From everything I've read about him, it would appear that billionaire Elon Musk has an eccentric sense of humor – you could argue that the dude spent $44 billion just to get access to Babylon Bee headlines, so that says something right there.
Now, how eccentric? I can't be sure. But the more I watch the unfolding, melodramatic, pearl-clutching, unhinged freakout by so many in left-wing media about Musk's commitment to free speech, I can't help but think that he's sitting somewhere in a dark room watching all these pretentious media elites set fire to their last remaining vestiges of credibility in the eyes of the public, and he's just laughing his head off.
Conservatives have been protesting for years that the Left has an uncomfortable fascination with fascism. Commentator Jonah Goldberg observed and chronicled those tendencies nicely in his book Liberal Fascism. But far too often those protestations fell on deaf ears with the general public, either because average citizens lacked the patience to think critically about the issue, or they just didn't care enough to pay attention.
That's what Musk's purchase of Twitter has done – it has exposed to those average citizens exactly who presumes to have the right and authority to limit what you can and can't say, what you should and shouldn't read, and what you will and won't be allowed to believe.
Even a person only peripherally involved in the political world can't help but notice that the people who fret regularly about "democracy" and the "voice of the people" are now worried the voice of people who aren't left-wing will kill people.
Got that? Conservative, right-leaning, or contrarian rhetoric is just too dangerous to be shared publicly – it could "literally kill people." And to show just how convicted they are about this profound danger, a bevy of these progressive champions are losing their minds.
Two comedians, whose careers have only advanced because of their ability to share unconventional and provocative content, declare the ability of other people to do the same thing is a bridge too far? The insecurities and over-sensitivity of so many of these "envelope-pushing artists" to ideas they don't agree with is maybe the funniest thing they've produced in years.
Meanwhile, the left-wing commentariat has been equally panicked, with more than a few calling for the government to start censoring speech they don't like.
Government control of public speech. Remember when the Washington Post was so worried about Donald Trump's authoritarianism that they changed their slogan to "Democracy Dies in Darkness"? Now that we know how many of their media compatriots and activist allies demand that the "voice of the people" be restricted to only those with progressive politics, maybe they should change it to "Democracy Dies When Exposed to People We Don't Like."
So let's be honest about what's really happening here. Regardless of your confidence that a single figure like Musk can maintain a fair, open-marketplace of ideas, it's important to note that he has single-handedly shattered the Left's absolute control over speech on one social media platform where they regularly censored ideas and thoughts they didn't like. That wasn't free speech.
This spectacle of outrage progressives have displayed in the loss of their Twitter racket is given everyone a front-row view of the their true commitment to speech.
Musk is not a conservative. He admits as much. But what he's said is that he believes a powerful media platform like Twitter should not be censoring conservative thought from the public square. And for that, and that alone, the Left hates him.
Anyone paying attention will realize conservatives have been right all along. This has never been about misinformation or about protecting people; it's always been about power.
