Your mileage may vary, of course, and I know he has had his moments over the years. He got fired for being a lone voice against the irritating pap that passed for analysis in the wake of 9/11, a casualty of political correctness during the exact sort of time when political correctness is most prevalent, and the alternative is most needed. (And the irony is that his show was called, “Politically Incorrect”, though obviously ABC didn’t actually want him to follow up on the concept of his show.)

But…Maher really, really bugs me. I have a few longstanding gripes with the guy. I suppose I should say that I am a Christian, but I’m not offended by the existence of atheists, just as I’m not offended by the existence of Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, etc. I know the “atheism is a religion too” argument causes many to bristle, but let me assure you that that’s not my point. The only people who are angry that reasonable people disagree with them are weak people who don’t trust their own system of beliefs and are too freaked out to change it. This is not a new debate. But Maher…he rejects religion as just a set of fairy tales, though he prefers a slightly different set fairy tales. Really, what Maher conveys is ignorance, a smug dismissal of stuff he considers bad, and an embrace of stuff he considers good, whether he gets it or not. He doesn’t bother to understand what’s in either category. Embracing anti-vaccination claptrap is the opposite of the scientific mindset. And regardless of whether you think it’s true or not, religion has long been an important part of human societies. To merely dismiss it all without a thought is to close off an entire avenue to understanding human nature. To want to understand, to know, is a foundational liberal value. It’s the opposite of dogma. Maher’s stance is not the sign of a liberal-minded person with a curiosity about the world, is all I’m saying.

But this isn’t a new story. I guess what brings me to write this is that Maher’s not really much of a progressive. He’s perhaps of the left, but that’s not the same thing. I’m writing this because I was bothered by the man using language that degrades women. Now, to be fair, the women in question are appalling in pretty much every way. I can see the temptation to be controversial in a position like Maher’s. But this reminds me of when conservatives rushed to say that Constitutional rights didn’t apply to anyone who wasn’t an American. Either they’re the things we believe in, or they’re not. I don’t believe in special rights for one group over another (though occasionally fairness and equality aren’t exactly the same thing, which is why I support programs to help the poor). Human rights must be universal rights, and this is especially true of the people we can’t stand. The urge to dehumanize the people we dislike the most is so strong and so constant throughout the course of human history. You can see it in the conservative reaction to Barack Obama–there seems to be a need to reduce the man to some sort of one-dimensional caricature that can be easily vilified and dismissed. Foreign-born jihadist, Kenyan anti-colonialist, college Marxist, closeted Alinskyist–they don’t make sense on their own or go together, but there is such desperation to reduce the man to a stereotype of some sort. I can certainly understand the urge to do it to Palin too, but it must be resisted. Her team’s protestations aside, I feel as if Palin has been rejected based largely on her actual flaws instead of by invoking stereotypes, and this is a good thing. To reduce a person to a few superficial (or just invented) components and then to condemn them is the opposite of liberalism–it’s the source of much that is bad in the world. Reading stuff like this just reminds me that I need to be careful when criticizing Palin and the rest of her ilk, lest I fall into a similar trap.

To me, Maher is just as bad as the people he targets, just from the other side. He might be “of the left” but his worldview is devoid of actual liberal values. This is eminently possible–really, just look at any communist country for proof. To the extent that Maher extols something like science, it is an assertion and not a lived value. To the extent he abhors sexism, it is because the “bad guys” do it, not because he finds it personally disgusting. Words, as they say, are cheap, it’s what you do that matters most. So I say no thank you to Bill Maher. If I wanted kulturkampf of the ill-informed variety I would have registered as a Republican in the first place.

And this is because such ugliness requires a little beauty to offset:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDXBPZoV2jw