Sunday, June 05, 2022

Musk may help end liberal narrative

(My Eastern New Mexico News column for May 4, 2022)




My Twitter account was shut down during the dark days of censorship, but I made a new account a month or so ago. Just in time to see all the fun and drama over Elon Musk's buyout of the platform.

The celebrations on multiple sides, and the meltdowns on one side, were entertaining. The melodramatic handwringing-- over fears of Musk doing to "their side" what they've supported doing to everyone else for years-- was great comedy.

Elon Musk became their new Donald Trump.

Modern so-called liberals have turned on one of their own because he still values the formerly liberal cause of free speech. What a mixed up world. This is how you know they aren't liberals anymore.

"Liberal" is supposed to mean open and generous. They are the opposite. They are authoritarians, just like the worst of the "conservatives".

Musk has warned everyone that he's not a conservative and will do things which anger conservatives. He explained that he only seems conservative now because the leftists moved so far left while he stood his ground. This left him closer to conservatives than to his former allies.

In some ways, Elon Musk leans libertarian. Not in enough ways, though. He's still better in this regard than most famous people, even many who call themselves "libertarian", but he has a long way to go.

Elon could be a libertarian if he'd stop pandering to the state-- to political government and the politicians who dwell within it. I get it, though. To run a successful business-- or three or four-- there are things you have to do to keep from being violently shut down, robbed blind, and caged by armed legislation enforcers and other government agents. He plays the dangerous game because it's how he stays in business. It's part of the reason he's a multi-billionaire and I'm not.

There's a twisted side of me, of which I'm not proud, which loves seeing the people who have relied on censorship and bullying to keep the opposition in check watching as their control of the narrative slips away. They may get it back-- I hope not.

I despise censorship of any kind, so I don't want them censored or bullied, either. I want their narrative exposed to the light of day so everyone can see how thin and worn it is. I want it to rip to pieces, and it looks like Elon Musk might just help this happen.
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Rights or power?


Government-supremacists would like you to believe there's no such thing as rights, inalienable or otherwise. Only power. 

Scott Adams recently made this argument again on his podcast. As I've said before, when he's right he's right and when he's wrong it's because of government-supremacism.

Because if that's the case, on what basis would he criticize Hitler? He did what he had the power to do. If there are no rights to violate, he did nothing wrong. 

Which is part of the reason I recognize and respect rights. 

Even when someone has the power to violate rights and get away with it (at least temporarily), like Hitler, Trump, Trudeau, and Biden, those rights still exist unchanged. Either political criminals are right in everything they do because there are no rights to be violated and they are just doing what they have the power to do, or government supremacists are wrong.

If someone says rights don't exist, it's probably because they want government to do things that would obviously violate someone's rights (like anti-gun legislation) but they don't want to feel like they are the bad guy.

Government does have the power to violate rights. This invalidates the argument that government is necessary or good, not the concept of rights. Without rights, try to have a functioning society.

If power is all that matters, then government needs to have its power taken away. All of it.

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