Elon Musk bought Twitter. Conservatives appear cautiously optimistic about the platform’s future, with several prominent commentators noting that their follower counts rose significantly overnight. Still, some are concerned that Musk is not a conservative. They point to his public positions on climate change and support for left-wing organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Yet, the establishment and activist Left quickly aligned in opposition to Musk’s leadership of Twitter. Many prominent blue checks are vowing to leave the platform, and Twitter employees are up in arms. It makes you wonder why the Left is so furious that a man who agrees with many of their preferred policies is the owner of a powerful social media platform.
Sure, Musk is a heterodox thinker who was reportedly motivated to buy Twitter when the Babylon Bee, a popular conservative satire site, was banned from the platform. The billionaire is quirky, somewhat cryptic, and has a mischievous sense of humor. However, the source of the Left’s disdain is rooted in a fundamental ideology, and Musk let the cat out of the bag himself in response to a tweet about him:
I do love humanity
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 25, 2022
Musk’s businesses now and in the past seem to strive to make people’s lives more productive and pleasant. No matter your view on anthropogenic climate change, less pollution is an admirable goal, and Teslas are amazing vehicles. PayPal made online shopping and money transfers easy. While reservations about Neuralink are justified in the face of transhumanism, Musk appears to be open to that debate. His stated reasons for trying to develop interfaces between computers and the brain also seemed aimed at human flourishing, even if you disagree with the project.
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And the Boring Company is taking on traffic the way SpaceX took on space travel. Musk wishes to make interplanetary living a reality in the event humans need to vacate Earth. Meanwhile, he focuses on helping us navigate this one as quickly and efficiently as possible. Musk also believes we need more people on planet Earth, not fewer. At a Wall Street Journal event in 2021, he called rapidly declining birth rates “one of the biggest risks to civilization.” According to CNBC at the time:
Musk added that too many “good, smart people” think there are too many people in the world and that the population is growing out of control.
“It’s completely the opposite,” Musk said, urging people to look at the data. “If people don’t have more children, civilization is going to crumble. Mark my words.”
When asked if this is why he has so many children, the father of six said he’s trying to set a good example, adding that he has to practice what he preaches.
In contrast, most of Musk’s fellow billionaires advocate for the Malthusian policies that burst onto the scene in the late 1970s with the book The Population Bomb by Stanford insect expert Paul Ehrlich. The bible of the climate movement, the book built on the Malthusian theory of population proposed by Thomas Robert Malthus in 1798. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Malthus warned that population increased in a geometric progression while food production increased in an arithmetic progression. The difference between these rates would result in food shortages and famine unless birth rates decreased. Ehrlich declared the battle to feed humanity was over, and humanity had lost.
Malthus’s work gave rise to every anti-human movement in the modern era, from Margaret Sanger and eugenics to the apocalyptic climate movement spurred on by Ehrlich. In an article about the importance of language in the culture war, I noted that California gubernatorial candidate and climate activist Michael Shellenberger called the Left’s approach to climate change “pro-scarcity and anti-human.” If you examine most of the doomsday climate movement’s proposals, Shellenberger’s characterization is accurate.
The Left is satisfied when gas prices rise because your vehicle becomes more expensive to operate. They want to price you out of your personal transportation. Cattle farming and agriculture produce an insignificant fraction of all carbon emissions. Yet, the International Left at the World Economic Forum and United Nations are determined to feed you mealworms or lab-created meat. They also intend to disrupt the way we farm with an abrupt implementation of restorative agriculture managed globally. Eat some lentils and learn to live with less is the pro-scarcity message.
Abortion on demand until the moment of birth exemplifies the Left’s anti-human ideology. A proposed California law now appears to excuse infanticide during the first 28 days of life. It is the natural progression of a movement willing to kill full-term infants in the womb and call it “reproductive health.”
Perhaps the best ambassador for the Left’s anti-human, pro-scarcity ideology is Israeli futurist and professor Yuval Noah Harari. Harari is an advisor to WEF founder Klaus Schwab and often speaks about the implications of the next industrial revolution. In a 2017 interview for Vox, he openly rooted for Skynet, saying, “It’s not because I overestimate the AI [artificial intelligence]. It’s because most people tend to overestimate human beings. In order to replace most humans, the AI won’t have to do very spectacular things.” Harari also told Ezra Klien it was questionable if humans would even exist in 50 years, and it was doubtless they would be extinct in 200-300.
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During the pandemic, at an event sponsored by the New York Times, Harari said the pandemic was critical to convincing people to accept total biometric surveillance. In 2021 with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Harari said the next step to electronic surveillance of who we chat with online and where our GPS takes us is monitoring under our skin. He calls humans “hackable animals” and believes the next generation of products humans will produce are “bodies and minds.” Harari rejects the existence of the soul and free will while calling the story of Christ “fake news.”
Is Musk a conservative in the traditional American political sense? Perhaps not. However, he is conservative in a fundamental ideological sense. Musk believes in the dignity of the individual, and that one person can have a profound impact. If he did not think that, he might not have spent approximately 10% of his net worth purchasing Twitter. Musk also believes in human flourishing, that people will have dominion over the earth and perhaps even conquer other planets.
So, while Tesla may be the leading producer of the electric vehicles the Left says we desperately need and Musk may donate to lefty NGOs like the ACLU, he is not one of them. He is pro-environmental responsibility but believes you should drive an exceptional vehicle while being climate-conscious. Musk believes we need more humans, not fewer, and has helped produce six more to prove his point. He believes most people have good intentions and deserve to have a voice in the political process.
Musk’s belief in human progress, dignity, ingenuity, and abundance means the pro-scarcity, anti-human Left will never claim him. He is on Team Humanity. And it is why conservatives should stay on Team Elon even if we have policy disagreements with Twitter’s new owner.
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