In Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, John Cleese leads the People’s Front of Judea as they complain about the invasion of the Romans.
“What have the Romans ever given us?” Cleese asks.
One by one, the People’s Front offers Roman contributions – the aqueduct, sanitation, and irrigation.
“Right,” says Cleese, “but what the Romans ever given us?”
“America has its own People’s Front,” Dan Flynn told Fairfield students Monday night in a lecture sponsored by the College Republicans. “They call themselves the left.”
His new book, “Why the Left hates America,” addresses the viewpoints of this political group. Flynn stressed that by “left,” he does not mean liberals or democrats.
In fact, Flynn said that liberals and democrats share more characteristics with Republicans than they do with leftists. According to Flynn, leftists are unwilling give to credit to the United States for its major contributions to the world.
“Why is the left wrong?” Flynn asked. “They have a warped sense of reality.”
Flynn went on to say that America has played a significant role in the development of technology worldwide, and that the left fails to recognize this. Instead of seeing the good, Flynn offered, the left focuses on, and even obsesses over, anything that is wrong in America.
“America stands as a massive refutation to a lot of the central theories that the left holds near and dear,” Flynn said. He added that America is not racist, nor is it religiously intolerant, as many leftists believe.
Flynn noted that no one in Miami ever builds a makeshift raft and goes to Haiti.
“Maybe [our] society’s not as bad as leftists think,” he said.
In spite of the fact that leftist represent only 10% of the political groups in the country, he cited their influential power in America as a major problem, specifically on college campuses where professors tend to “lean to the left.”
“If they had an influence of 10%, a guy like myself could sort of just laugh them off,” said Flynn. “They wield a lot more power in society – disproportionate to their numbers.
Flynn has spoken to a number of colleges and universities – about 60 in the past year – because he feels that students should be exposed to perspectives they might not come in contact with otherwise. Faculties are not nearly politically diverse enough, he said.
“You have a faculty that looks like the UN but thinks like a San Francisco coffee house,” Flynn said. “The sort of diversity we get is a fraud.”
Flynn said that at some universities, administrators and professors were angered that some of their colleagues chose to display the American flag. He called reactions such as these “disturbing.”
Flynn offered two views of America: the leftist view, which sees only the “slave master’s whip, homelessness, and AIDS,” and the view of everyone else, who see brave soldiers, “the 13th Amendment… and GIs liberating death camps.”
“You can’t… look only at the bad and the ugly,” he said.
America is often compared to an ideal state. Flynn proposed that instead of comparing our country to a lofty ideal, it should simply be compared to other countries in the world.
“When you do that, we look rather exemplary,” he said.
Flynn is the former executive director of Accuracy in Academia, and has written many articles on higher education. He has appeared on the O’Reilly factor, CNN, MSN, and is a frequent guest on talk radio shows.
“He is a pretty fair conservative,” said Yez Alayan, ’04. Alayan added, however, that he “asked [Flynn] a question… he took me into the spin zone. I guess if you missed this just watch Fox news.”
Those directly affiliated with the College Republicans were pleased with the lecture.
“It’s great to have someone from the right come to a campus that’s dominated by liberals,” said Vice President Stacey Campbell, ’06.
Executive Director for the Connecticut Union of College Republicans Bob French was also in attendance. Having heard him speak before, French considers Flynn to be an effective speaker.
“He’s someone who can really create a dialogue on campus,” said French.
Leave a Reply