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America, Bill Maher, Christianity and Islam, Defend the modern world, Gaza, Hypocrisy, Iraq, Liberals, Michael Moore, Multiculturalism, politics, Race and ethnicity in the United States Census, Real Time, Television, USA, War
The Liberal position in America is notoriously difficult to define. Many of the ideologies gathered under the term in the US would be classed at ‘Right-Wing’ in Europe (and almost certainly in continental Europe) where the label usually carries connotations of socialism and enthusiasm for the welfare state. American Liberals (against the claims of some Conservatives) are not at that point yet. More often, they align roughly with British centrists like the Orange-book Liberal Democrats or Cameronite Tories.
The American term for Liberals of the European style is ‘Leftist’, or collectively ‘The Left’. These are not often found in Establishment politics, or indeed anywhere close to the heat-field of democratic accountability. Rather they lurk on the fringes of Hollywood, music and (perhaps most of all) the booming trade of ‘political satire’.
A giant on this last stage is a Mr William “Bill” Maher.
Perhaps the most effective satirist in modern America, Maher has never made a secret of his adoration of President Obama (he was a big money donor to Obama’s re-election campaign) or of his violent loathing for White American culture and the rural poor. His well-honed spiel has been to accuse, with the merry confidence of a drunk, anyone exhibiting hostility toward the big-state idea as ‘racist’, a paid-for corporate toady or else a reprobate, homophobic, pro-life creationist.
And this has worked extremely well. On my personal facebook page, I can never seem to avoid a re-post of Mr Maher’s latest routine, and his television show ‘Real Time’ is one of the most popular of its kind on American cable.
But despite such popularity, Maher has a quirk which makes his acceptance into Liberal high society controversial for more devout believers.
Maher is a Zionist. As a matter of fact, a very orthodox one. The comedian reliably supports the Israeli military in its offensives against terrorism wherever (and in whatever manner) they occur, and most recently found himself in hot water for doing so regarding Operation Protective Edge.
But why would I complain about that, you ask? It’s simple. Mr Maher’s support for Israel’s right to defend itself lies in stark contrast to his consistent refusal to grant this same right to America and Europe.
Whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, Maher has repeatedly berated the US military for its excesses and sought (with some success) to diminish the morale of patriotic forces. The Bush regime in particular had no moral fibre for Maher and his baying amen-corner audiences. The invasion of Iraq was motivated by the price of oil. The assault on Falluja was a war crime. The abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib meanwhile was not a singular episode but rather chimed with the moral tone of the whole enterprise.
Is it unfair to speculate that had the IDF been responsible for any of these events, Maher would have no trouble finding a way of rationalising them? I don’t think so.
And what would that be exactly? Hypocrisy? Tribalism (Maher has a Jewish mother)? Ignorance (that America and Israel are fighting the same wars)?
That I don’t know. But in my humble opinion the right Israel has to defend its liberal society extends to any other democracy, and wrong-headed hypocrites like Maher let us all down by obscuring this fact.
D, LDN.
Defend the Modern World 
The difference is simply geographical.
Israel is a tiny country, literally fighting for its existence against enemies who want to see it and it’s people completely destroyed, at its borders or near its borders.
The US and Europe are vast places with no credible existential threat at their borders. All the fighting is going on in places thousands of miles away from their borders in conflicts in which they have no clue as to what really going on, in places where they shouldn’t be in the first place, wasting the treasure of their people and the blood of their soldiers in stupid idiotic conflicts with no clear objectives, and political-corrected ness chained to their hands.
The difference is enormous and Bill Maher is rightly pointing it out.
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Europe has no credible threat at its borders?
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Europe has no credible MILITARY threats at its borders(so far). The threat is demographic, due to the foolish multi-culti non-selective immigration of people who essentially hate what the West stands for and want to stealthily(for now) and aggressively(once sufficient numbers are reached) replace it’s culture with something else.
But, this could have been avoided entirely, if only the Western leaders and Western ‘intelligentsia’ had understood the nature of the threat and dealt with it, instead of unnecessarily wasting its treasure and the blood of its soldiers on foolish no-end conflicts in the middle-east.
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It depends what you mean by ‘military’. There are quasi-militaries like Hezbollah, ISIS, the Mujahedeen in Libya etc… who pose a long-term threat to our security if left unattended to. My point in this post is that should we choose to bomb these terrorist encampments in Libya, Syria, Iraq or elsewhere (whether or not that is the right thing to do), Maher would almost certainly object. Yet when Israel bombs terrorist encampments in Gaza, he is vocal in his support. There is something aggravating about that.
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I totally agree with your assessment of Maher. Please do not think he represents all American Jews. He does not.
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I don’t think he does. Most Jews have the guts to stand against the Islamist project. There are no half-way houses in a struggle like this. Maher is intelligent enough to know this. Perhaps he just plays the clown for his Liberal audience. I don’t know.
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Yeah, Bush was warned that removing Saddam Hussein would ignite Iraq into civil war forevermore, and he went ahead and did it anyway. Now we have ISIS, thanks a lot G.W. Bush, soulmate of Arab Oil Sheiks including those named Bin Laden. Google Arbusto.
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I’m undecided on the Iraq war. However, Bush deserves much more credit than he receives for taking the fight to the terrorists.
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The terrorists were from Saudi Arabia though. Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden did not get along, so there were no Al Queda training camps in Iraq, either. Bush just had this hard-on for getting Saddam and lied to the UN and everyone “weapens of mass destruction” which weren’t there. He was told don’t do that, the country will explode in civil war, and he just smirked and did it anyway. And the invasion of Afghanistan turned out to be, to get a pipeline through it, not, get OBL. At least that is one thing Obama did, silly me I thought that meant he knew what terrorism was and to wipe its leaders out, like the Mossad.
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Good occupation here. I truly enjoyed what you had to say.
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