FILE – Elon Musk departs after a welcome ceremony with President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in Beijing. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File) During a recent interview with “The Economist,” Elon Musk asked what is possibly the most important question of our time. Interviewer, Zanny Minton Beddoes, hit Musk with this loaded statement: “You support, not just the populist right, but the far right — in fact very fringe parties in some countries.” Musk responded: “No, I support the normal people.”
To the political left, much about Musk is now radioactive. Many leftists want to debate or condemn his definition of “normal.” I prefer to cut to the chase regarding what I view as Musk’s most important point made during that interview.
“Here are the principles, and tell me, which of these sound terrible,” he said. “That we should have secure borders? That we should have safe cities? That we should have sensible spending? Which of those three are far-right fringe?”
Having grown up in abject poverty, been evicted from 34 homes as a child, I came to conservatism not because of indoctrination, but because of lived experiences. Common sense and pragmatic solutions were the life preservers I swam toward time and again in my sea of despair. A common sense told me as an adult that the entrenched elites from both major political parties did not care about me or the disenfranchised, but only about their own power.
For the last 20 years, I have been an independent in search of commonsense and pragmatic people offering up the best solutions for the majority of the people — that is, for the working class and the disenfranchised. I will take the best solution from any flawed personality every single time — an attitude that has taken on a new meaning in the age of Trump.
Today, my first thought centers around the safety and future wellbeing of children and grandchildren. Not Republican or conservative or faith-based children and grandchildren, but all children and grandchildren.
Safe cities, secure borders and sensible spending sound like common-sense, pragmatic goals for those children. If New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) or Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson listed those three things as basic needs for the working class and disenfranchised, I suspect that most people on the left would agree. But of course, in an age and a party where police-defunding and prison-abolition are increasingly trendy, they never will advocate for such solutions.
Musk does. And as with President Trump, the mere mention of his name can enrage some on the left. But as they hate on Musk, they should think about this: During my childhood, it was the Democratic Party that stood up against discrimination and censorship, and that fought for the disenfranchised. Today, not so much. Now, many on the left are spewing hate, censorship and cancellation. If you do not align 100 percent with their narrative, you become the enemy.
Four years ago, I flagged this trend with a book titled, “The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.“ I was hearing more and more voices calling for the cancellation of our Founding Fathers, for sandblasting their names off schools and buildings, and the “reimagining” of our American history. My take on that subject is that if our history is bad, we must learn from it. If it is good, we can also praise it and build upon it. But let us never, ever cancel our shared American history.
We live in highly polarized, siloed and dangerous times. Discussion, debate and civility are all but gone. If we do not run to common sense and the pragmatic as a country and civilization, all will be lost.
Like him or hate him, Musk has asked a question that is critical to the long-term survival of any nation and its people. If we want to coexist in peace while helping and protecting the least among us, we need to address it now.
Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.
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