Scott Tibbs
Conservative praise of Elon Musk is misguided
By Scott Tibbs, December 16, 2022
It is a very bad habit of conservatives to elevate people to the top of the conservative movement just because he makes liberals angry. "Own the libs" seems to be the highest goal of too many conservatives, but that "owning" is not winning elections or implementing conservative policy. Instead, "own the libs" means making liberals angry. The more angry, the better, and if you are a successful troll then you are a hero. This explains the popularity of Donald Trump, but at least Trump managed to actually implement conservative policy as President.
With Elon Musk, however, we are getting a show without real substance. Conservatives have crowed about how Musk
"is trying to simply give us free speech," but is that actually happening? It is still
against the rules on Twitter to point out that a specific person who was born with a penis and testicles is a man. If I say on Twitter that the United States assistant secretary for health is actually a man cosplaying as a woman, I will be banned from the platform. So is "the regime" actually
losing censorship as a weapon? Nope.
Musk's purchase of Twitter and reversing the ban on some accounts is good, though it does not go nearly far enough.
Pausing the enforcement of the COVID-19 "misinformation" policy is a good sign, especially considering that some things that were censored under that policy actually turned out to be true. Chief among those is the fact that the Communist government of Red China genetically engineered a bat coronavirus and made it able to infect humans with "gain of function" research, creating COVID-19 and then releasing it on the world. But as long as biological facts that conflict with Leftist gender theology remain against Twitter's rules, Musk cannot claim to be in favor of free speech.
Musk has made a lot of Leftists angry with superficial changes to Twitter policy, reinstating President Trump, and with his own trolling of people like
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and
Elizabeth Warren. But while Musk may be an occasional co-belligerent against the Left, that does not make him our ally, much less a champion of free speech. Conservatives have to stop making heroes of people simply because they make Leftists angry. "Own the libs" advances nothing of substance, and it cannot be our goal.
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