Elon Musk doesn’t owe society a dang thing.
He employs thousands of people. I bet most of their lives are already significantly better than they had at other jobs. The free market has determined that he is to be wealthy. If people didn’t like his products, he wouldn’t be rich. It’s pretty simple.
He pays more taxes than any other person in America. Yes, regardless of what the talking heads say, even the rich pay taxes. Whether it’s paid by you personally, or paid by a company you own, you’re paying taxes. Five percent of a few hundred billion is far more than 15 percent of $40,000. Therefore, I’m okay with successful people paying a lower rate.
Musk “owes” society nothing. Musk has borrowed nothing from me. He “owes” me nothing, not any more than he “owes” my friend who has an orphanage in Africa. Success does not mean you “owe” anyone if you have earned it.
He has every right, as do you or I, to decide whether to keep his earnings or use them to help someone else, or some combination of the two. Are you okay with me pointing a finger and shaming you because YOU don’t do as much as I think you should to help the hungry/poor/needy? If the man wants to buy Twitter, and has the scratch, I say more power to him.
Between those who are as jealous of his wealth and those who see him as some evil overlord, I may actually begin to like the man, rather than just respect him. Most of his critics are, in my opinion, simply envious of his success.
He owes them nothing. He owes me nothing.
At the same time, the U.S. government owes all of us something: an apology.
I sincerely doubt there has ever been a government department assembled so quickly as the “Disinformation” bureau or whatever it is called. It’s purely coincidental, I am sure, that as soon as a wealthy, powerful freedom of speech advocate announced plans to buy and renovate the Left’s digital mouthpiece (in part because they were restricting his free speech), the government decided it’s time to organize a department to limit free speech to “good” free speech.
This is the same government, remember, that says men can get pregnant, thinks kids should be force-fed sexuality in grade school, insists it’s okay to decide to abort a child (the president’s own words), that it’s okay to break the law if you’re properly registered to vote, and that there’s no such thing as a border.
Orwell would probably shake his head that his prophecy from 1984 has come so blindingly true.
It’s sadly amusing to me that the very woman put in charge of this new department is one who led the charge saying that the computer tied to the current president’s perverted, criminal son was a Trump/Russian plot. This is after Twitter banned news stories proving the legitimacy of the infamous laptop. She still insists it’s a plot, despite begrudging admissions by the media who spiked the story that the computers are real.
Orwell would probably shake his head that his prophecy from 1984 has come so blindingly true.
Perhaps she got the job due to loyalty as well as her singing skills, kind of an American Idol thing. She does have a nice voice, of sorts. She does an admirable job with her own parody of a Mary Poppins song, mocking the laptop and other serious issues that have since been proven true. The performance earned her the name “Scary Poppins,” and that moniker is appropriate.
The freedom of speech does not mean freedom from speech we might find disagreeable. There are some community standards that should be met, of course. Outside of the gender dismorphs who fervently desire to make first graders experiment with sexuality, I don’t know of anyone thinks pornography should be displayed where little children can see it. Community standards are determined by the community, people who can talk and reason and debate, sometimes vehemently, to make their point. I strongly support parents who want to limit some books and curricula in their kids’ schools, because most little kids and teens are not capable of making all the right decisions.
Standards shouldn’t be determined by a minority of wealthy digitally-protected oligarchs who are utterly out of touch with the real world, and have been, since their parents added on to their childhood homes to make room for more participation trophies.
There are a lot of things I don’t like to hear: vulgar language, blasphemy against God, and anything by Miley Cyrus are just a few. There are a lot of things I don’t like to read or see. I make a choice as a responsible adult to avoid such things, after evaluating them as best as I can. Conversely, I have read and often still read a lot of things I don’t support, so I can better support my own position.
I make the choice. I don’t let or expect others to make the choice for me.
To threaten people’s lives or take violent action because one disagrees with what the other one says is silly. To establish a government directorate to monitor what is acceptable is terrifying. That’s the type of thing that was standard in Nazi Germany, pre-Revolutionary France, Stalin’s USSR, the Ayatollah’s Iran, Saddam’s Iraq, the Taliban’s Afghanistan, some of the more fashionable Banana Republics, Communist China, Castro’s Cuba, Amin’s Uganda … you get the idea.
Places where the wrong words get you a bullet in the head, and your family gets the bill for the bullet. Our country used to fight those kind of dictators.
I was shocked and angered, though I shouldn’t have been, to hear supposedly respectable commentators suggest reeducation camps for conservatives during the last presidential election. What really scared me was hearing some people in my trade – even coworkers at the time – wholeheartedly agreeing with the idea.
Now we have the current president declaring that those who supported the last president are domestic terrorists, the most dangerous group in American society. Indeed, he must think that is the case, since his own Justice Department was assigned to keep tabs on parents who spoke out against mask mandates.
Ideas like that are why we need unobstructed free speech.
I am no fawning fan of Musk. I admire his intelligence, his work ethic, and his business acumen. I like the fact that at least some of his companies are being moved out of California to protest that state’s insane punishment of corporations. I like the fact that he understands and responds to the free market, and has fun doing so. I respect the fact that he came here from another country as an adolescent, seized the American Dream by the scruff, and shakes it vigorously like a terrier with a rat.
I don’t care for some of his sociopolitical beliefs, his sometimes salty language, or his love of marijuana. But that’s okay – he might not like things I hold near and dear, either.
I am chilled that America has elected a slate of leaders who have no problem using money entrusted to them by the voters to try to cancel someone because they are afraid he might not bow to them.
“They (the Left) didn’t need a ‘Disinformation Governance Board’ until Elon Musk threatened their control over the narrative,” Texas Republican Congressman Troy Nehls posted on Twitter.
You know something? America doesn’t need a Disinformation Governance Board, either.
What we need is Americans who will elect grownups who don’t need an Orwellian nanny named Scary Poppins.
