Below is my column in The Hill on the Musk mania now sweeping over the media with pundits and politicians unleashing unhinged attacks on the billionaire. In an Age of Rage, Musk is now eclipsing Donald Trump as Public Enemy No. 1. It began with his stance against censorship.
Here is the column:
This week, Elton John publicly renounced the Rocket Man — no, not the 1972 song, but Elon Musk, whom he called an “a**hole” in an awards ceremony.
Sir Elton, 77, is only the latest among celebrities and pundits to denounce Musk for his support of former president Donald Trump and his opposition to censorship. Musk-mania is so overwhelming that some are calling for his arrest, deportation and debarment from federal contracts.
This week, the California Coastal Commission rejected a request from the Air Force for additional launches from Vandenberg Air Force Base. It is not because the military agency did not need the launches. It was not because the nation and the community would not benefit from them. Rather, it was reportedly because, according to one commissioner, Musk has “aggressively injected himself into the presidential race.”
By a 6-4 vote, the California Coastal Commission rejected the military’s plan to let SpaceX launch up to 50 rockets per year from the base in Santa Barbara County.
Musk’s SpaceX is becoming a critical part of national security programs. It will even be launching a rescue mission for two astronauts stranded in space. The advances of SpaceX under Musk are legendary. The Air Force wanted to waive the requirement for separate permits for SpaceX in carrying out these critical missions.
To the disappointment of many, SpaceX is now valued at over $200 billion and just signed a new $1 billion contract with NASA. Yet neither the national security value nor the demands for SpaceX services appear to hold much interest for officials like Commissioner Gretchen Newsom (no relation to California’s governor, Gavin Newsom): “Elon Musk is hopping about the country, spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help the hurricane victims with free Starlink access to the internet.”
Newsom is the former political director for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 569. It did not seem to matter to her that increased launches meant more work for electrical workers and others. Rather, it’s all about politics.
Commission Chair Caryl Hart added “here we’re dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race and he’s managed a company in a way that was just described by Commissioner Newsom that I find to be very disturbing.”
In my book “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” I discuss how Musk became persona non grata when he bought Twitter and announced that he was dismantling the company’s massive censorship apparatus.
He then outraged many on the left by releasing the Twitter Files, showing the extensive coordination of the company with the government in a censorship system described by a federal court as “Orwellian.”
After the purchase, former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton called upon Europeans to force Musk to censor her fellow Americans under the notorious Digital Services Act. Clinton has even suggested the arrest of those responsible for views that she considers disinformation.
Silicon Valley investor Roger McNamee called for Musk’s arrest and said that, as a condition of getting government contracts, officials should “require him to moderate his speech in the interest of national security.”
Former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich wants Musk arrested for simply refusing to censor other people.
Former MSNBC host Keith Olbermann called for Musk to be deported and all federal contracts cancelled with this company. As with many in the “Save Democracy” movement, Olbermann was unconcerned with the denial of free speech or constitutional protections. “If we can’t do that by conventional means, President Biden, you have presidential immunity. Get Elon Musk the F out of our country and do it now.”
Of course, none of these figures are even slightly bothered about other business leaders with political opinions, so long as, like McNamee, they are supporting Harris or at least denouncing Trump. Musk has failed to yield to a movement infamous for cancel campaigns and coercion. The usual alliance of media, academia, government and corporate forces hit Musk, his companies and even advertisers on X.
Other corporate officials collapsed like a house of cards to demands for censorship — see, for example, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg. Musk, in contrast, responded by courageously releasing the Twitter Files and exposing the largest censorship system in our history.
That is why I describe Musk as arguably the single most important figure in this generation in defense of free speech. The intense hatred for Musk is due to the fact that he was the immovable object in the path of their formerly unstoppable force.
The left will now kill jobs, cancel national security programs and gut the Constitution in its unrelenting campaign to get Musk. His very existence undermines the power of the anti-free speech movement. In a culture of groupthink, Musk is viewed as a type of free-thought contagion that must be eliminated.
Their frustration became anger, which became rage. As Elton John put it in “Rocket Man,” he was supposed to be “burning out his fuse up here alone.”
Yet, here he remains.
George Bernard Shaw once said “a reasonable man adjusts himself to the world. An unreasonable man expects the world to adjust itself to him. Therefore, all progress is made by unreasonable people.”
With all of his idiosyncrasies and eccentricities, Elon Musk just might be that brilliantly unreasonable person.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
Many more immovable objects are needed if the heretofore irresistible force of illiberal progressivism is to be held in check. For as long as it takes until it withers away from its inbred contamination on the toxic vine of its heinous existence.
https://youtu.be/5oPsvq81n2A
Good Professor,
Well Said. You sound sane and normal.
They sound desperate. Their narrative is failing.
The title of this article refers to liberals but these freedom haters are the opposite of liberal, they are leftists. The Democrats used to be much more liberal but now their base is made up mostly of illiberal leftists, whose instincts are totalitarian.
They lie constantly – not BS’ing or exaggerations like Trump – lies like they’re women, or they’re liberal, or they’re progressive, or they’re anti-war, or they’re pro-democracy, or they’re pro-America, or they’re anti CCP, or they’re good for anything, or they’re better educated, or … Non-stop gaslighting.
The left is a cancer on America, plain and simple. If you want to see what they do, look no farther than anywhere they’ve been and you will see good turned to $hit – Minnesota, Detroit, B’more, California, St. Louis, etc., then look at the people they said they would help – unions like furniture and textiles, steel and auto, chemical and mining, blacks, working poor,… – etc.
It is clear that the dems create systems they say will help _______ and then we see that whatever _______ is, is now worse off. Every single time for generation after generation. But hey, they like to kill babies, so vote for them!!! JFC.
OldManFromKS,
I would argue the traditional Democrat base is still there but they are now the silent majority. Like Bill Maher, once Elon Musk, the good professor and my own sister. They are still there, they are in shock at what the fringe leftists have taken over the party are saying and doing. Musk had the good sense to see the insanity and left the Democrat party. That is why the illiberal left is losing their little minds. Maher said he will vote Democrat even if it were Biden’s head in a glass jar, which is not to far off from where Biden is now. My sister is still undecided last time I talked to her at any length. While the good professor is a traditional Democrat of the JFK party, I believe he sees this is not the Democrat party he once knew. While many of our leftist friends claim he is a MAGA supporter, he is not. He is merely pointing out the insanity that has taken over his party. The un-Constitutional, the anti-1stA to a lesser degree the anti-2ndA and clear, overt quest for power, lawfare and even lawlessness.
Upstate, I don’t deny that there are some JFK Dems left in the party, but I doubt it’s the majority anymore. If that were the case we’d see it reflected in electoral results throughout the country.
The continuing proof of the fanaticism of the American Left, shown for example by the trolls on this blog, disproves the advice that Republicans and conservatives should “work across the aisle” or “try to come together”. These people are beyond ordinary suasion.
“Leftists are Losing their Minds over Elon Musk” – There. I fixed that for you. Liberals are in favor of free speech. It is in fact a core value of liberalism. Leftists are the ones who hate free speech. All who oppose Musk and free speech are leftists, not liberals.
Thank you.
To those not left wing nuts, PLEASE do not use the term liberal to describe those on the left.
Turley is a liberal, Derschowitz is a liberal, Taibbi is a liberal, Gabbard is a liberal, The Wiensteins are liberal, Greenwald is liberal,
There are many people who are not conservative, who are left of center, who are liberal, who you may disagree with about many issues, who are not woke leftist, anti-freedom nut jobs.
These are people who even if they are wrong you can have a real debate with, who will not try to silence you because they disagree.
When you think about it Olly, it was truly amazing that the Trump Administration achieved as much as it did in four years given the intense resistance they received from Obama with Operation Crossfire Hurricane before he was inaugurated and everything else that followed. Unprecedented in American history. Heels Up Harris (aka Berkeley Girl), George Soros, Knucklehead, and the Democrats will go hard in-the-paint to sabotage Trump before he is inaugurated this time droning on insufferably about “saving democracy”. Lawsuits will be filed by the hundreds in blue counties to “save democracy”. Our only hope is if the Republicans win the House and the Senate. It’s long past time to turn the Nimitz into the wind….
Agreed 100%. The Trump administration was under assault (and remains so today) with one false claim after another. Most sources were anonymous (fake) and we had hacks like Schiff claiming on a daily basis he had all this “classified” evidence that he could not share from his perch on the house intelligence committee. These people should be prosecuted if Trump wins. This behavior can not go unpunished or it will be repeated.
The old lamp lighters of the Democratic Party are out turning down the gaslights again when they tell us that gang violence is not a problem in Aurora Colorado. Would you care to see some of the outstanding citizens that Colorado lets into the state. Inflation is transitory, crime is way down and the border is secure. Death is not transitory. Here’s a little piece of evidence for your listening displeasure.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jz7TNdZKPcM. There are at least twenty more for every one they caught.
Not only are liberals losing their minds but our leftist friends here on the good professor’s blog are so pathetic, so desperate, knowing they are losing they have to resort to lying that they are others like GEB, S. Meyer, Traveler, Darren, myself and others. In pretending they are Darren, they claim they can see our IP addresses and is threatening to block our comments. Which they clearly cannot do. Their latest tactics scream of desperation.
How marvelous!!
So, was this ^^ the ‘fake’ Upstate or not?
It’s amusing how much hostility there is toward ‘liberals’ and ‘leftists’ because they point out specific flaws and hypocrisy about Elon Musk. Turley rails against the “age of rage” rhetoric because it pits one group against another. How does he address it? By getting readers riled up against ‘liberals’ because they are critical of Elon. He’s party to the “age of rage” rhetoric, too.
Elon is undoubtedly a successful entrepreneur. There’s no question about that. But he’s also no Tony Stark as so many make him out to be. He’s good at certain things, and he certainly deserves credit. But he’s also awful with his “free speech absolutist” stance.
He is indeed a hypocrite, which makes him fair game for criticism and ridicule. He’s sued advertising companies for not advertising on his social media platform despite telling all of them to go fvck themselves. He defied Brazil’s demands to moderate content in Brazil. Now, after being blocked from the country for months, he’s paying the fine and following the law.
I’m surprised georgie hasn’t used “disingenuous” or “I’m amused” in this comment–both learned by him from others on this site! He uses them about as much as “reading comprehension” and “context.” Very limited thinking on his own!
“It’s amusing how much hostility there is toward ‘liberals’ and ‘leftists’”
The hostility towards leftists is because you are openly a threat to everyone’s liberty.
You make no secret of the fact that given power you will infringe on the liberty of others.
One of the few legitimate justifications for the use of force is threatening the liberty of another.
“because they point out specific flaws and hypocrisy about Elon Musk.”
Go ahead – do prescisely that.
But actually do it.
Do not talk about doing it.
Do not play this stupid black and white game that you can not be for free speech it you will not allow child porn on the internet or pedophiles to groom preschoolers.
Also please quit telling us why Turley or others do as they do. Your not inside their heads.
And your argument is stupid.
Am I a hypocrite because I will use force against someone who tries to use force against another ?
That is not how it works.
Again OPENLY the left preaches a hierarchy based on oppression – that is literally pitting one group against another.
You can step in and try to shutdown those trying to violently divide us without being a hypocrite.
It the warped logic of left wing nuts such as yourself, one can not try to stop a murder without being hypocritical about violence.
Sorry George – does not work that way.
I would note – this is not about being critical about musk – this is about being batschiff crazy about Musk.
This is not about whether Musk is perfect or not.
The left is not threatening to argue with Musk.
They are threatening to jail him, send him to other countries to be jailed. to destroy him – for the heinous crime of thwarting their near total control of speech on social media.
I f Musk is a right wing nazi, a free speech hypocrite – none of which is true, It would STILL be a net good that he bought twitter and ended the lefts monopoly on censorship of social media free speech.
Musk is no Tony Stark – Musk is real.
“But he’s also awful with his “free speech absolutist” stance.”
If that were true – Musk would still be an incredible asset to free speech.
But it is not true and you know it.
” He’s sued advertising companies for .. ”
Breach of contract.
Being an absolutist on Free Speech does not mean you are also free to defraud others. To make commitments that you do not keep.
“He defied Brazil’s demands to moderate content in Brazil.”
Correct – the De Moreas is demanding that Musk violate the brazillian constitution.
Only in left wing nut world is it hypocritical for a free speech absolutist to oppose censorship.
” Now, after being blocked from the country for months, he’s paying the fine and following the law.”
So you think the unconstitutional conduct and bullying of De Moreas is a good thing ?
I have no idea exactly what the future brings – but my Guess is that when Trump is elected – Brazil is in for a world of hurt.
What I would have expected from a US president would have been to use the power of OUR government to protect the rights of US citizens – especially when those rights are recognized by OUR constitution and THEIRS.
Pres. Biden should have told Brazil to Follow their own laws (and the UN charter of rights). Or face consequences.
Our country has a long history of supporting the free speech rights of disidents in other countries – even when they were not US citizens and even when their speech was illegal in their own country.
H311 Biden traded the “merchant of death” – who is back to spreading murder accross the world, for brittney griner who actually violated the laws of another country – laws that with less draconian penalties exist in the US.
Liberals are Losing their Minds
Now, now all I want to know as a registered voter is, can VP Kamala Harris cook, clean & make the very best pineapple upside down cake.
These three things are true:
The Left’s instincts are always totalitarian.
California is undergoing a Stalinesque self-extermination.
Elon Musk is saving civilization.
“These three things are true”……..only in your alternative world you live in.
Fishstick, I would say OldManFromKS one and three are opinion. The second one is evident by evidence of the failed Democrat policies in the failed state of CA. There is a reason why the failed state of CA is losing thousands in population so much so they are projected to lose seats in Congress as those people who can are fleeing the state. And they are taking their money with them, California says it lost $2 billion in state income taxes from earners leaving
https://justthenews.com/nation/states/center-square/california-says-it-lost-2-billion-state-income-taxes-earners-leaving
Dear Mr. Turley, thanks again for a great article. I am not at all surprised by the Liberals’ taking shots at Mr. Musk. Just as another person mentioned here, the left were all too happy with him before he bought Twitter and exposed the government’s lies, the bias towards conservatives and inflating how many people were reading what various Liberals had posted to their account. I would ask GEB to watch the bedsore he mentioned in jest a few days back. Once Liberals smell any weakness in a person, they will keep on mentioning it until ad nauseum. Liberals love and thrive on another’s perceived weakness and will keep on mentioning it. As in GEB’s “bedsore” the Liberals on this page will not let him forget it until he ends up in bed due to the stress. With the chance at a real bedsore!!!
Appreciate the thought Anonymous but the Real GEB is fine. Some fakes are being sent today under GEB and others.
“Liberals [Will Lose] their Minds”
If D’s win the House, and Trump the WH, their first corrupt act:
Invoke 14.3A to decree Trump an “insurrectionist.” That wipes out all of his electoral college votes. Then all hell breaks lose.
“If D’s win the House, and Trump the WH, their first corrupt act”
There appears to be a lot more going on than that (no surprise, considering the source):
INSURRECTION ALERT: Dems Lay Groundwork To Delegitimize Election if Trump Wins
https://freebeacon.com/author/stiles/democrats/insurrection-alert-dems-lay-groundwork-to-delegitimize-election-if-trump-wins/
Remember when the libs loved Musk when he started building electric vehicles ? Funny how the winds change. . .
The old saying, “if their lips are moving they are lying” has never been so true. Even in Aurora where video shows a gang taking control of an apartment complex the Democrat Governor and “Republican” Mayor said it was vastly overblown. After all, what’s one or two apartment complexes? This morning, the apartment management company put out a statement saying that the reports of gang activity were true and the company even posted a picture of its resident manager after he had been beaten by gang members at the end of 2023. The problem we face is that the media endorses and repeats the lies as if they were true as shown by the recent interview with J. D. Vance. The lies magnified, encouraged and supported by the media’s massive propaganda just may be enough to put Harris in the White House and the country in deep, deep trouble.
Honestlawyermostly,
The way they tried to gloss over the facts in the interview with Vance just shows how they try to justify their lies. I really like how Vance called her out on it. In Texas, a multi agency operation rolled up some 150 illegals of that gang.
Can you proivde a link to the statement from the apartment management outfit? I’d love to add that to my archive of articles detailing leftist BS…
Anonymous @ 11:17.a.m. on Oct. 14
Here’s a link for youhttps://kdvr.com/news/local/owner-of-troubled-aurora-apartments-says-gangs-assaulted-its-representative/
Anonymous– https://x.com/CbzManagement/status/1844823374968590656
Anonymous– I tried but it would not submit. You can google “Aurora Apartment Manager Statement” and that should bring it up on X.
Your post with link did actually work (maybe it was delayed). Thanks. I found another account of this in The Epoch Times this morning:
Property Manager Accuses Venezuelan Gang of Taking Control of Aurora Apartments, Attempting Extortion
https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/property-manager-accuses-venezuelan-gang-of-taking-control-of-aurora-apartments-attempting-extortion-5741333
I’ve stated it before, but Musk buying something as silly as Twitter literally saved us. The backlash and threats against him remove all doubt about that, and remove all doubt that the modern left is an aristocratic regime seeking to impose their will.
He’s an immovable object due to his values, but also because he simply has more money and connections than they. I respect anyone willing to take the risk of publicly standing up to the regime, particularly other elites. People like Olbermann should probably be in a padded room.
California nullified immigration law with their sanctuary cities; now they’re overruling our national security.
How is holding the nation hostage anything like “defending democracy?!?” These sanctimonious, hypocritical, little totalitarians need a harsh lesson in democracy.
Well now, who have we been quoting for years?
KNOW THE ENEMY
STOP SUCCUMBING IN EVERY BATTLE
___________________________________________
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
_____________________________
The mayors and officials of sanctuary cities are direct and mortal enemies of the American Thesis of Freedom and Self-Reliance, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, actual Americans, and America. These traitors reject and violate both statutory and fundamental laws. They deny the constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities of actual Americans.
Acknowledge the enemy, declare war on enemy, neutralize the enemy, and eliminate the enemy.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Merriam-Webster
enemy
noun
en·e·my ˈe-nə-mē
plural enemies
1: one that is antagonistic to another – especially : one seeking to injure, overthrow, or confound an opponent
2: something harmful or deadly – alcohol was his greatest enemy
3a: a military adversary
3b: a hostile unit or force
The Bee beat you to it doc. https://babylonbee.com/news/democrats-cruelly-make-fun-of-autistic-african-american-jumping-for-joy
Thank you. The Bee is so interesting. The editor was a keynote speaker at a fundraiser in my state recently. I so badly wanted to go.
Does autism fall under the Americans for Disability act?
The federal government needs Musk way more than Musk needs the federal government. I’m sure Florida would gladly allow Musk to launch from any number of sites and/or establish a private space launch facility creating thousands of jobs in the State.
As a wildly ambitious and successful engineer-entrepreneur, you would think progressives would at least relate to Musk’s ability to get things done — hard things. Sure, he’s had some “hits” and “misses”. He does best in matters of creative applied physics-engineering where his extraordinary abilities lie. Musk is our greatest national nerd. He’s more ordinary in matters of business and politics, and in fact, his admittedly autism-spectrum brain doesn’t read people as well as he’d like. The thing that’s creepy about the progressive demonization of Musk is how shallow and 1-dimensional their thinking — the closing of the collective mind.
It begins with jumping from not liking something a person does to denouncing the entire person as rotten. 30 years ago, adults who reacted that way were looked down upon as under-developed (immature). Now, the distinction between disapproval of an action and demonization of the person has nearly vanished when the context is national politics. We can thank Trump to some degree for this debasement of political culture. But, it’s spread like a cancer. It’s creepy. It’s making it hard to function as a nation.
In recent years, blame Democrats. Look at GWB. They demonized and demeaned Bush, dehumanizing him, leading to Democrat marches where people carried signs saying KILL BUSH. Trump was demonized before he reached the bottom of the escalator and recently was shot, followed by another attempted assassination. The left has demonized Trump to such an extent that one might believe the “debasement of political culture” by Democrats was the cause.
The hateful comments coming from the various democrats and leftists are not those of classical liberals. Classical liberalism died in the Democratic Party about 2008 but had been declining for some time. Although a conservative for many years I was sorry to see the classical liberal disappear from the Democratic Party. We, as a nation, are at our best when we have 2 significant parties, 1 moderate to the right and 1 moderate to the left. Occasionally they can bring in more radical ideas towards the center but they basically got filtered by the moderates in either party. We did best when there was tension between the moderates of left and right and small forays further out into the left or right. No side has all the answers and we do best when we steal each other’s ideas and move on.
Trump is not an arch conservative and that’s ok with me. He takes many ideas from them and even some from the left. Bill Clinton did the same thing but from the left side.
So the rhetoric of the left is disturbing because they cannot seem to stand any deviation from the radical left path even if means destroying themselves and the economies of their neighbor and friends.
The truth of the matter will be revealed with the election. Will it stay lawfare and outright screeching and condemnation or will they go further. I don’t know.
As far as Mr Musk is concerned, he is a gift to this country. Also I suspect he will make more investments in Texas and other red states for his launchpads. And business continues to flee California.
“…the rhetoric of the left is disturbing…” because The Left™ is “disturbed”, GEB. Simple as that. Their sense of humor is worse than a rattlesnake’s.
GEB,
Great observation.
The Democrat party has been take over by a cabal of radical, authoritarian leftists who seek total control and to put us under their thumb. I think some of them, based off their recent rhetoric, would go further even destroying the country to keep themselves in power.
Upstate, you post very similar comments here every day
describing the ‘leftists’ in such a fashion. As if they are your enemies.
Yet in another post today you call them ‘friends’. Gaslight much?