Hating America as usual.(Scan)

I don't normally attend presentations by radical anti-American leftists for the same reason I don't go in for unnecessary dental work: I'm not a masochist.

Yet when pseudo-Indian quasi-professor Ward Churchill spoke at the University of Hawaii's Manoa campus on February 22, it seemed like something to attend. After all, most of Churchill's speaking engagements had been canceled when his comparison of America's 9/11 victims to profit-obsessed Nazis--"little Eichmanns," he called them-became widely known. Yet the University of Hawaii went out of its way to provide him with a paid vacation to the Aloha State after the firestorm ignited over Churchill's saying that the September 11 victims got what they deserved.

What did Ward Churchill have to say that was worth bringing him all the way out to the middle of the Pacific? Everything is America's fault. There are no innocent Americans. I am a poster boy for academic freedom. And I am being targeted because the Right wants to eliminate "ethnic studies, women's studies, and queer studies"--not because of his revoltingly offensive statements about those slaughtered on 9/11.

"Americans have a big streak of Nazism in them," explained Churchill. This Nazi streak, he insisted, is the same thing that almost brought down Harry Truman. No, I don't get it either.

There was whooping and hollering from the sympathetic crowd. The main age groups were 18-24 and 45 plus. Most people were either white or Japanese American, the two groups that make up most of the power structure in Hawaii's multicultural milieu. There were quite a few lesbians.

Most of the men were either balding or longhaired--or balding and trying to grow long hair. One actually wore a beret. Muscle tone was in short supply.

Many appeared to be aging radicals happy for the chance to come out and relive the good old days. One elderly, chain-smoking Asian woman hawked copies of Revolutionary Worker. Lots of folks wore message T-shirts, such as "No Hate--No War--No Republicans!" or one that showed Red State America with a caption reading "Weapons of Mass Destruction." The most common tee showed an old ...