Ben Shapiro

The PGA Tour has demonstrated that power matters and money matters. According to the Wall Street Journal, the PGA Tour and LIV Golf have agreed to a stunning merger that ends the divide that has dominated the sport for the last year.

“The deal weds the Saudi money and the PGA Tour name and connections after months of bruising litigation and sharply traded accusations. It also consolidates the biggest assets in professional golf. … The same Saudi gushers that have funded LIV will be pooled with the PGA Tour's existing revenue streams, giving the combined entity vast new resources for unnamed future investments.”

The move carries risk for the PGA Tour because they have spent the last year yelling about the moral evil of LIV Golf existing.

What happened is that the PGA Tour was paying the golfers a certain amount of money, and then LIV Golf came along and said, We'd like to get into the golfing business. We think a lot of these golfers are underpaid, so we're going to offer them more money.

The PGA Tour yelled at those golfers and said, Wow, I can't believe you guys are so venal and greedy that you're taking Saudi money. How dare you?

PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan suspended six-time major champion Phil Mickelson, two-time major winner Dustin Johnson, alongside Sergio Garcia, Lee Westwood, Louis Oosthuizen and others, saying, “It's been an unfortunate week that was created by some unfortunate decisions, those decisions being players choosing to violate our tournament regulations. It's my job to protect, defend and celebrate our loyal PGA Tour members, our partners and our fans.”

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“I talked to players,” he later said. “I've talked at a player meeting. And I've talked to a number of players individually for a long period of time. And I think you'd have to be living under a rock to not know that there are significant implications.”

Families United sent a letter to the representatives of Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau, Patrick Reed, and Kevin Na expressing their outrage toward the golfers for participating in the new league and accusing them of sportswashing and betraying the United States.

So you're a big golfer and you took a lot more money. This made you complicit in moral evil. Phil Mickelson was ripped up and down for taking LIV Golf money. It was the PGA Tour that was leading that charge, not because there was a moral pillar in the PGA Tour, but because the PGA Tour wanted all of those golfers playing golf for them for less money.

Now they've decided that money talks because in the end, folks follow the money and follow the power.

Power and money are usually the motivations for major actions. Whether that is corporate or that is governmental is rarely only a moral question. That doesn't mean that moral questions don't come into play or that people don't try to wed their morality to power and money.

They do. But it does mean that when those two things come into conflict, very often the money wins or the power wins.

That is particularly the case when it comes to the PGA Tour and LIV Golf. You heard the head of the PGA Tour talking about the moral evil of golfers taking money from LIV Golf. But now, it turns out that the PGA Tour is taking money directly from LIV Golf.

The PGA Tour commissioner spoke about this:

I said previously that we were going down our path and they were going down theirs. And today, that tension goes away. The litigation has dropped. We're announcing to the world that on behalf of this game, we're coming together. And it's less about how people respond today, and it's all about how people respond in 10 years. And when they see the impact we're having on this game together, there will be a lot of smiles on people's faces, and there will be a lot more people playing this game all over the world.

Well, that is awkward. It is awkward to basically rip your potential business partners as terrorist supporters and then make a deal with them and expect nobody to notice.

This says something not only about corporate priorities, but about American priorities more generally. The corporate priorities are pretty obvious. There are a lot of people who might ask why corporations are going into business in China. Stop making products in China. China's an evil dictatorship and we should stop doing business with Saudi Arabia.

But the answer is that if you're a corporation, you go where it is cheapest and most productive to produce the product. If there are national security problems, it is up to the government of the United States to prevent investments in places like China or places like Saudi Arabia.

But the reality is, the U.S. government also wants it both ways.

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The PGA Tour is doing the same thing Joe Biden did. In 2010, Joe Biden intimated that Saudi Arabia was a horrible, evil, terrible, no good, very bad place filled with murderers and scum. Then came 2021 and the upcoming midterms of 2022. And Biden turned to Saudi Arabia and said, Wow, you know, we could use some oil from you guys.

It turns out that power matters an awful lot when it comes to politics and corporate money. Morality generally takes a backseat to the money. But when the two can be aligned or when you can get away with shoving your morality into the guise of power and politics, then you do it.

But when the two come into conflict, everybody just goes weapons down, which is pretty amazing. John Kirby was asked about the merger between LIV Golf and the PGA Tour. “I think we'll let the Saudi government speak to that,” he responded.

The lesson for all of us, the big takeaway for all of us, is that you should follow the money and follow the power. And when people start to morally preen and posture, you should ask them this very simple question: If the mathematics changed, if the money changed, if the interest changed, would you still hold to that?

If the answer is, you wouldn't, then we know where your actual priorities lie. We know where the priorities lie for the United States government when it comes to a lot of conflicts around the world. So long as it supports American interests in a real hardheaded way, that's okay; we can all live with that. That's realism.

It's when you start to do things that are not in America's interest and you preen morally that we know if the interests shift, you will shift. We start to have some serious questions.

The same thing is so about corporate America and the woke agenda. Don't woke-scold everybody about how you are very much in favor of all these social liberal causes of the day, because the minute somebody comes at you with money, the Pride Progress Flag goes down and the Chinese flag goes up.

Ben Shapiro
Editor Emeritus,
The Daily Wire

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