Author and former Accuracy In Academia director Dan Flynn conceded [at Accuracy In Academia's June 2003 Conservative University] that the title of his latest book “Why the Left Hates America” is provocative. It is deliberately so, he said. He then proceeded to back his assertion with example after example and to explain the Left’s hatred. 

Flynn noted how Left-wing anti-Americanism visibly increased subsequent to the campaign to forcibly oust Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. He allowed that there is nothing inherently anti-American about having questions about the wisdom of choosing the timing and/or circumstances of military action. Many conservatives [such as Flynn himself] have expressed such concerns. 

That the Left have gone far beyond this is expressed by the mindset of some anti-war protesters he recently interviewed: One young lady said the US is a “little bitch – someone broke her nail, so [America] is blowing up the whole world.” Another youth was selling t-shirts with Bush, Cheney & Rumsfeld portrayed as icons of the true ‘Axis of Evil.’ Other shirt represented the President of the United States as today’s Hitler. With little prompting, the vendor offered that he considered America a fascist state. The audience snickered as Flynn wondered aloud if this were true, how long could one reasonably expect to sell such material 200 yards from the White House unmolested? 

‘Diversity’ is an oft-cited buzzword today, especially on college campuses. This has lately been perverted to mean that a given faculty should have a diverse appearance like a UN gathering, but think monolithically like the patrons of a San Francisco coffee house. Flynn asserted that the Leftist conception of diversity is based upon ‘things that shouldn’t matter,’ such as skin color rather than the true intellectual diversity that one should expect in a university. 

One explanation is the political orientation expressed in faculty party affiliations. Flynn cited such recent statistics as a 25:1 Democrat-to-Republican ratio at CornellUniversity. At the University of Colorado at Boulder it is 31:1, Stanford University boasts a 9:1 figure while the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professes a 10:1 proportion. UNC’s history department stands at 46:1, which [provoking some chuckles] Flynn interpreted as having less intellectual diversity than the Soviet-era Kremlin. 

What has been the result of such an ideologically monolithic academia? Flynn recalled University of New Mexico professor Richard Berthold, who was pleased to tell his students [the day after 9/11], “anyone who can blow up the Pentagon would get my vote.” [In “Why the Left Hates America,” Flynn noted that the professor’s repeated this diatribe to several subsequent classes.] 

Citing faculty complaints, Holy Cross College’s sociology department head Royce Singleton insisted a secretary remove an American flag she had displayed. She explained it was to honor her friend Todd Beamer [who was aboard United flight 93 (that crashed in rural Pennsylvania before hitting its apparent DC target)]. Unmoved, Singleton removed the flag himself. 

A central theme in “Why the Left Hates America” was whether this nation is redeemable and worth preserving. According to Hollywood types like Janeane Garafalo, Sean Penn and Woody Harrelson the answer is an emphatic ‘no.’ We should all just “duck and implode” - this is not a society worth defending. 

If that is so, asked Flynn, how do we account for the fact that 45 of the last 60 Nobel Prizes had Americans at least named as co-recipients? The audience was further reminded that our [still private] medical system has heralded the advent of the MRI and CAT scan. Cures have been found for such diseases as polio and yellow fever – the lifespan of human beings worldwide has been significantly increased in the last century as a direct result of American medicine. 

We were further invited to recall that such essential inventions as the airplane, electric light and the ATM were created here. As Osama Bin Laden, Saddam and other America-haters in hot climates ducked into their air-conditioned abodes, they were giving tacit endorsement of everything that is good about the US. 

Yet the Left is fond of smearing America as a racist and sexist country. Flynn posited that although our history is ‘by no means perfect,’ several facts give lie to such derogatory assertions. From 1820 to 1930, the US took in 60% of the world’s immigrants. Although not exceptional in denying women the vote in the late eighteenth century, America was indeed ‘unique’ in granting as broad a franchise as it did at that time - and was among the first to eventually grant female suffrage. Flynn pointed out that even today, the majority of humanity has no say in choosing leaders or official policy – thus illustrating how the US is still exceptional. 

Flynn balanced the condemnation of American ‘cultural imperialism,’ as he related how such practices as cannibalism, infanticide, honor killings and suttee [throwing or expecting a widow to throw herself on her dead husband’s funeral pyre] were curtailed if not eliminated by contact with the West. Flynn asked, how could all cultures be declared essentially equal [a la cultural relativism] with the existence of such barbaric practices? 

The Left compares American culture to a Utopian ideal rather than in the context of the real world in which we operate. It is true that no women have yet been invited to golf memberships at Augusta. It is true that US women are not proportionally represented on the battlefield. Flynn added that it is also true that we live in a ‘global village’ wherein dowry killings, female genital mutilation and forced abortions persist. 

For multiculturalists, American culture is less than equal – every other society in the world is not to be judged, no matter how violent and oppressive. Nonetheless, Flynn tells us that the Left finds nothing to applaud in our own culture. This is a mindset that cannot be embraced by anyone with common sense and intellectual honesty. 

Mr. Flynn expressed gratitude for the warm response with which he was greeted, noting a stark contrast to those of several previous occasions. At a 2000 address at UC Berkeley, his speech was successfully terminated by an ‘orchestrated campaign’ of chants and catcalls. [Provoking laughter, he added that he was mooned as well.] A ‘Nazi-style’ book-burning of his book Cop Killer topped off the event. He explained that his determination to place himself in ‘liberal Meccas’ has been attended by such results as last-minute speech cancellations, being banned at any future Black Panther meetings and a physical attack by ‘aging hippies’ at a protest rally. 

Flynn offered that the Left hates America because it is as fundamentally repellant to them as was the Soviet Union for conservatives. Further, the very existence of a prosperous and free US stands as a tangible refutation to the Leftist assertion that freedom and capitalism are failed concepts. Flynn went on to say that President Bush ‘couldn’t have dreamed’ of casting an opposition that would better serve his agenda by alienating the American people. 

The Left can be distinguished from Liberals or Democrats as being more like Gore Vidal rather than Al Gore. They are hardcore ideologues comprising probably less than ten percent of the US population. Flynn offered that the likes of these people could simply be ‘laughed off’ if they had proportionate influence. Given however that they dominate the culture - museums, Hollywood, the media, academia etc. - they represent a cadre that must be understood and dealt with accordingly.