The season premier of HBO's “Real Time” with comedian Bill Maher closed Friday night with a sharp critique of Tea Party members for their admiration of the Founding Fathers. Maher made the argument that the Tea Party is far from what the Founding Fathers were: forward thinking, intelligent, tolerant of all religion, and men who read books.
“Now that they’ve finished reading the Constitution out loud,” Maher said to chuckles from the audience, “the tea baggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I’m talking of course about the founding fathers.”
Maher:
"Now, I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly b—s---."
Maher went on to claim that the Founding Fathers had a moral code, but it didn’t come from the Bible - ”except for the part about, ‘it’s cool to own slaves.’”
Comments
Most revolutionary types are more like James Dean than they are Oral Roberts.
In the old world, they lived under a very strong religious hand. In the new world, they could let it all hang out. What would you do?
The problem is when you found a new country, you represent that new country's elite.
And the cycle starts again.
x
The Tea Party -- precisely like the Founding Fathers -- espouse limited government. This is the correlation, while any other comparison is meaningless and specious.
Somalia has limited government. It is a paradise.
What's meaningless and specious is your belief voting is going to change anything.
The powers that be in this country are well beyond your ability to affect them with "their " system. It IS their system. Don't kid yourself. So is your money and banking structure. The only reason you haven't noticed that noose around your testicles is because it hasn't been tugged on yet.
What we have here is the elite of the country running the show, while you and other "voters" dance to whatever tune they call.
They know a lot of gospel music...
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I doubt the founding fathers would have wanted the US turned into a crime-ridden cesspit.
Bill Maher is both right and wrong. Yes, the Founding Father's were Liberal elites but you have to put that into the context of WESTERN Liberalism as a whole in which both Modern Conservatives and Modern Liberal's (Progressives) are a subset.
Our Founding Fathers were NOT MODERN Liberals. They were 18th and 19th Century Liberals which is known as CLASSICAL Liberalism which is akin to modern Conservatism.
CLASSICAL LIBERALISM (Founding Fathers) is closest to MODERN Conservativism.
Bill Maher, and many of you here need to look up the distinction and understand your history.
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