[Pre-order a copy of David Horowitz’s next book, America Betrayed, by clicking here. Orders will begin shipping on May 7th.]
Conservatives are so starved for celebrity validation that too often we giddily embrace any progressive star who throws us a bone. Yes, we should acknowledge when someone on the other side of the political aisle has an occasional moment of lucidity and gets on the correct side of an issue, but that doesn’t turn a Bill Maher or J.K. Rowling into a full-fledged ally to the right.
Friday on HBO’s Real Time, for example, comedian, talk show host, and mocker of religion Maher expressed dismay and disapproval over the chants of “Death to America” at an anti-Israel rally in the Islamic Republic of Michigan last week. “The left has gotten mad at me for many years for talking about Islam. I try not to do it too much, because I know it makes them go crazy and I’ve made my point. But it needs to be talked about now.”
Indeed it does, and yes, bravo to Maher for at least being willing to break the progressive taboo against criticizing the Religion of Peace™; those of us who have been calling out jihad for many years now know full well that one is reflexively shouted down – at best – as an “Islamophobe” for doing so. But this willingness alone doesn’t put him squarely in the conservative camp; Maher went on to state that he likes American freedoms and doesn’t believe, as the rally speakers claimed, that our “whole system” has to go, but that that doesn’t mean he’s turned conservative.
But then, on the same episode, when the topic among his panelists turned to abortion, Maher proceeded to stun the progressive hipsters in his audience by declaring that they are wrong to claim that pro-life people hate women; abortion opponents, he pointed out with admirable fairness and respect, sincerely believe that terminating a pregnancy is murder.
Provost of King’s College, Cambridge and Financial Times columnist Gillian Tett began by calling it “strange” that abortion is still such a controversial political issue when America is facing other enormous geopolitical challenges. It’s so “19th century,” she observed, and the audience cheered.
Then Maher dropped the hammer. He responded,
Well, not if you believe it’s murder. That’s why I don’t understand the 15-week thing or the — Trump’s plan is, “Let’s leave it to the states.” You mean, so killing babies is okay in some states? I can respect the absolutist position, I really can. I scold the left on, when they say, “Oh, you know what, [pro-lifers] just hate women, people who aren’t pro-life — pro-choice, they just –” [Pro-lifers] don’t hate women. They just made that up. They think it’s murder.
Rightly said. So far he sounds like a defender of conservative opposition to abortion, and there was no cheering this time from the audience, only palpable silence. Then Maher gave away the progressive game by saying the quiet part out loud: “…And it kind of is [murder]. I’m just okay with that. I am. There [are] eight billion people in the world, I’m sorry, we won’t miss you. That’s my position on that.”
You could have heard a pin drop, to abuse a cliché. Every progressive in the audience and watching at home must have been horrified to hear the pro-choice Maher confirm the pro-life position that abortion is not “reproductive care” or “family planning” but murder; and not only that, but also to hear him openly admit he is indifferent to killing the unborn because overpopulation! Media fixture Piers Morgan jumped in, joking, “That’s quite harsh, Bill,” and the crowd burst out in nervous laughter, but for one long, tense moment, Maher’s nakedly honest pronouncement had sucked the air out of the room.
His admission must have been especially unnerving for the left considering that the Democrats are going all-in on making the 2024 presidential election a referendum on abortion. They have to, because Biden/Harris can’t run on their popularity or achievements. The only Democrat hope of victory against the unstoppable Donald Trump juggernaut is to galvanize the female vote by hyping the specter of a Handmaid’s Tale dystopia under a misogynist, “Christian nationalist,” Trump regime. The right to terminate the life of their unborn children is a sacrament to Democrat women, and the 2022 Supreme Court overturning of Roe v. Wade sent a seismic shock through progressives nationwide. They are hysterically upset about the looming threat of a “national abortion ban” under Trump, even though he recently stated that he believes the abortion issue should be left to the states. They can’t afford to have someone with a platform like Bill Maher’s expose abortion as the infanticide it really is, or openly shrug it off.
It’s been noted many times that Maher is like the proverbial broken clock in that he gets things right occasionally, and considering the media megaphone he wields, that’s a good thing for the conservative cause when he does. But at heart he is still a progressive, and as he demonstrated in the aforementioned episode of Real Time, progressivism is a death cult.
And he’s okay with that.