Most people, when thinking of flyover country—farmland, patriotism, and conservativism—think of John Deere tractors. What could be more American than this venerable 187-year-old company? It turns out that a lot of things could be more American because John Deere has been captured by the cultural left. That needs to stop. Indeed, it’s time for Americans to demand that all corporations return to their core jobs, reserving excess profits for shareholders and employees, not for cultural indoctrination.
John Deere was founded in 1837 in Illinois when Mr. John Deere himself opened up a machinery shop that used his blacksmithing skills. Back then, that meant plows, pitchforks, and shovels. Over the years, though, as farming became increasingly mechanized, John Deere became the $61 billion company it is today, with its name on a huge variety of agricultural machinery. John Deere is middle America writ large.
Image by AI.
Except that it actually isn’t. Instead, at the management level, the company has morphed into a leftist wet dream, complete with its own DEI page, which includes the statement that,
We encourage employees to use their personal pronouns (such as he/him/his, she/her/hers, they/them/theirs) in internal and external communications, including email correspondence and email signatures.
Not only is this a sign of mutual respect, it's practical for our global company. With employees and customers on six continents, sharing our pronouns and respecting one another’s helps foster a sense of belonging for all, since the use of gendered nouns varies across cultures and individuals.
That point about it being “practical” is lunatic. Outside of the affluent West, the rest of the world understands that pronouns are a sign of a culture that is decadent and out of touch with reality. That’s not a good thing, whether regarding business dealings or America’s national security.
In addition, John Deere proudly boasts that it’s won several awards for its diversity initiatives:
To the extent those are all awards admiring John Deere for DEI, each award represents the fact that John Deere has substituted identity politics for merit. Again, not good.
But there’s still more. John Deere is especially anxious to encourage the LGBTQ+ agenda. Robby Starbuck did a devastating exposé about the money the company pours in LGBTQ+ events and organizations outside of the four walls of the corporation itself, including those that target children:
The same exposé also reveals that John Deere, while corrupting the culture at home, is moving a lot of its production to Mexico—we get the culture war; Mexico gets the money.
In the old days, companies understood that their primary responsibility was to the shareholders. That responsibility required them to make the best product possible so that consumers would buy it, generating shareholder profits. With time, corporations realized that it made good sense to maintain a happy workforce. Turnover is expensive, and reasonably paid employees also become customers. Companies also learned that they couldn’t despoil the environment both for legal and ethical reasons.
When it came to their communities, businesses donated to the local sports teams, supported innocuous local charities (i.e., the local hospital), and pitched in to help the community when disaster (e.g., fire, flood, earthquake) struck. And of course, they’d keep the local politicians happy, with the smart company sprinkling money on both sides of the aisle. That was it.
It’s time for corporations to return to that model. Every last one should get out of the business of anything that isn’t its core business, whether a product or service. Producing the best product or service should maximum generate profits, that go to shareholders and happy employees. Then, the companies need to let go and trust that those same well-remunerated shareholders and employees can make their own decisions about spreading cultural wealth.
Meanwhile, patriotic Americans inside and outside of flyover country must turn their backs on John Deere until it sees the errors of its ways and promises never to sin again in ways deeply offensive to its customer base.