Bill Maher Is an Idiot and Other True Stories

Appearing as an iconic (?) comedian (?) and a noted expert (?) on all things political, Bill Maher dazzled fan Harry Smith of NBC News on Meet the Press with witty (?) banter themed around how Republicans are bad and Republican voters are dumb.

The segment is worth watching, because Bill Maher for all his faults—including the fault of being the caricature of pretension and snobbery—in a vital way epitomizes how the American Left views conservatives and Republicans.

You see, Bill Maher is an idiot.

Although I enjoy calling people idiots because it makes me feel intellectually superior, I assure you that calling Maher an idiot is fair, accurate, and above all, makes me feel intellectually superior.

Bill Maher thinks that Americans who are not in the so-called “1%” are “corporate America's useful idiots” if they vote Republican.

Note the strikingly original (and not-at-all intellectually shallow) reference to the “1%,” a term coined by a leftist fringe “movement,” whose only other worthless contribution to American politics was being chased out of public parks by ultra-liberal mayors who for some reason valued public health over incoherent anti-capitalist drivel and the inalienable right to defecate in public.

“1%.” LOL insert smiley face winking. Bill Maher is so witty!

But beneath the veneer of an idiot who uses uninspired clichés to make anti-intellectual partisan points, is a bigger idiot who believes that a majority of Republican voters vote against their self-interests.

This theme was thoroughly and mindlessly overanalyzed in a 2004 book, “What’s the Matter with Kansas,” which has become the leftists’ gospel for psychoanalyzing conservatives because it portrays Republican voters as misinformed morons. And that makes leftists happy.  

We see this theory advanced whenever elections don’t go the Left’s way.

When Volkswagen employees in Tennessee voted against joining the United Auto Workers union, the crazies at MSNBC blamed racism (duh!), but also lamented that the workers were voting against their economic benefits.

Bill Maher and other idiots echo this crackpot theory every chance they get, in part because it makes them feel better for not having a coherent philosophical foundation for their ideas. There is no Milton Friedman, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Thomas Sowell, or Henry Hazlitt on the left. Unless of course we count Karl Marx. There are liberal authors, but there are no leftwing intellectual heavyweights who have ever come close to offering a compelling counter-thesis to Friedman’s epic “Free to Choose.”

What books do you suppose Bill Maher has read that have shaped his world view? I’ll venture to guess he’s read such brilliant authors as Michael Moore and Al Franken. It’s clear from his firm and courageous reliance on platitudes and sophomoric analysis that he has never read anything serious or substantive.   

To fill the intellectual void and to avoid reading Friedman, Hayek, et al., liberals like Bill Maher rely on some variation of “What’s the Matter with Kansas” to explain why lower-class and middle-class Americans vote Republican.

I want to help Bill Maher understand—in so much as he is capable of understanding anything—why people who are not as filthy rich as Bill Maher vote Republican.     

Here’s a very short list.

Public Schools

The United States’ public school monopoly is failing a great number of kids, especially kids in poor neighborhoods. As even some Democrats who support public school reform have recognized, the blame rests squarely with teacher unions and their left-wing enablers in federal, state, and local governments.

Let’s say Mark, a fella of average means, who cannot afford to send his kid to private schools, decides he’s had enough with union abuses and votes for a Republican who pledges to take on the corrosive influence of teacher unions on education. Seems to me, Mark is voting his self-interest.    

The debate over charter schools, which is inextricably linked to the power wielded by teacher unions and their political allies, is playing out in New York City, where far left-wing Mayor Bill De Blasio is waging a war on these quasi-private schools.

This has drawn the ire of predominately Democratic voters in Harlem, who are suing De Blasio for violating their kids’ civil rights.        

Janette makes $30,000 per year. She is a lifelong Democrat, but votes for a Republican who runs against De Blasio and pledges to not violate her son’s civil rights by denying him the right to attend a school of Janette’s choosing.

In short, if members of the “99%” aren’t happy that policies advocated by teacher unions have the effect of trapping kids in failing public schools, they may vote Republican.

Public Unions

Jack is struggling to get by. He works two jobs and resents the fact that employees in his state’s public sector earn higher salaries and receive more generous benefits than their private sector counterparts. The discrepancy is not based on merit, but rather on union bosses having spent millions of dollars to elect liberal Democrats who use Jack’s tax dollars to pay off those who got them in power with disproportionately high wages and benefits.

Jack decides he’s had enough of this unethical and unfair collusion between unions and government, including the havoc it’s reeking on his state’s budget, and decides to vote for a Republican governor who pledges to rein in out-of-control public union contracts.        

Detroit

That’s it. Checkmate. Okay, I’ll needlessly elaborate.

Detroit is the shining example of decades of liberal policies. Try as they may (and Bill Maher’s partner in idiocy, Ed Schultz tried) liberals cannot get around the straightforward, unambiguous fact that liberal Democrats at the local, state, and federal levels destroyed Detroit.

In fact, if you look at virtually every impoverished, crime ridden neighborhood, you will notice that the people who run it at all levels of government are Democrats.

So maybe Martha, who lives in Chicago’s Auburn Gresham neighborhood, is disgusted with the liberal Democrats who have failed to lower crime, reduce poverty, and create jobs in her hometown, studies the experience of New York City under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, and decides to give a tough-on-crime, pro school choice, pro tax credit Republican mayor a shot.

You see, Billy, it’s in her self-interest.    

Ok, there you have it. A few reasons why people of all backgrounds may choose to vote Republican. There’s also the debate about the proper role of government, the balance between individual liberty and government control, the practical effects of an ever-expanding welfare state, the morality of income redistribution, and other philosophical issues that Bill Maher could not possibly begin to understand.

Because, you know, he is an idiot.