The talk on Tuesday night was billed as "Why the Left hates America" and was given by Daniel Flynn, author of a book by the same title. Because most people think of liberals as being on the left and conservatives as being on the right, this title was only the first of many misrepresentations.
The fact of the matter is that liberals and conservatives have the same goal -- roughly, making America the best place it can possibly be -- yet Flynn followed a common tactic of downplaying legitimate liberal concerns and emphasizing the hatred of America by those on "the Left." This is a gross caricature of liberals as being more against the status quo than they are for anything, and it inhibits real debate of issues.
According to Flynn, "the Left" is the 10 percent of the population that used to be Marxist revolutionaries and is now mad at the United States for disproving all their theories. Though they are few in number, he is worried about them primarily because they dominate academia. Flynn claimed to dislike extremism of any kind, but in fact, he was only worried about it in "the Left," and he repeatedly blurred the lines between his extreme examples and liberals generally. His primary goal was to discredit pretty much anyone who feels there is anything wrong with America.
As proof that universities are controlled by the Left, Flynn cited the overwhelming number of registered Democrats in various academic departments. This was just a few minutes after he had claimed to make a distinction between Democrats and the Left. Throughout his talk, he implicated a significant portion of the ideological spectrum in his accusations against those at the far left end. This sort of manipulation of terms is simply intellectual dishonesty.
It was clear that Flynn had two favorite approaches for attacking the people he disagreed with. The first was with regard to American foreign policy, and the second dealt with questioning the actual condition of our country.
He recalled several instances of patriotism being stifled after September 11, and implied that these were a few among many, but failed to look nearly as critically at the numerous instances when anything other than rally-round-the-president, pro-American sentiment was similarly stifled. He played recorded statements from protestors he had recently interviewed, and sure enough, these people were quite crazy. He then proceeded to say, "I don't want to suggest that this represents the average person who is against the war."
But this is exactly what he did suggest. He lambasted "knee-jerk anti-Americanism," which seemed to be characterized by any attempt to understand why the September 11 attacks happened. The disturbingly common answer was that there was no reason, that the United States was an innocent victim and that the only correct response was to wave the flag and sing "God Bless America" while the government does its thing. With regards to this far more prevalent knee-jerk pro-Americanism, Flynn said that, despite their unthinking devotion to their preformed beliefs, at least these people were right. It is not surprising that he gave no justification for these people: He is one of them.
A second approach for attacking liberals Flynn breached when various audience members asked him about the actual condition of our country. His standard response was to draw on an impressive body of facts and statistics about conditions in other countries (all from what would generally be called the third-world), as well as to list various good things about our country. Both were irrelevant to the actual question being asked.
Economic opportunity in America is greater than in many parts of the world, though it falls drastically short of Flynn's perceptions. Even if we haven't quite solved that messy "civil rights" thing yet, there are millions of people world-wide who would gladly trade their situation for ours. Although over 90 percent of last fall's federal elections were won by the candidate who raised the most money (note: this is not how democracy is supposed to work), there are countries where people do not even have the illusion of popular control over government.
Flynn is right, there are people who are worse off. But this does not change the simple fact that our country is far from perfect and does not live up to its ideals. Government should not be rated on a comparative scale. Not demanding, expecting and effecting change is tantamount to saying that things are good enough as they are. It is complacency of the worst sort.
This was the crux of his problem: he saw people attacking America, and rather than offering ways to fix things or even trying to show that these things are not problems, he pointed to problems that we don't have. "When you compare anything to an ideal," he said, "it's gonna fall short." He failed to realize that this is why you have ideals, so you can see where you need to go. And we still have a long way to go.
(Dave Algoso is a Cavalier Daily viewpoint writer.)
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