Most Americans might be somewhat surprised to learn that the founder and former CEO of Whole Foods, John Mackey, is a full-throated capitalist who has been warning about the socialist intrusion into American politics and society for several years.
For his most recent anti-socialist diatribe, Mackey appeared on the Reason Foundation’s podcast.
On the topic of socialism, Mackey did not mince words.
According to Mackey, “My concern is that I feel like socialists are taking over. They’re marching through the institutions. They’re…taking over education. It looks like they’ve taken over a lot of the corporations. It looks like they’ve taken over the military. And it’s just continuing.”
Amen, John. In recent years, socialist ideology has absolutely infiltrated once-vaunted institutions. From critical race theory in our nation’s public schools to the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”
obsession that has overtaken corporate America and the U.S. military, Marxist tenets are certainly taking root in today’s America.
“You know, I’m a capitalist at heart, and I believe in liberty and capitalism,” Mackey added. “Those are my twin values. And I feel like, you know, with the way freedom of speech is today, the movement on gun control, a lot of the liberties that I’ve taken for granted most of my life, I think, are under threat.”
Once again, Mackey hit the nail on the head. Aside from the socialist encroachment into American society, which is a very dangerous development, we also seem to be experiencing a concerted effort by many on the left to discount, and in some cases severely undermine, the very freedoms that have made the United States the most free and prosperous nation in human history. While Mackey points out that freedom is under attack on multiple fronts, we must remind ourselves that the anti-liberty onslaught is part of a greater struggle to turn the United States into a socialist bastion wherein those at the top make the rules for the rest of us.
As Americans, we ought to reject any and all socialist ideas from making their way into our nation’s institutions. For more than a century, socialism has been an evil that has spread nothing but misery, poverty, and death whenever and wherever it has been implemented. For decades, the United States stood as the beacon of freedom as socialism marched throughout Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America, wreaking havoc and torment in its wake. It would be quite ironic, and incredibly sad, if, in the end, the United States succumbs to socialism.
PHOTO: Tulsa Whole Foods. Photo by Kari Sullivan. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0).
Chris Talgo ([email protected]) is the editorial director and a research fellow at The Heartland Institute, as well as a researcher and contributing editor at StoppingSocialism.com.
