Stereotypical Whole Foods Shoppers, Meet Irony

Courtesy of Liberty magazine, we find Whole Foods CEO John Mackey shining in absolute brilliance in "Winning the Battle for Freedom and Prosperity." Who would have imagined that the founder of the grocery store that feeds the Leftist intelligentsia in enclaves around the country would be such a ... capitalist? A vegan capitalist, to be sure, but an unapologetic one all the same. And one who writes:

That is the secret of the success of the Left, despite its bankrupt economic philosophy. The Left entices the young with promises of community, love, purpose, peace, health, compassion, caring, and environmental sustainability. The Left's vision of how to meet these higher needs in people is fundamentally flawed. But the idealism and the call to the higher need levels is magnetic and seductive, nonetheless. The irony of the situation, as I see it, is that the Left has idealistic visions of higher human potential and social responsibility but has no effective strategies to realize its vision. The freedom movement has strategies that could meet higher human potential and social responsibility but lacks the idealism and vision to implement these strategies. I assert that the freedom movement can become a successful mass movement today if it will consciously adopt a more idealistic approach to its marketing, branding, and overall vision, and embrace a vision of meeting higher human potentials and greater social responsibility.

It was Prime Minister Thatcher who said, "First you win the argument, then you win the vote." Among those who don't consider themselves to be on the Left, or even left of center, the quality of the argument has been faltering. Mackey's article is presented as an "Action Plan" -- it could revive the quality of the argument tremendously. Read the whole thing, and check out his new initiative FLOW.