatriotAcademy.com and then you can sign up for the Coach Congress. That’s right, no matter what your age, what your background is, where you’re from, you can come spend a week with us at the State Capitol in Austin, Texas. While the students are having their Leadership Congress, our flagship program of the last 23 years, the military veterans will be over on the Senate side having their military veterans, Patriot Academy Leadership Congress, and then you can be a part of the Coach Congress, where you get to debate on the House floor in the committee rooms, you get to live the life of a legislator for a while and learn how it works. It’s going to make you better at influencing your legislator, maybe even set you up to run for the legislature. But best of all, it’s going to train you to be a good biblical citizen, all the speaking workshops, all the great speakers that are going to be there, it’s going to be incredible. You don’t want to miss it. Check it out at PatriotAcademy.com today. Alright, David and Tim later in the program Michael Ross is our guest today from Alliance Defending Freedom we’re going to be talking about pushing back against these woke corporations and their actions, how that can actually be done. You know, we deal with this all the time, guys, whether it’s, oh politics is too big or Congress won’t listen to me or the corporation’s too big. A lot of people decide not to take action or be a part of the solution because they just feel like the problems too big. The giants are too big. The fortified cities, you know, most people want to fall into the 10 spies of we can’t do anything. It’s too hard and not into the Joshua and Caleb thing. Today we’re going to be talking about how to be Joshua and Calebs, specifically with woke corporations.

Tim Barton
Well, I think it’s something too that probably now more people are recognizing the opportunity and ability to influence some of these big corporations, because of things like what happened with Bud Light. When you saw the Dylan Mulvaney, the transgender push from Bud Lights, right, Budweiser Anaheim, in general. And you saw first of all, they really misread their clientele, when they had the new marketing individual, the lady and she said, man, we don’t want to be viewed as, you know, the beer of the frat boys anymore. But wait a second, where do you sell the majority of your alcohol? At least be smart enough to know who your consumer is. And if you’re a consumer are a bunch of dudes, and they’re not dudes who want to dress up like women, this probably isn’t the best marketing move for you. But because of the blowback and the push back against Bud Light, because you’re looking at… I saw numbers a week or so ago that they’ve dropped 30% in their market share. And I mean, they’re just they’re significantly down and then you saw Target, when in the front of their store, they’re putting these transgender swimming suits encouraging boys to do this tuck thing and not to get graphic here on the radio, but you saw target going the same direction. And then there was pushback and blowback against target and rightfully so. I mean, when we were talking about… right, first of all, if you’re a beer company, I mean that’s just a dumb move. It’s not knowing your clientele, that’s promoting something as dumb, but this is… that was something for adults, when you come to target. Now, we’re not talking about promoting this ideology to adults, we’re talking about promoting this to children. You can go in the kids swimming suits section, and they have these LGBT swimming suits for children, like toddlers, infants, this is an ideology that has been promoted. And most parents are not wanting to promote this for their children. And certainly target misread the situation. But Rick, as you said, there’s been a lot of times when people just roll their eyes and go, oh my gosh, there’s nothing we can do. This has been one of the first times in decades, when you have seen enough people unified on an issue, enough people indignified by this evil ideology being promoted to children in Target, that there’s enough of a pushback and blowback and I think there are now individuals recognizing that if we will take a stand on principle, and we will let our voice be heard, we actually can make a difference. We can have an influence. And so as we’re looking at some of these corporations and organizations that have begun embracing some wokeism and unfortunately, there was a kind of new revelation for a lot of people that Chick fil A was going the direction of the DEI, the diversity, the equity, the inclusion and they are now doing this training for all their businesses and all their employees and this is just kind of a woke ideology that people that there was several posts on social media went viral and people were realizing that, wait a second, even Chick fil A is drinking some of this Kool Aid. They’re going the wrong direction as well. The reality is that nearly every major organization is embracing this on some level, some are just being much more blatant, much more outspoken with it than others, and some have gone further than others. But because of things like Budweiser, Bud Light because of things like Target, I think Americans and adults, parents, Christians, conservatives in general are finally recognizing that taking a stand can make a difference, if enough of us take a stand. And I think this is why we could be encouraged even having an interview today talking about corporations. And what can we do? How can we stand up, identifying that some of these places when they’re going a direction that is so backwards, so ridiculous, we need to push back against them and places like Target, it was so easy, because they put this in the front of all of their stores, these transgender swimming suits and encouraging boys to do this tuck thing and hide their genitalia, and like just crazy in the front of the store for children. This is something that was upfront enough that parents found out and they wanted to push back well, the more that we will find out what some of these organizations are doing, the more it creates an opportunity for us to say, wait a second, that doesn’t reflect my values. I don’t need to give you my dollars. And so what are the options. If you don’t go to Target where are you going to go? Well, you might go to Walmart, right? You might do some other things. But your options are places like Walmart, maybe Amazon, maybe shopping local, but even if you go to Walmart, Walmart is not pure and clean and innocent, but they’re not being as aggressive and upfront. So we are still sending a clear message in the market, that we are not okay with the upfront brazen attempt to indoctrinate to sexualize our children. That is still the right message being sent. Even though this is a… this wokeism is a battle we’re fighting across so many lines and corporations, it is still good for us to know what’s going on for us to take a stand. And now recognize that taking a stand can make a significant difference.

David Barton
And it’s interesting that those who have taken this stand that really attack the traditional values, they claim to have viewpoint diversity, they claim that they’re trying to bring all these viewpoints together and they don’t. They clearly attack and exclude particular viewpoints. And one of the groups who have been on the front line in really kind of fighting some of this crazy sexual wokeness that’s out there is Alliance Defending Freedom. They helped to get passed a few years ago, the the laws that protect women’s sports, really trying to keep Title Nine alive where we created women’s sports in the first place. And so they’re passing laws saying, no, if you’re a biological male, you don’t participate in women’s sports. And so they’ve been doing this all along. And yet we’re getting pushback from the other side saying, no, we’re the ones that have diversity. We’re the ones that are inclusive. And so ADF in dealing with this, they’ve come out with a measurement for all these large national groups, all these these businesses, etc. And it’s called viewpoint diversity score. So you can now go online and check these groups and say, hey, if they’re attacking my values, I don’t want to spend my money with them, but I don’t know if they attack my values. You can go to the scorecard and you can look and see how they rate and say, okay, that’s good. I’ll support them because they’re not attacking my values. I don’t want to give them my money to attack me. So this is a great service that’s out there. You know, people like like Mat Staver and, and Tim Wildmon, they have this at Christmas time the naughty or nice list, you know, go support the companies that are doing the right thing at Christmas and still celebrate Christmas, haven’t made it into a holiday season, make it a Christmas season. So this is really good because we now can, Tim, as you said, vote with our bucks, like people have done with Target and like people have done with Bud Light and like they may be doing soon with Chick fil A. This is a great way to do it. So having ADF to explain this to us is going to be a real good program.

Rick Green
Stay with us, folks, Michael Ross from Alliance Defending Freedom when we return on WallBuilders.

Tim Barton
Hey, guys, we want to let you know about a new resource we have at WallBuilders called “The American Story”. For so many years, people have asked us to do a history book to help tell more of the story that’s just not known or not told today. And we would say very providentially, in the midst of all of the new attacks coming out against America, whether it be from things like the 1619 project that say America is evil and everything in America was built off slavery, which is certainly not true or things like even the Black Lives Matter movement, the organization itself, not out of statement, Black Lives Matter, but the organization that says we’re against everything that America was built on, and this is part of the Marxist ideology. There’s so many things attacking America. Well, is America worth defending? What is the true story of America? We actually have written and told that story. Starting with Christopher Columbus, going roughly through Abraham Lincoln, we tell the story of America, not as the story of a perfect nation or a perfect people, but the story of how God used these imperfect people and did great things through this nation. It’s a story you want to check out WallBuilders.com , “The American Story”.

This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Many today wrongly claim our founding fathers were largely atheist agnostics and deist. Certainly, some founders were less religious than others. But even they were not irreligious. Consider Benjamin Franklin, definitely one of the least religious among them. Yet, when the delegates at the Constitutional Convention hit an impasse in their deliberations, it was Franklin who called them to prayer, invoking numerous scriptures to make his point. As he reminded them, “God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aide? We have been assured in the sacred writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this.” So, even the least religious of America’s founders urge public prayer and dependence on God. For more information about the faith of the Founding Fathers, go to WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. Great to have Michael Ross with us from Alliance Defending Freedom. Michael, thanks for your time today, man.

Michael Ross
Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Rick.

Rick Green
Hey, we typically think of, you know, free speech, freedom of religion only being violated by government. You make this point very clear, in the things that you guys are working on right now. In fact, I saw a great quote from Jeremy Tedesco on your team, saying the exact same thing that you know, with collusion with big business now we’re seeing big business basically being the enforcer of violations of free speech, and freedom of religion and ADF, of course, always right there on the front lines to stop it when it happens. So thanks for what y’all are doing. Talk to me a little bit about all these big companies and how we can know which companies are supporting free speech and religious liberty and which ones are actually violating it?

Michael Ross
Yeah, I appreciate it. So I mean, you’re exactly right, what we’re seeing is that concentrated private power is posing an increasingly large threat to the fundamental freedoms of everyday Americans, our free speech, and religious liberty. And so you know, that’s why we developed our viewpoint diversity score, business index, it’s first comprehensive benchmark to measure corporate respect for free speech and religious freedom. We do it across 42 factors and how these companies treat their vendors, their business partners, customers, their employees, you know, where they donate to. And so, you know, the left already has many benchmarks like these. And so what we want to do is say, well, look, you know, this country was founded on fundamental freedoms, like free speech and religious liberty, having, you know, robust civil discourse, understanding and protecting religious flourishing. And we want companies to respect and promote that. And so we’re hoping to make inroads, and we’ve already seen some powerful changes and some success with our recent campaign on de-banking.

Rick Green
Well, is it… I mean, is this pretty recent, that we’ve had to raise awareness to these companies, do you think a lot of these companies, this happened, you know, almost like board takeovers, where the left ended up, or have they’ve kind of been planting the seeds for some of this for a long time?

Michael Ross
They have definitely been planting seeds for a long time. I think a lot of people are not aware of it. You know, a lot of these activists and a lot of shareholders on the left has been trying to, you know, harangue, and get these companies to adopt, you know, what are far left positions, but of course, they promote it as something that’s, you know, very… sounds very benign, you know, environmental, social governance factors, ESG. But that’s really a Trojan horse for adopting their radical, you know, social and environmental stances.

Rick Green
What… and what do you think the likelihood is that they listen, right? I mean, like, what are the chances that they actually are there? Is the pocketbook going to overrule the the political philosophy, you know, is what I’m really asking then. If we put enough pain on them, Right? Will they change? Or are they just almost religious about it? Here we are, we’re talking about religious liberty. Is it almost cultish for them? And they’re like, no, we don’t care. You know, is Disney going to… they want to groom kids no matter what, it cost them on the pocketbook?

Michael Ross
Yeah. So it’s a good question. You know, I think we do have a lot of good opportunities for some of these companies. You know, obviously, some of them are going to be bad actors. And some of the board and high level officers are activists, but what we’re seeing from a lot of this, is that a lot of these companies are getting dragged into this activism. They don’t want to be there, they want to be in the business of making money. And, you know, we believe that if we can bring them back to a spot where they’re promoting tolerance and diversity for all types of religious and political viewpoint, that that’s a good spot for them. They don’t have to spend millions and millions of dollars, and, you know, taking these radical political positions that are very divisive, for the general public. And so we saw some success with this. You know, we’ve gotten a lot of participation in our business index from a lot of major finance and tech companies that have been willing to work with us and are, you know, trying to promote these types of policies. And we’ve seen that you know, JP Morgan Chase has responded and has really geared up to try and respond to our campaign against them for de-banking, certain political and religious groups.

Rick Green
So they… and I remember having I remember having Senator Brownback on our program, might have even been last fall when that happened him, one of his nonprofit, Chase basically kicked him out and said, we’re not going to do business with you. So you’re saying Chase has actually, at least conversing with you, they’re at least having some effort to stop some of this ESG and woke stuff. Is that what you’re saying? There’s a positive, you know, potential there at least even if they haven’t completely corrected it?

Michael Ross
Yeah, that’s right. We’ve seen them respond to some of our shareholder resolutions, we filed one and got it put before the voters this year at their shareholder meeting earlier in May. And, you know, they have given a logical explanation, they said, they’re considering participating in the viewpoint diversity index. But you know, we’ve had to mobilize a lot of people to speak up. And I think that’s a good message for your listeners, as well, is that, you know, we have to participate in corporate governance, corporate democracy, we have to, you know, let our voices be known as customers, that, you know, there are a lot of conservatives out there, you know, whether they’re employees or customers or wherever, and they’re affected by these bad and divisive policies. And, you know, these companies need to understand that and start respecting, you know, political and religious diversity for everyone.

Rick Green
How can people participate in this in terms of like, you know, accessing the index, and then sharing it with people, you know, reaching out to the corporations themselves? I mean, what do you recommend for an average Joe, like me? How do I respond?

Michael Ross
Yeah. Well, look, if you work for a company, and you want to advocate for some of our policies, you can look online, we have our, all of our policies and resources online at ViewpointDiversityScore.org, you can go there, you can contact us if you want advice on how to talk to this about your company. You know, if you’re a business owner, we have a network of, you know, like minded business owners who try and promote these policies and practices. But in general, I think just staying abreast of it. And, you know, if you’re a shareholder too, you know, I’d encourage you to talk with your financial advisor, or if you don’t have one, to just participate directly in the voting that happens every year on all of these resolutions. You know, I think that’s something that is gone under the radar for a lot of people on the right, that the left has been doing for probably over a decade, is that, you know, they’re voting with their shares.

Rick Green
What, what’s the website again, for people to see it?

Michael Ross
Absolutely, it’s www.ViewpointDiversityScore.org .

Rick Green
Okay, that’s funny, because I went to ViewpointDiversity.org and it’s a total left wing.

Michael Ross
No, that’s not us.

Rick Green
Not you. Yeah. So I was like, oh, wait a minute, Michael, I didn’t know you were part of this group. No, that’s great. Okay, so that’s actually good, because maybe a lot of their people end up on your website and get convinced to come to the right side of this thing. Okay, so ViewpointDiversityScore.org , make sure the score is in there, folks, ViewpointDiversityScore.org . And then, of course, it goes to, you got a lot of polling and stuff on there that you guys have done, and then how leaders can be a part of this. And then back to what you just said about, you know, actually participating in the shareholder meetings and voting and all of these things that Miss so few people do that, and even know that that option is there. And maybe some people have been discouraged where they’ve seen someone stand up at one of these meetings, and you got like Starbucks CEOs, like I don’t care, don’t buy coffee from us anymore. So in some of those woke companies, they didn’t get the response they wanted, I say, keep the pressure up. I mean, even if that is how the CEO or board member responds, man, just keep coming back, keep coming back, you got to be relentless, like the left has been.

Michael Ross
That’s exactly right, we have to utilize every lever of pressure that, you know, we can get.

Rick Green
Well, and people want to make a difference. They’re looking for ways to speak out. And, you know, if you got one share, you have a voice within that company, so absolutely, folks, pay attention to that. Hit the website today, ViewpointDiversityScore.org . While I’ve got you, Michael, before I let you go, just hit this issue, a little bit of a lot of people will dismiss us and say, you know, if it’s not the government, it’s not an issue. And so when I said that, at the beginning about the collusion between government and corporations, and that kind of thing, some people don’t think that’s happening, and it’s not necessarily like they’re actually having this official board meeting and deciding and telling them, hey, go do this. It’s more of a almost, you know, almost an attitude, and and a pressure that they feel from… I mean, what do you think in terms of these big corpse doing this stuff and it actually being, you know, a chilling of free speech in our in our nation?

Michael Ross
Yeah, that’s a great question. You know, the biggest flash points for this are de-banking and social media. We’ve been focusing on de-banking. And what you’re seeing is that these activists are getting these… pressuring these companies to do what activists can’t do at the ballot box. And that’s to regulate and to get certain viewpoints out of the public discourse. And so their Express aims are to de-bank conservatives to de-bank Christians to make harder for them to operate in the market to get their voice heard on social media, and that doesn’t benefit everyone. Just because they’re private actors doesn’t mean they shouldn’t promote free speech. Of course, the First Amendment, you know, doesn’t apply in most circumstances. But you and I both know that everyone needs to be promoting, you know, robust discourse and religious freedom. And so that’s what’s important to understand there.

Rick Green
Yeah, and fight on all fronts, right? So like, we make sure government isn’t doing it. But then we also make sure corporations aren’t doing it, and then use… It’s a different tool, right? It’s a different tool to stop the corporation than it is the tool to stop the, you know, stop a government actor. And thankfully, folks like ADF, you’re you’re willing to go after both and be involved in both. And you guys have tons of lawsuits against government entities when they violate these kinds of things. But then also engaged over here, and you just have to… you have different areas of the law and constitution and freedom that you fight for, depending on the battlefield that you’re on. And another good reason for people to support ADF and help you guys continue to do what you’re doing. So God bless you, man, I appreciate you guys and all that you’re doing, and appreciate the index and folks being able to be a part of that as well.

Michael Ross
Thanks so much for having me.

Rick Green
That’s Michael Ross from Alliance Defending Freedom. Stay with us, folks. We’ll be right back with David and Tim Barton.

Tim Barton
Hi, friends, this is Tim Barton of WallBuilders. This is a time when most Americans don’t know much about American history or even heroes of the faith. And I know oftentimes we, parents, we’re trying to find good content for our kids to read. And if you remember back to the Bible, to the book of Hebrews, it has the faith Hall of Fame where they outline the leaders of faith that had gone before them. Well, this is something that as Americans, we really want to go back and outline some of these heroes, not just of American history, but heroes of Christianity in our faith as well. I want to let you know about some biographical sketches we have available on our website. One is called The Courageous Leaders collection. And this collection includes people like Abigail Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Francis Scott Key, George Washington Carver, Susanna Wesley, even the Wright brothers. And there’s a second collection called Heroes of History. In this collection, you’ll read about people like Benjamin Franklin or Christopher Columbus, Daniel Boone, George Washington, Harriet Tubman; friends, the list goes on and on. This is a great collection for your young person to have and read and it’s a providential view of American and Christian history. This is available at www.wallbuilders.com. That’s www.WallBuilders.com .

Rick Green
Welcome back to WallBuilders. Thanks for staying with us. And thanks to Alliance Defending Freedom, Michael Ross, and all the attorneys as a part of that network out there fighting for our freedom on the front lines and for bringing this new and to us ViewpointDiversityScore.org , make sure you put score in their ViewpointDiversityScore.org is the website to go check out more David and Tim, important tool here, if we’re going to fight back against those woke corporations.

David Barton
Yeah, this is really in support of the free market. This is where you can have an impact individually. Even though there’s 330 million Americans, you can have an impact individually with your dollars. And we’re seeing that with the examples Tim you listed earlier. So it’s neat that Michael pointed out that even Chase has moved away from that, they’re going in the right direction. And by the way, I’ll add too along the same lines with ESG, you know, we talk about ESG periodically here. And we’ve been fighting that for a long time, about half the states this year, we were involved actively on the ground fighting, six insurance companies last week announced that they’re not going to be part of ESG anymore. So the free market is working, more and more companies are moving away from it. companies involved with ESG are losing money, they’re losing their investors monies, their investors have had enough and their investors are saying we’re not going to be part of you if you’re going to do ESG. And so the market does speak. Now, it’s really important here, because when you look at partnerships between large corporations and government, we’ve seen a lot of that. We saw that, for example, with the January 6 stuff that Bank of America actually partnered with the government and let the government have access to their banking records to see who use their Bank of America credit card in DC on January 6, so they could know who to go after and investigate. That’s a bad deal. And historically, people need to understand that by definition, when you have a government and a business partnership, hand in hand, by definition, that’s called fascism. And that’s always been a really bad thing in the history of the world. It leads to oppression every time. Well, this is a way to break up that fascism. We can use our dollars, we can check the viewpoint diversity score, and put that where we want and break up that government corporate partnership.

Tim Barton
And Dad too, this was something we saw even with Twitter, when the FBI was going to Twitter and saying hey let’s not share this Hunter Biden stuff or let’s not allow these things to go. There’s several examples we can point to where the government was using private businesses to try to censor certain messages, to censor certain individuals to deplatform certain people. This is an incredibly dangerous thing. And it is fascism. This is I mean, this is absolutely the direction of a Marxist regime of tyranny that we want to stay away from, and most people had no idea the level of what the federal government was doing the intrusion until Elon Musk took over Twitter and revealed some of these files. But this is part of the danger we have to stay away from.

David Barton
And by the way too, some people have a visceral knee jerk reaction, and say, oh, we’re not fascists. And when you look at Mussolini, and you look at Hitler when they were taking power back a decade earlier. That was the partnerships they had going. So people hear fascism, now and think oh, we’re not Nazis. No, no, no, look at how it started. And if you don’t stop that, if you don’t get that government business partnership broken, and have a free market, where that they make their own decisions, then you’re going to have trouble down the road. So don’t have a knee jerk reaction to that. But again, go back to the fact that you can have an impact with your dollars. And that Viewpoint Diversity Score is a good way to really be focused on having a positive impact.

Rick Green
Alright folks, out of time for today, don’t forget to visit PatriotAcademy.com and get signed up for that Coach Congress it’s going to be coming up really quick. That’s the first week of August, you’ve got to sign up now if you want to be a part of it, we’ve got a package where you can stay at the DoubleTree hotel right next door to the Texas Capitol with the rest of us or you can just do the tuition for the week and choose your own lodging, inexpensive either way, for the experience that you’re going to get. So check that out today at PatriotAcademy.com . And come join us for the week. I’m telling you it’s gonna be incredible. You’ll hear from Tim Barton, David Barton, myself, all kinds of other speakers that are coming in and being a part of it that week, plus the training, plus the chance to just be a legislator for the week. Actually be on the real floor in the real committee rooms. I mean, how do you beat that. It’s the best simulation in the world for the legislative process and it will make you a better citizen I can promise you. Check it out today at PatriotAcademy.com , click on Leadership Congress. Wou’ve been listening to WallBuilders.