From the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal, this is Free Expression with Jerry Baker.

Hello and welcome to Free Expression with me, Jerry Baker, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page.

Thanks very much for joining us.

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This week, we're going to take a look at the takeover of American capitalism in recent years

by progressive, woke ideology. Companies from Apple to Disney, Coca-Cola, and others,

commit themselves now to many of the nostrums of the modern left on issues such as racial

equity, gender and identity

politics, climate change. Is there a backlash brewing? The ESG craze, the idea that companies

should be judged not simply by their financial returns to shareholders, but on their performance

on progressive standards in the field of environment, social governance matters. Has that ESG

craze now gone too far? With the

economy facing tough headwinds, could there be a return to simply pursuing the time-honored objective

of all successful companies, profitability? To discuss this today, I'm joined by Vivek Ramoswami.

Vivek is an entrepreneur, commentator, and author, and I think it's fair to say, one of the

most fearsome scourges of so much of our

modern woke ideology. He founded Biological Sciences firm Royvent Sciences and went on to create

a number of other new businesses. Most recently, he co-founded Scribe asset management. That's a firm

that invests with a goal of getting companies to back away from controversial social or environmental

issues and simply focus on making money. He's the author of Woke Inc. Inside Corporate America's Social Justice Scam, which was published last year, and his latest book is Nation of Victims, Identity Politics, The Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence. Vivek Ramoswamy joins me now. Thanks very much for being here. Who to be on, Jerry. How are you doing? Great, thanks. Congratulations on the new firm and the new

booked. I want to talk first of all about corporate wokeness or what's happened to so many American

...