I'm generally for private enterprise, and It seems rather questionable to me to say that everyone who takes any Government money under any circumstances is equivalent. Musk has indeed taken a lot of Government money, and more importantly IMHO hired a bunch of people who got their experience in space and rocketry at NASA, but does that make him more or less private than, say, Lockheed-Martin or the other usual contractors?

I would say that the aerospace companies doing cost-plus contracting for loosely defined projects with fuzzy requirements and no prospect for sustainable private operations are in a very different business than companies that do fixed-price contracts with the Government for specific services with an eye towards capturing a private market in the future. The cost-plus guys are IMHO government agencies in all but name, plus some fat paychecks and kickbacks going to a few connected people. The fixed-price guys are IMHO normal private companies that happen to contract with the Government for their normal profitable services sometimes. I don't think it makes much difference if the first business that funded initial development was all government contracts - the private market for launch services is real, and SpaceX has a plan for making a profit in it and is progressing towards capturing a solid market share in it.