I came into Michael Moore’s speech thinking he was the Rush Limbaugh of the left — a big fat idiot (though not a racist or drug addict).

And although I didn’t fall head over heels for him, his passionate concern for the direction of this country sincerely impressed me.

But still it’s important to take an objective look at Moore’s schtick. His speech last night at McGaw Memorial Hall promoting his new book “Dude, Where’s My Country?” did have elements of why plenty of people outside college campuses think he’s a big fat idiot.

You can’t help but nod your head with him when he drives against the failed Bush administration, but he often swerves off the road with exaggerated facts and some ludicrious explanations for society’s ills.

Last winter people fell in love with his documentary “Bowling for Columbine.” Yes, it was very entertaining and had some powerful, moving moments. But Moore takes it upon himself to go beyond America’s problems with gun violence and launches a crusade against everything establishment — everything not part of his fantasy liberal dreamland.

He has a gripe with nearly every U.S. foreign policy decision of the past 50 years. Moore told me before his speech that “we were friends with the Taliban” and lined their pockets when we helped Afghanistan fight the Soviets in the 1970s. New scholarship clearly shows the Taliban came to power once we stopped giving aid, after the Soviets fled. Moore opposed destroying terrorist camps there two years ago and thinks we shouldn’t be there in any capacity today. Had we fulfilled our commitment to a peaceful Afghanistan 30 years ago, things might have been different. It’s a lot harder to criticize President Bush for neglecting Afghanistan when clowns like Moore contend we shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

The list goes on: He suggests fighting the war in Kosovo (which only ended a Nazi-style genocide and deposed a dictator) desensitized the Columbine killers to the point that they didn’t see anything wrong with slaughtering classmates. Is he serious? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

Moore undoubtedly has good inentions; his film “Roger and Me” brought overdue attention to the assault on the middle class. But his demagogery gets so extreme at times that it can drown out his legitimate points, giving meatheads like Limbaugh (once he gets out of rehab) the opportunity to unfairly paint liberals as unpatriotc.

Liberal lion Al Franken spoke at NU last year and gave one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Rational and moderated yet still funny, Franken carried the day against the failed Bush administration but didn’t resort to the absurdities Moore has made a fortune spinning.

I know criticizing Moore on a college campus is unfashionable. But if we let the extremists in our fold dominate like Republicans have, we’ll have plenty of time to read “Dude, Where’s My Country?” in the second Bush administration.