Elon Musk’s Stick Figure Graphic Illustrates What Happens When Our Nation’s Moral Standards Shift by Michael L. Brown for Ask Dr Brown
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 28, 2022
What can we learn from Elon Musk’s apparent shift to the right in his politics? From his perspective, as illustrated in his stick figure tweet, he has not shifted at all. Instead, the left has veered further left, because of which, by remaining stationary in his own views, it is perceived that he has moved to the right.
His graphic reminded me of an illustration I used for many years while preaching, holding the Bible high in my right hand and using my left hand to represent the state of the society.
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I would then say this: “Because we don’t want to appear fanatical or radical as followers of Jesus, we tend to set our standards somewhere between the standards of God’s Word and the standards of the world. But as the standards of each generation get lower and lower, our standards get lower as well.
“As a result, within a couple of generations, things are acceptable in our own homes as believers that would have been detestable in the homes of our non-believing grandparents.”
Put another way, unless we actively swim against the tide of the worldly culture, we will find ourselves drifting in the wrong direction. We will simply be carried by the current.
Musk’s point is similar yet different, especially since it is not related at all to a faith standard or a biblical belief.
Instead, it illustrates just how far to the left the “progressive” mindset has shifted. As the saying goes, “Today’s Democratic Party is not the Democratic Party of Bill Clinton.” (Do you remember when the Democratic mantra concerning abortion was, “We want abortion to be safe, legal, and rare”? How would that play today?)
Most of my Jewish relatives and friends from childhood are Democrats today, some of them quite staunchly.
Yet a few of these old friends are not, and when I interacted with them on social media, asking them what happened, their stories were the same.
They began to see what was really happening. They began to recognize how dramatically the “liberal” side was becoming extreme. They began to understand that the policies they once defended were actually indefensible and that the policies they once loathed actually had some merit.
Now, some of them are more conservative politically than I am.
To be clear, and as I’ve said almost endlessly over the years, my hope is not in a political party. And, while I virtually always vote Republican, I am registered as an Independent just as a personal matter of conscience.
Yet no one cannot deny that, for those of you who identify as liberal or progressive or Democrat, the ground has shifted under your feet. And if you remain stationary, you have now moved to the right.
Some of this shift happened right before our eyes during the Democratic presidential debates, as candidate Biden moved further to the left on abortion, saying he would no longer support the Hyde Amendment. It was either that or distance himself from his increasingly pro-abortion party. At least that was his perception. (As reported in the New York Times, “Joe Biden Denounces Hyde Amendment, Reversing His Position.”)
Getting back to Musk, Lee Brown wrote in the New York Post, “Billionaire Elon Musk insists he is a liberal — but is viewed as a far-right ‘bigot’ because ‘woke progressives’ are pushing the left to extremes.
