The Foolish Lectures of Bill Maher

There isn’t much to like about Bill Maher. I struggle to watch his television show for more than five minutes. So while I normally wouldn’t give him the time of day, his most recent Huffington Post piece deserves at least one response. He spends the entire time assaulting the minds of the American people, using his acerbic style to state repeatedly how stupid Americans are and how the “smart” politicians like Obama should ignore them. Near the end comes this:

And if you want to call me an elitist for this, I say thank you. Yes, I want decisions made by an elite group of people who know what they’re talking about. That means Obama budget director Peter Orszag, not Sarah Palin.

Which is the way our founding fathers wanted it. James Madison wrote that “pure democracy” doesn’t work because ‘there is nothing to check… an obnoxious individual.'”

Yes, Mr. Maher, James Madison and the rest of the Founders abhored pure democracy where rule was only carried out directly by the people. Yet such distrust in the direct rule of the people fails to prove Maher’s prior assertion. It did not mean Madison and the boys wanted a technocracy, the rule of government “experts” like Peter Orszag. Such a view actually denies our nation’s fundamental axiom that all men are created equal by denying the legitimacy of representative government. Instead, the Founders argued for a Republic, where the people rule indirectly through the Constitution and their representatives. Madison trusted the people’s will as molded by the Constitution and its system of goverment far more than Maher’s alternative of appointed technocrats.

If Maher wishes to summon the Founders to call Americans every form of stupid, he should at least understand what they wrote and said.