Jason Chaffetz: Elon Musk is who you want running companies
Fox News contributors Jessica Tarlov and Jason Chaffetz provide reaction and analysis to the release of the eighth installment of the Twitter Files and the possibility of Elon Musk stepping down as CEO.
On rare occasions, we may be witness to nation-changing history in the making and simply not be aware that it is taking place.
Fifty, one hundred, two hundred years from now students and adults in whatever country survives or is reborn from today’s United States of America may very well look back upon these very days, weeks, and months of 2022 and read, watch, and hear about the actions of one man who set a new "Freedom from Tyranny" movement into action.
That man being Elon Musk.
You believe that to be stretch? I do not.
This past summer, I put out a book titled "The 56" not only praising the 56 men who signed The Declaration of Independence, but warning about the escalating attempts by the far-left to not only smear and cancel those heroic men, but cancel the 4th of July itself.
Like Musk, a number of our Founding Fathers were exceedingly wealthy. In today’s world, many would have been the equivalent of multi-billionaires. Back in 1776, the vast majority of the wealthy in the Colonies either remained silent, or openly became "Loyalists" to the British Crown. Why? They did not want to rock the boat or risk their wealth and privilege.
Sound familiar?
Fortunately, our Founding Fathers -- and most especially the 56 men who literally signed their own death warrants when they put quill pen to parchment -- decided they could not live with themselves if they did not step out from that pack of entitled silent-sheep to take a stand against the tyranny of the Crown. And with their actions, a new nation was born.
250 years later, Musk is taking a stand against the tyranny of Big Tech. In some real ways, it can be argued that the insidious tyranny of Big-Tech is an exponentially greater threat to the Liberty and rights of the American people of today than the Crown was to the Liberty of the Colonists.
Via his releasing of the "Twitter Files" and other measures, Musk is courageously launching a campaign against an oppressive and increasingly dangerous tyranny.
"Courageously" because he knew and knows full well the far-left and their lapdogs in the legacy media were and are going to come after him hammer and tongs. And so they have. With a vengeance.
Because of the vile and threatening pushback being directed at him, Musk himself addressed the possibility of an assassination attempt on his life. Said the CEO recently via Twitter:
"Frankly the risk of something bad happening to me, or even literally being shot, is quite significant…It’s not that hard to kill somebody if you wanted to, so hopefully they don’t, and fate smiles upon the situation with me and it does not happen. There’s definitely some risk there."
There is more than "some risk there." The risk is significant, must be called out, and never belittled. Like him or not, Musk is emulating some of the heroic actions taken by our Founding Fathers almost 250 years ago.
Some may believe it "sacrilege" to compare an immigrant multibillionaire from South Africa to our Founding Fathers. To them, I would say: "your ignorance – quite possibly underscored by hate – is showing."
A number of our Founding Fathers and a number of the men who signed The Declaration of Independence were immigrants to the New World and the Colonies. When they arrived, they not only saw the vast potential of a people imbued with the spirit of independence, but knew from past experience in their previous homelands that the heel of oppression would try to crush it.
Elon Musk is not perfect and neither were our Founding Fathers.
Like all of us, they had flaws, made mistakes, and had regrets.
But unlike all of us, a number of our Founding Fathers were also gifted at the genius level and had the means and the talent to lift an idea or a cause out of the shadows of obscurity and inspire a people with its potential.
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Musk has such a mind. One which allows him the luxury of playing multidimensional chess not only on the world stage, but now, within the near Solar System.
Within one of those dimensions, he fights for free speech and against the woke cancel-culture far-left.
Musk’s actions in late 2022 to identify and challenge the censorship and tyranny of the left does expand the liberty trail blazed by our Founding Fathers. More than that, as with the steps taken by Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, and others, Musk’s undertaking in the name of freedom may very well inspire other billionaires now sitting on the sidelines to step onto the floor of the arena to fight back against a totalitarianism which is destroying the futures of their children and grandchildren.
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What would such inspiration be worth?
Will Musk be afforded credit as a "Father of a New Liberty movement" in history books decades and even centuries in the future? We will never know but in some truly significant ways, he does fill the mold of our Founding Fathers.
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