Authored by Jeffrey A. Tucker via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

There’s a Tesla in my neighborhood with a bumper sticker that seems to be begging people not to key the car. “I bought this car before I knew that Elon was crazy,” it says.

Fascinating message there. Is it a protest, plea, or both? The car is brilliant, obviously and the guy loves it. But these days, driving a Tesla comes with implied messaging, due entirely to Musk’s political actions.

Elite liberals were buying this car for years as a status symbol of their love of the planet. Then everything changed. Now they are experiencing something like an existential crisis. That’s because a movement has emerged among elites who have turned against it.

Then began a campaign of violence against property. Marauding gangs have attacked dealerships and vigilantes have vandalized cars and trucks all over the country. It’s revealed a point about the political left that has heretofore been only suspected: it harbors a violent streak that is alarming, even terrifying.

This idea that we are what we buy—that our purchases are not just about the products but a judgment for or against the companies that make them—seems rather new as a mass phenomenon. We saw it in the mass consumer boycott of Bud Light.

These violent actions, however, go far beyond a buyers’ boycott. No one in a free enterprise system objects to declining to buy. It’s another matter to lash out at others for their decisions.

The political actions of the CEO dragged the company into a difficult relationship with the main customers of the product. There seems to be no question that this is the reason for the dramatic fall in both sales and the company’s stock price.

EV sales otherwise seem to be on the rise, while Tesla has experienced disproportionate losses at the tail end of a very contentious election followed by the CEO’s actions that have attempted to gut the civil service.

The fall has been so stinging that Elon is stepping back from politics to focus again on bolstering his company and reputation. Certainly he seems to have become less outspoken than he was a few months back. The markets seem to have humbled him into going back to business and staying out of the political muck.

His project called DOGE will live on, and I suspect that he will ultimately be vindicated. For now, however, he is taking it on the chin. His early estimate of saving $2 trillion with cuts kept being pared back given court judgements and impossible bureaucracy. It now stands at $150 billion, much of which will be lost in litigation fees. It’s a terrible realization: if Musk could not do it, even with the full confidence of the U.S. president, can it even be done?

Ever since Musk distinguished himself as the most prominent corporate voice against lockdowns, I’ve paid careful attention to his political migration. He was a conventional corporate liberal not too long ago, say 10 years ago. His experience during COVID changed him. This was when governments around the country and the world said they and they alone would decide which companies would open and which would close. Understandably, he came to believe that civilization was under attack and swore he would do something about it.

He promised to keep his factories open even as the rest of the world was shutting down. He moved his company out of California and his corporate registrations out of Delaware in protest against what was happening. The sudden dawning of his political enlightenment mutated into a serious attack on a range of government and corporate policies that mitigate against merit in hiring and promotion. He turned on “woke”—also in part due to private family struggles that hurt him deeply.

Elon eventually put his money where his mouth was. He decided to buy a heavily censored and deeply propagandistic Twitter and turn it into the much freer X that drove forward public narratives which contributed mightily to Trump’s victory in 2024. In so doing, he fired 4 out of 5 employees in the wildly bloated staff and dramatically changed the platform to become the world’s most popular news and social media application.

Those actions earned him a great deal of influence over policy in the new administration. He was tasked with doing to the government what he had done at Twitter: clean it up, refresh it to become more effective and efficient, and bring some degree of transparency to government finance.

Musk had some success. That said, changing government is much harder than changing a private company over which you are CEO. He has had wide influence within the Trump administration, but not as much as perhaps he had hoped. He wanted budget cuts and worked within established parameters to get them, even fully gutting several terrible sources of corruption like USAID.

My judgment on his role is that Musk’s activities here have been absolutely heroic. He helped restore free speech. He has cleaned up some waste and fraud. He has streamlined some processes of government. He has set a new standard for accounting, personnel, and accounting. DOGE will go on without him.

Also, it is not generally understood how xAI or Grok broke an emergent monopoly in artificial intelligence, shattering OpenAI’s hopes for a monopoly once it let go of its non profit status. Grok made that impossible. Even now, Musk’s Grok AI engine ranks very high in all side-to-side comparisons of AI tools, and certainly excels in its user interface.

Musk is very easily the leader in autonomous driving, which could revolutionize transportation on many fronts. And he does it all with open-source technology.

I’m not a Tesla owner and I’ve written many articles with grave doubts about EVs in general. That said, I’m for consumer choice. If you think he makes a better car, great. Buy it and drive it. He has been very clear, too, that he is against all mandates, subsidies, and even patent protections, which is quite remarkable. In general, I would say that he has behaved throughout with notable scrupulosity.

Further, he threw himself into politics with the best of motives. He wanted to end censorship. He wanted to stop the corruption. He wanted to fix government finances. He has been sincere throughout and performed extraordinary deeds. He was not only not paid for his service; he has been punished financially for what he has done.

This entire episode prompts a kind of reflection on the role of public life, courage, and doing what is right. Musk truly attempted to make a difference. He was courageous. He took on huge financial risks in buying Twitter that seem to have paid off. He risked the status of all of his companies when he threw in with Trump’s campaign. He could have played it safe but chose a different path.

Why did he risk it all? Because he strongly believed it was the right thing to do. This is a beautiful thing to see in our cynical times. There is an element of tragedy in how his sacrifices have not been rewarded but rather punished.

What message does this send to the business culture at large? It says: do not stick your neck out to stand up for what is right. Instead, be more compliant and agreeable with whomever or whatever is in power. That’s the best way to protect the bottom line.

This is an unfortunate signal for business in general. It’s extremely rare that someone so accomplished in enterprise would stand up for what is right and true. He deserves the gratitude of everyone who believes in free speech and freedom generally. Arguably, his actions saved both from grave danger. He was and is paying a heavy price for doing this.

What might he have done differently? He might have some thoughts on that but the general theme is that he did the right thing when it mattered the most. I seriously doubt that he would change anything about his big decisions.

As for the bumper sticker on the Tesla that attacks Musk, it’s truly pathetic, an act of cowardice, whatever the motive. In multiple ways, he has been the benefactor of us all. Is every hero doomed to live a thankless life in these times? Maybe. But they will prevail in the end.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.