Bill Maher gave a lengthy defense of the U.S. constitution and also basic American values during his “New Rules” segment on Friday’s “Real Time.”
And while the bulk of the commentary was a somewhat tedious expression of inchoate frustration with Gen Z activists, the main point was a celebration of how the constitution ” makes life good” even for the people who hate the people who created it.
Maher’s entry into the topic was to refer to Kamala Harris’ speech at the Democratic National Convention in August. “the smartest thing Democrats did this year was finding their patriotism again. If you told me a year ago that if Kamala Harris would be the nominee and in her acceptance speech she would use the word privilege, I would not have guessed that she used it the way she did the greatest.”
At this, Maher cued up footage of Harris saying that being an American is a privilege (in the sense of good fortune, not deservedness).
“Yeah. And Tim Walz also began his speech with a great line, saying, ‘We’re all here tonight for one beautiful, simple reason. We love this country.’ And yet this message doesn’t seem to be catching on with a lot of the younger people. None of them are standing up and screaming, that’s my country. Quite the reverse. Quite the reverse,” Maher said.
At this, he noted recent protests, including a pro-Palestine rally in Seattle where rapper Macklemore said “f— America” to big applause.
“I’m sure it was a big hit with the queers for Gaza crowd, literally advocating for a government that would imprison you or kill you for being queer from the safety and security of a country that doesn’t do that. Yes, America the only place in the world where a white guy from the suburbs could become a millionaire rapper because every person, regardless of race, class or gender, has the right to be talent free,” Maher said.
Maher then noted how earlier this month was Constitution Day, the federal holiday celebrating the constitution. “It’s an actual Federal holiday, but no one noticed, despite the fact that it’s probably the greatest legal document ever. Is it flawed? Of course, it was written by humans, and they were all white men, as depicted in this illustration from Google AI,” Maher joked as a typically terrible AI-created image appeared onscreen.
Maher then noted that many of the people who created the constitution were themselves very young, joking, “James Monroe was 18. Alexander Hamilton was 21 James Madison 25 Joe Biden was only 30. America’s founders, they were the Gen Z of their day.”
“Whenever your age, they started a country. What have you done?”
“The Constitution isn’t perfect because it wasn’t written by Taylor Swift,” Maher said. “And yes, the founders made excruciating compromises, obviously, slavery, but slavery was a deal breaker for the southern states, so there would have been two countries. And then to end slavery in North America, it would have involved invading a sovereign nation, instead of having the moral high ground of keeping a Union together, would that have been better? History is complicated, and Gen Z reasoning is not they think they’re pure, but they’re really just simplistic. They know two things. White people did some very bad things, and no, that’s it. That’s all they it.”
“Maher argued that “in 1776 slavery was a lot like flying private. Today. If you could afford to, you would have done it too. Everybody did it, of all races, throughout history, in the Bible and all over the world. If you hate George Washington for slavery, are you prepared to hate ‘The Woman King?’ Because her Empire was built on it too.”
Then he argued that “at least America self-corrects, a mechanism for which was actually written into the Constitution. The citizens of Gaza cannot assemble and protest of their own government, cannot do or say what they want or practice whatever religion they want, or have a free press, all rights guaranteed in just our First Amendment.”
The constitution, Maher continued, is the “bedrock for everything that makes life good for the very people who hate them so much. It’s so easy to take for granted individual liberty, a bill of rights, the rule of law, checks and balances, getting a trial by jury, the peaceful transfer of power, protecting minority rights and democracy itself. But those are the things that make our pampered, privileged, bratty lives so relatively cushy. No one starves here, even our poor people are fat.”
There’s more of course, and you can watch the whole thing below: