By Bill Maher

Let’s talk about North Korea and its extensive system of prisons, re-education camps and gulags.

The Washington-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea recently released a report, documenting just how many of these facilities exist and under what circumstances prisoners are held. The Washington Post adds, “A U.N. Commission of Inquiry concluded in 2014 that the prison system amounted to a crime against humanity. About 120,000 North Koreans are thought to be held in the camps.” What assholes. Not the Washington Post – the North Koreans. What kind of country locks up that many of its citizens?

One like ours, I guess. The United States incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other country in the world, to the tune of almost 2.3 million Americans currently behind bars. We are only 4.3 percent of the world’s population but we hold over 20 percent of the world’s prisoners.

My question is, if North Korea is the evil, oppressive, “crimes against humanity” people and we’re the good, enlightened, “let freedom ring” people, how is it that we see the need to lock more of our citizens up? Are the American people that much more immoral and unethical than the North Korean people? Is it okay with everybody that, just in sheer numbers, we are more punitive towards our own people than a cruel, iron-fisted dictatorship?