When Did Normal Become "Far-Right"?

While talking to a British reporter, Elon Musk made what I thought was an extremely important point about the “far-right”:

“You support not just the populist-right, but the far-right. Very fringe parties in some countries,” the reporter stated.

“No, I support the normal people. What you call far-right, falsely…” Musk replied.

“Falsely… you think is the normal person?” she asked.

“Okay, yes. Literally, if you go back 10 or 15 years, those policies are completely normal,” Musk responded.

It’s certainly worth noting that not so long ago, Elon Musk, who voted for both Clinton and Biden, was considered a hero of the center-left. Eventually, his criticism of the way COVID was handled, his opposition to censorship, and his attacks on “wokeness” turned him into a public enemy on the left and pushed him toward supporting Trump. Since then, liberals have QUITE LITERALLY tried to convince people that the same guy who voted for Hillary Clinton is actually a Nazi:

So, when Elon Musk talks about how normal views can suddenly become “far-right,” he is speaking from experience.

That was fresh on my mind when WNBA “star” (I really like her, but I hesitate to use the word “star” for anyone that plays in the WNBA), Sophie Cunningham said men shouldn’t be playing women’s sports or be in women’s locker rooms:

You know what stands out to me about that? The fact that a biological male shouldn’t be playing women’s sports or be in a locker room exposing himself to young girls as he changes is a “conservative” opinion.

If we went back to say, 2010 or arguably even 2015, probably 95+% of America would have STRONGLY AGREED that no biological male should be changing with women.

Moreover, there’s not really anything even inherently liberal about saying that men pretending to be women should be actually treated like women in every way. In fact, you could probably make an even better case from the left that biological men taking female spots on athletic teams and forcing their way into their locker rooms is part of a “war on women.”

But that’s just it, isn’t it? Liberals are the ones waging the “war on women” in this case, and liberalism now mainly revolves more around reflexively opposing what conservatives want and showing disdain for America than it does around any type of real principles.

For example, there’s no principled reason liberals have to be unpatriotic or horrified by the American flag. In fact, left-wing patriotism was the norm for decades until the late sixties.

What about rent control? Well, since the actual impact of that policy has been concretely established to be higher rents, liberals could just as easily oppose it on the basis that it hurts poor Americans. Incidentally, you could say the exact same thing about raising the minimum wage, which hurts the poorest, least experienced workers the most by eliminating jobs that they need.

The same thing goes for “defunding the police” or drug legalization. The wealthy can afford to pay their own security. But crime-ridden neighborhoods inevitably end up being poor neighborhoods because no one with money would live there, so again, having active, well-funded police departments is another “conservative” policy that could just be an across-the-board, common-sense policy. Additionally, rich people can often skate on the consequences of using drugs because they can afford rehab and get better lawyers, while poor people are much more likely to have their lives destroyed by drugs. Again, it’s not obvious that making it as easy as possible for people to get drugs should be a left-wing policy (and it certainly didn’t used to be a left-wing policy), but again, it is.

Believe it or not, we could even say the same thing about illegal immigration. Liberal icon César Chávez’s United Farm Workers used to hunt down, rob, and beat the living hell out of illegal immigrants because they were often used as strike breakers. Of course, it’s also worth noting that illegal aliens drive down wages for the poorest Americans and are here in such numbers that they’re undoubtedly increasing the cost of housing. One of the best things you could do to actually help poor Americans would be to get rid of illegal immigrants.

Things have gone so haywire that the left has even been getting angry about Donald Trump cleaning up and repairing monuments in DC, as if there’s something inherently right wing about making DC look nice:

We can go on and on with this, and certainly, we can give actual reasons why some of these positions have been embraced by the left, but very few of them make the left look better.

For example, liberals pretty clearly want more poor people here who are hooked on welfare because people like that vote Democrat. Liberals are also willing to open up the borders, even if it’s horrible for our country and hurts poor Americans most, because they’re not having as many children as conservatives and need to import a new voter base. Why do liberals try protect criminals so much? Because people in crime-ridden neighborhoods are more likely to vote Democratic. Why do liberals get upset about flag waving? Because they hate America. When you look at the places liberals willfully choose horrible policies that don’t really align with traditional mainstream left-wing ideology, rarely will you find a reason to be charitable about their motivations.

The point of all this is that many of the policies liberals support today are toxic, contrarian, and aren’t even principled liberalism in any sort of meaningful sense – and it shouldn’t be that way. The left and right have a lot of principled disagreements, but the left is so far gone that even the most common-sense policies are increasingly becoming explicitly right-wing.

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