Native-born Americans could take a lesson from Elon Musk.
One of the wealthiest men in the world, a billionaire many, many times over, leader of the pioneering aerospace firm SpaceX and CEO of Tesla, Musk has been dominating news cycles for most of 2022 as the purchaser of the social media giant Twitter.
But the giant of the internet age and naturalized American citizen still looks to the foundation of American democracy for inspiration.
That was the message of a tweet posted Monday in which Musk included an image of āthe most treasured itemā on his bedside table: a collection of Americaās founding documents.
The set includes the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence andĀ āWashingtonās Rules of Civility.ā
Muskās tweet was in reply to a quote he posted in the wake of a controversy surrounding the overhyped accusation that former President Donald Trump had called for trashing the Constitution over revelations about Big Techās meddling in the 2020 presidential election.
āThe Constitution is greater than any President. End of story,ā Musk wrote in the November tweet.
āMay it always be so,ā he wrote in the post published Monday.
But thereās something more fundamental at work here that all Americans should be paying attention to.
For the left, the foundational documents of the UnitedĀ States are irredeemably tainted by the slavery that existed in the South at the time.
The Declaration was written by Thomas Jefferson, a man leftists despise because he had slaves and allegedly sired children with a woman he āowned.ā
The Constitution, which permitted and codified the institution of slavery with its āThree-fifths Clauseā regarding how āfree personsā and āall other personsā should be counted, is considered an abomination by the left.
As for George Washingtonās famous āRules of Civilityā? Washington was a slave owner too, so heās automatically a villain for the left. And recent years have shown ā with their āmostly peacefulā riots and violent hostility toward the nationās past ā the contempt the left actually has for civility.
But Musk, who was born in South Africa and became an American of his own volition in 2002, apparently thinks enough of all three that heās declaring that devotion for all the world to see.
Itās worth pointing out that this isnāt the first time Musk has posted an image of the texts.
In November, he tweeted a picture of what appears to be the same bedside table littered with empty Diet Coke cans. The set of books can be seen in the background behind the lampstand.
The important thing to remember here is that Musk wasnāt born a United States citizen. He grew up in a nation literally founded on the separation of human beings by race. Thatās a far cry from being saturated in the American atmosphere of respect for the individual (however much identity politics-obsessed liberals try to deride that respect now).
Heās an American citizen because he understands that the wealth of the wealthiest country the world has ever known is built on a foundation of liberty.
Was the United States flawed at its founding? Of course it was. Is it flawed today? Of course it is. Any work of flawed human beings is going to be imperfect.
But from its birth, the United States has been unlike every other country, a nation, as Lincoln wrote, ādedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.ā In the present day, it remains unlike every other country, a force for good in the world unrivaled by its peers, thanks in large part to the Constitution that progressives pretend to revere but in reality despiseĀ and have despised at least since Woodrow Wilsonās days.
Elon Musk, a foreign-born citizen, apparently understands this.
Native-born Americans should take that lesson to heart.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
