"Government, in my humble opinion, should be formed to secure and to enlarge the exercise of the natural rights of its members; and every government, which has not this in view, as its principal object, is not a government of the legitimate kind." —James Wilson (1791)
FEATURED ANALYSIS
'Free Speech Absolutist' Musk Buys Twitter
As an actual African American buys the Big Tech giant, anti-speech leftists go bonkers.
Nate Jackson
We've been rooting for Elon Musk in his endeavor to buy Twitter because restoring the basic American principle of free speech to one of the major social media platforms will be a huge step in the right direction for a country increasingly controlled by the Orwellian Thought Police.
Well, good news: In a $44 billion deal announced Monday, Musk will acquire Twitter and take the company private. Despite the Twitter board's initial rejection and insertion of a poison pill, ultimately they decided that the "substantial cash premium" was the "best path forward for Twitter's stockholders."
Three cheers for free speech!
To be sure, Musk is an odd duck. "To anyone I've offended," Musk said last year during a "Saturday Night Live" opening monologue, "I just want to say, I reinvented electric cars, and I'm sending people to Mars in a rocket ship. Did you think I was also going to be a chill, normal dude?"
He's not exactly a conservative, though he's a self-described "free speech absolutist" and he's an entrepreneur with an eye for profitable ventures and a distaste for unions. He's the world's richest man, and, unlike the members of the socialist billionaires club, he's doing something with his wealth other than fund the leftist takeover of everything.
"Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated," Musk said. "I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans. Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it."
The buyout is still a gamble on Musk's part. For a $21 billion personal equity stake (10% of his net worth), and a pledge of a third of his Tesla shares as collateral, it's a bet he sure hopes will pay off.
It's a good reminder that sometimes the best change can be brought about by the free market, not government intervention. That's assuming Twitter isn't destroyed from the inside by employees going rogue in the same way deep state actors sought to bring down Donald Trump.
"I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter," Musk proclaimed Monday, "because that is what free speech means." Indeed it is. That does not, however, mean Musk should or will continue to employ the aforementioned saboteurs — especially anyone ever involved in content moderation at Twitter.
What might be most hilarious about Musk's worst critics, though, is that they're just the worst.
Twitter is now the largest privately owned African American company in the world. You would think that Democrats would be celebrating that rather than whining and complaining. But alas.
"The deal is dangerous for our democracy," moaned Senator Elizabeth Warren. "Billionaires like Elon Musk play by a different set of rules than everyone else. We need a wealth tax and strong rules to hold Big Tech accountable." Oddly enough, Musk wants democracy to mean everyone getting a fair say and playing by the same rules — not a different set for conservatives than for leftists. Warren would rather confiscate Musk's wealth and punish "thoughtcrime."
"We need regulation of social-media platforms to prevent rich people from controlling our channels of communication," opined former Reddit CEO Ellen K. Pao ... on the pages of The Washington Post, which is owned by billionaire leftist Jeff Bezos.
Speaking of shocking lack of self-awareness, Bezos himself tweeted, "Did the Chinese government just gain a bit of leverage over the town square?" Says the man who started Amazon, which perhaps sells more Chinese goods than any other company. He did concede later, "My own answer to this question is probably not," but to quote Joe Biden, come on, man.
Which brings us to White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who said, "The president has long been concerned about the power of large social-media platforms, the power they have over our everyday lives."
Dear Jen: How does Joe Biden feel about the fact that Twitter helped get him elected by censoring the New York Post's 100% verified and corroborated blockbuster about his son Hunter's laptop revealing family corruption? Does that power concern the president?
Twitter influencing elections certainly worries MSNBC's Ari Melber. Now, anyway. He fretted, "You could secretly ban one party's candidate, or all of its candidates, all of its nominees, or you could just secretly turn down the reach of their stuff and turn up the reach of something else and the rest of us might not even find out about it until after the election."
We're scratching our heads wondering if Melber was even alive from October 2020 through January 2021 because all of that actually happened and it happened before Musk even thought of buying Twitter.
Speaking of Donald Trump and his lifetime ban from Twitter, the former president says, "I am not going [back] on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH [Social]" — the social media company he started.
Musk does have his supporters, though, and that includes former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey. "In principle, I don't believe anyone should own or run Twitter," Dorsey cautioned, but even he admitted, "Elon is the singular solution I trust."
Humorist David Burge joked, "If you think you're having a bad day, spare a thought for the Twitter person who decided it was a good idea to ban the Babylon Bee."
And speaking of that Bee ban, Allie Beth Stuckey observes, "What's remarkable is that one of the most stunning turns in the history of public discourse occurred because a satire account said a man is not a woman."
Veteran journalist Brit Hume brings it back to the central issue of censorship of free speech: "'Content moderation,' as it's called, is nothing but a euphemism for a very selective editing and censorship of viewpoints found disagreeable by those doing the 'moderation.' Musk is going to make it the open platform it was supposed to be. ... His view seems to be the old view that animated the Founding Fathers of our country, that the answer to objectionable speech is not less speech, it's more speech. As Thomas Jefferson put it, this is a country where we're not afraid to tolerate error so long as 'reason is free to combat it.' Content moderators don't want to combat it, they want to silence it. ... Free speech on Twitter is not going to harm America."
It will be interesting to see with algorithms exposed what implications Musk's ownership may have for Facebook and, moreover, what Musk may do to encourage political solutions to the suppression of free speech on competing platforms. Simply put, social media giants cannot simultaneously serve as the town square and the arbiters of what people are allowed to say about gender, a virus, or the climate.
