While this may be true in many cases, it is probably far less so than most Americans imagine.  And even when it is true, the far more important question is: How does a CEO's philosophical or business-school conservatism affect the company's political and social agenda?

     The answer: On social issues and on almost any matter that is even vaguely political, business is either a pacifist in the war of ideas -- deliberately avoiding controversy -- or is an active supporter of the liberal-left agenda.

     Even some of the companies whose founders or executives are identified with conservatism go out of their way at times to appease the left.  Amway Corp., for example, is one of the nation's most vocal supporters of free enterprise.  Its chairman once chaired the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- yet Amway cosponsored, with the Amway Environmental Foundation, one of last year's major environmental tree-hugger events.  The awards gala was politically loaded.  Three United Nations agencies were honored -- agencies whose socialist economic agendas have perpetuated the kind of Third World poverty that leads to environmentally damaging activities such as forest clear-cutting.

     Why is Amway honoring socialist economics?   Why, for that matter, are corporations such as AT&T, Capital Cities/ABC, General Mills and Xerox supporting the radical feminist agenda by funding the National Organization for Women?

     Why is corporate support for the social and political left the rule, not the exception?

     For the past six years the Capital Research Center in Washington, a philanthropic watchdog group, has been monitoring the public affairs contributions of major U.S. corporations. Over the years the findings have been consistent.  While some companies move up a notch, and other move down from year to year, the overall pattern that emerges is this: Major U.S. corporations give more than $2 to left-of-center organizations and activities each year for every $1 they give to right-of-center groups.

     Why?  Each corporate contribution has its public relations justification, but there is a common denominator.  The organizations supported by big business favor group rights over individual rights.  They favor government intervention over private-sector or market-based remedies.  They believe "society," rather than individuals, must shoulder most of the responsiblity for the iniquities that exist among us.

     If this is what corporate executives believe, they should continue funding the left.

    But when America's largest corporations fund the politically correct over the morally and economically correct, it is laughable to call them conservative.
 

Marvin Olasky, PhD is a professor of journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, and the editor-in-chief of World, a national weekly news magazine