Real Time with Bill Maher has become rather dull, with few strong conservative guests and no conservative presence in the audience. Everyone simply agrees that Bush is an idiot and feels no need to present any evidence.
A few days ago though, Maher invited on former-socialist Christopher Hitchens, now a supporter of the war in Iraq.
From The Passion of Christopher Hitchens:
What tempers the furor over Hitchens is the recognition that he has not really become a soldier for the right. Browsing through his ample writings during the first quarter of 2005, one finds, alongside support for the war in Iraq, a variety of opinions that many American leftists would applaud: a slap at the late Pope John Paul II for “saying that condoms are worse than AIDS,” praise for John Brown as a prophet “who anticipated the Emancipation Proclamation and all that has ensued from it,” and a tribute to Tom Paine as “our unacknowledged founding father … the moral and intellectual author of the Declaration of Independence.” Hitchens also continues to oppose the death penalty and to advocate putting Henry Kissinger on trial as a war criminal.
Hitchens was clearly the best-read member of the Real Time panel. No one knew how to react when he matter-of-factly pointed out that America’s conflict with Islam goes back to the Barbary pirates, who enslaved American sailors as infidels.