Back in 1944, songsters Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer gave us an uplifting piece of music: it was called “Accentuate the Positive.” Nearly 80 years later, Michael Seifert, the founder, CEO, and president of PublicSq (Public Square), is doing just that; as the lyric goes, he’s latching on to the affirmative. In a recent interview with the CEO of the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), Rebecca Weber, who also hosts the association’s Better For America podcast, Seifert described his company as the “largest online directory of freedom-loving businesses in America.” 

 As he described it, Seifert founded PublicSq in January 2021, “creating a marketplace that would be full of businesses that love the country, the Constitution, and the values that that document protects.” He said the idea is to give “we the people,” through the power of their wallets, a way “to create a new society. For years multiple corporate entities in the United States have turned against the values that tens of millions of Americans still hold dear. We’ve actually witnessed this for decades, but it’s been especially elevated in recent years, most notably with Bud Light, for example, which used to be a classic American brand. And then, unfortunately, they began to take a turn with their values, and they began to call their old brand and their old customers outdated. And so, they embraced a progressive social campaign that ended up leading to the demise of their brand [at the cost of a] 26 percent drop in sales. We saw the same thing with Target when they came out this past summer with a ‘pride month’ collection, deciding to lecture the U.S. populace on issues about gender and sexuality. And many consumers said they’re not a fan of that. We just want to buy clothes and not be lectured about gender. And so, in turn, Target had their first quarterly earnings miss in six years and had their stock downgraded twice. We have witnessed over the recent years, corporate entity after corporate entity come out looking like a progressive political organization.”

Seifert explained that although we could simply boycott these companies, “We figured that’s effective and we certainly support people’s rights to boycott, but what if they could actually take the next step and shop with businesses that they know are actually different? They love the country, the Constitution, basic truths. What if [consumers] could actually support businesses that support family values? And in turn, they wouldn’t just have to boycott, but they could actually move their money, their purchasing power somewhere else.”

Seifert contended that “it’s important for consumers to recognize that what you spend your money on is what you’re empowering. This is a massive sobering wake-up call. I hope for every American consumer to connect the dots and recognize that when I spend my money on a corporate entity that funnels millions of dollars to BLM, for example, the money I’m spending is in turn supporting an organization that is very proudly behind terrorism. Pair this with the fact that many of these companies also support open border policies and all of a sudden you realize you have a very bleak and troubling environment on our hands.”

As he stated, “there are terrorist attacks taking place against one of the United States’ greatest allies in the Middle East. Those terrorist attacks are being conducted by military-age males that are coordinated with Hamas.” Be aware, Seifert said, “many military-age males are coming across our border to the tune of tens of thousands every single day, unchecked and unverified. And so not only are we funding these companies [that] support progressive policies, we’re actually funding open border policies, we’re funding the demise of the U.S., we’re funding the demise of our safety here domestically, we’re funding the demise of our allied relationships overseas. And so, our encouragement to folks is to recognize that your wallet is a weapon and you can use it for good or you can use it for evil. And our encouragement to people is, Hey, let’s recognize the power in those dollars and shift them to companies that would never donate to a Marxist terrorist-aligned organization.”        

John Grimaldi writes for the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), a senior-advocacy organization with 2.4 million members.