The reaction on the left to Elon Musk’s still-uncertain attempt to buy out Twitter in some fashion and remake it as a global platform for free speech has been almost hilarious to watch. So many of the hot takes showing up on the platform itself, as well as in major newspapers and cable news outlets sound as if they could have come from the Babylon Bee. (Of course, if they had, you wouldn’t have seen them since the satirical Bee is also banned as a “misinformation” outlet.) You’d think that the Devil himself was riding into town to set fire to the churches and enslave the locals. At the New York Post this week, Rich Lowry takes a look at some of these over-the-top reactions and dwells on precisely what has liberals up in arms over Musk’s efforts to take ownership of yet another company and why they are trying so hard to paint him as a “dangerous” figure. And he has some of the most priceless reactions to back up his contention.

A year after being named Time magazine’s person of the year, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is attempting to acquire Twitter.

To listen to Musk’s critics, you’d believe it’s a betrayal almost on par with Hitler invading Poland not long after being named Time’s man of the year in 1938.

A writer for the left-wing Web site Salon worried that a Musk takeover of Twitter would enable fascism in America. A New York University journalism professor lamented that posting on Twitter with the threat of Musk looming feels like partying at a Berlin nightclub “at the twilight of Weimar Germany.” Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich warned, “This is what oligarchy looks like.” And so on.

Lowry has plenty to say about Musk, not all of it glowing, but in terms of the current debate over the possibility of him controlling Twitter, he makes one clear point. Musk represents “a clear and present danger to the use of Twitter as a one-sided instrument to impose progressive rules on the public debate.”

Speaking as someone who has been watching this food fight unfold from the cheap seats, I would have to agree. And I know of far more examples that crop in places where most people won’t see them. I follow and engage with an eclectic mix of people on Twitter, ranging from full-on liberal socialists to some of the most hard-boiled conservatives. And the reactions from those more left-leaning correspondents has been amazing to behold.

I’ve personally watched some of these people refer to Musk as a “greedy billionaire” who is looking to promote “harm” against people by allowing unacceptable (to the left) speech to appear in their timelines. The amazing part of all of this is that many of these Twitter users are people who I have personally seen praising Musk in the past. Some have marveled at his SpaceX launches and replied admiringly when I tweeted out the live feed to the latest rocket preparing to go up. Others have lauded Musk for his work in producing electric cars, thereby doing his part to prevent climate change. And many of them have “liked” videos that I’ve posted of both my wife and I melting things with the flamethrower that Elon Musk sold me a few years ago.

I really don’t know how much Elon Musk actually cares about climate change, but he does love his electric cars. I also don’t know many working-class people who could actually afford a Tesla. And everyone seems to turn a blind eye to the massive carbon footprint of his factories and his rockets. It’s something I don’t personally give a fig about, but if you’re a climate change warrior, it seems like you’d have noticed before now, right?

But now a different Elon Musk has emerged. He’s the villain who the left believes is threatening the narrative. If you allow people to simply go around saying what they think, God only knows how long it will be before the world comes tumbling down. Imagine the damage people might have sustained if anyone had been allowed to tweet about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the New York Times said it was okay to do so. (Well over a year later, when the election was safely behind Joe Biden.) What might have become of civilization if people had been allowed to see the name of Tara Reade while Joe Biden was still running for president? We could all be speaking Russian or Chinese by now!

I honestly have no idea what Elon Musk plans to do with Twitter if he does manage to acquire either the entire company or at least a majority share of the stock. I can’t say with any certainty that he’s actually serious about it and not just having some fun while turning a tidy profit in the process. If he does take over, I’m almost certain he’ll wind up doing some things I disagree with while very likely implementing some policies I will see as a huge improvement. But the one thing I know for sure is that the liberals’ reactions to his comments about taking over the company have been far more entertaining than anything I’ve seen on Netflix in the past year. (And if Netflix’s stock tanks any more this month, Musk may wind up buying that too.)