Comedian and talk show host Bill Maher always reminds me of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s famous short poem: “There was a little girl, Who had a little curl, Right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.” Maher’s most notable riffs can be truly horrid, as was the case when he conceded that abortion was murder but added that he doesn’t care, or very good indeed, as happened with his most recent monologue addressing pedophiles in Hollywood and the scourge of wokies forcing transgenderism on children.

Last week, Piers Morgan appeared on Maher’s show and pointed out that Europe, to which American lefties always look so longingly, often has much more stringent abortion restrictions than America does. In response, Maher honestly acknowledged that abortion is “murder” but added that he doesn’t care because of over-population:

There are several responses to the position that killing innocent babies is fine because of overpopulation, the most obvious of which is that Maher has effectively stated that anyone is fair game to “cure” the “problem” of overpopulation. Currently, we’re going after those who would add to the world’s population but, following Maher’s logic, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t also start culling the existing herd.

In England, they don’t like to treat old people for terminal diseases. In Canada, they euthanize expensive patients. It’s easy to imagine that very soon, in America, the same people who want Trump dead will suggest we depopulate by culling all Trump supporters. As Hitler shows, once you decide that a disfavored population is in the way, if you have no moral principles, there’s nothing to stop you from mass murder.

(As an aside, the surest way to decrease the population is through prosperity, and the fastest path to prosperity is capitalism in a free society…but that’s a topic for another post.)

While Maher’s honesty led him to a morally grotesque place regarding abortion, sometimes that same honesty leads him to the right place. That’s the case with his most recent monologue, in which he addresses the left’s obsession with child sexuality.

Maher begins by talking about the pedophile problems at Nickelodeon and Disney, which are easy targets, even for the left.

However, rather surprisingly, Maher travels from that soft target to the left’s relentless efforts to “trans” children. He does it so well that he even goes so far as to give Gov. Ron DeSantis props for taking on Disney.

Of course, because Maher is a leftist, it’s doubtful that he’ll ever acknowledge that so-called transgenderism is a mental disorder and a social contagion rather than a reality. Still, on this topic, just seeing someone with a bully pulpit being honest about transgender grooming is a great start.

We conservatives will never win an immediate, total victory on either abortion or transgenderism. For that reason, we must be willing to do what the left has done so well for the past 60 years, which is to shift the Overton window incrementally.

In his own way, Maher has contributed to that shift on two important hot-button issues. On abortion, he must have caused some people to recoil with revulsion when they saw the truth about the fallout from the left’s Gaia worship. Meanwhile, when it comes to transgenderism, it’s to be hoped that he made some people think and gave others the courage to speak out.

Image: X screen grab.